Tribes and crowds flock back to Shinnecock Nation powwow

Matthew Richardson traveled from North Carolina to sing traditional American Indian songs at the 76th annual Shinnecock Indian Nation powwow on Saturday.

Richardson, 25, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe, views powwows as a key way to pass down indigenous traditions.

“It’s for the little ones,” Richardson said, gesturing to the audience, which included children in traditional American Indian regalia. “You see all the littles ones out here all dressed up. This is why it’s important. So they know where they come from.”

Between 30,000 and 40,000 people are expected at the 76th annual powwow, which runs through Monday and this year opened to the public again after two years of pandemic-era private powwows that were limited to Shinnecock members, said Shinnecock chairman Bryan Polite.

The event began Friday, and each day there are two “grand entries” featuring traditional songs, drumming and dancing.

The grand entry takes place on a raised grass “drum circle,” which Polite described as “where you get all of your negative energy out.”

This year, the drum circle also was the site of a prayer and dance ceremony to raise awareness about the high rates of missing and murdered indigenous women.

“This has been an epidemic that has been going on since colonization, and it hasn’t stopped,” said Chenae Bullock, a Shinnecock Nation member who helped organize the ceremony.

A November report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office called the high rates of violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women “a crisis.”

Polite said increasing awareness is vital.

“Because indigenous culture sometimes is disregarded, the women are completely disregarded, and a lot of people don’t know about it,” he said.

In addition to hosting American Indians from around the country and thousands of non-indigenous visitors, the powwow is a “homecoming for Shinnecocks from all over the country and all over the world,” Polite said.

The powwows also allow visitors to see American Indians beyond caricatures and stereotypes, he added.

For Lynn Dyer, 58, of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape people of Delaware and southern New Jersey, dancing in the powwow is “to honor our ancestors,” many of whom were killed in the conquest of their lands by European colonizers.

Craig Merrick, 31, who is Dakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne and is a fifth-grade teacher on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Northern California, said he spends most of his summers traveling to powwows and other ceremonies.

Merrick said powwows are “about connectivity for me. It’s my spirit, it’s letting that spirit come back to that circle to understand who I am and where I come from.”

He thinks of all that his ancestors had to endure through the centuries since the European conquest.

“The reason I’m able to sing is because of their sacrifices through racism, through colonization, through white supremacy, through all that stuff,” Merrick said. “The fact we can still dance and still sing and show our children that we’re still here means we can continue going forward.”

For more information on the powwow, go to shinnecockindianpowwow.com.

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.