The images stick with me, a week after Peshawbestown's annual powwow.
A little girl, at most two years old, toddles along behind her mom in the Sacred Circle. They are dressed in similar buckskin colored dresses. The mother's thick black hair is pulled into two braids. The little girl's hair isn't long enough yet for braids, and her hair wisps in an impish circle around her face.
The mom takes baby steps in rhythm to the drum beats so her tiny daughter can keep up. The toddler sometimes stops to watch other dancers as they move around the circle -- a river of color, feathers, shawls, jingle dresses, and beautiful fringed blankets. She stares, looks all around, laughs, points and claps. Then, she returns on sturdy little legs to her mom, looking up at her with a face full of joy and wonder.
It is an annual time of family reunion, celebration, song and dance that honor and respect elders, veterans, families, community and harmony with the natural world and that also call for healing.
A boy, about eight or nine, in a turquoise vest and leggings, high-steps and swoops to the drumbeat like the fancy dancer he may one day become. A woman with white hair, an elder, walks the sacred circle with her metal cane in slow steps. Teenage girls let the shawls draped over their shoulders billow and flare.
Joy fills me as the late afternoon sun passes the wooded natural amphitheater and my hillside seat on its westward path to the horizon. When the drum stops briefly, I hear the jingle dresses shake and rustle like poplar leaves in a breeze.
I fall asleep that night with those images, colors and drum songs in my heart. I awake early the next morning and grab my journal. I want to describe all I have seen, but a single sentence pushes itself onto the paper.
"To take away a people's language, culture and spiritual traditions is to rob souls."
I find myself thinking about federal assimilation laws and policies that for decades made it illegal for American Indians to practice their spiritual and cultural traditions. This shameful chapter in U.S. history stripped native people of their land, language and culture. These laws, as well as resulting disease, poverty and illness, disrupted communities and broke up families.
It could not, however, destroy these resilient native people. I am thankful for that.
I believe a deep part of this region's heartbeat comes from northern Michigan's native heritage and legacy.
I feel fortunate to live in this place of native renaissance, mutual healing, new beginnings and ancient wisdom traditions that restore and affirm spiritual connection and harmony between human and natural world.
Associate editor Loraine Anderson can be reached 231-933-1468 or landerson@record-eagle.com
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