Calgary Public Library offers Powwow Trail 101

By Jeremy Appel, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

(ANNews) – For the second year, Calgarians have the chance to learn everything they’ve wanted to know about powwows but might have been afraid to ask, thanks to the Calgary Public Library (CPL), which recently hosted the first of two Powwow Trail 101 sessions. 

In Treaty 7, Powwow Trail encompasses the lands of the Siksika, Kainai, Tsuut’ina, Piikani, and Iethka Stoney Nakoda bands, with each hosting a powwow throughout the summer. 

Each Powwow Trail 101 session focuses on a specific powwow and is scheduled three days in advance of it.

On July 31, the CPL hosted Powwow Trail 101 at the Saddletowne Library, which prepared attendees for the Piikani Powwow. The Aug. 28 session will be at the Crowfoot location for the Stoney Nakoda Powwow. 

On Aug. 21, CPL will host a makeup session at the Forest Lawn Library, which was originally supposed to correspond to the Tsuut’ina Powwow, but was postponed due to poor air quality in late July. 

The sessions are hosted by Autumn EagleSpeaker, southern Alberta’s first female powwow emcee. 

“Encouraging our females and women to see what else is out there and what they can participate in is important,” said EagleSpeaker in a July 19 CPL news release.

“Our culture has been changed a lot by colonialism. Our ways of being and honouring our male and female roles has really changed. With modern times, we’re coming back strong and being part of leadership roles and emcees.” 

Kelli Morning Bull, the Indigenous service design lead at CPL, told Alberta Native News that the events’ origin occurred in 2021, when CPL hosted a powwow for National Indigenous History Month as its “first big public event” since the Covid-19 pandemic began. 

The powwow was a “huge success,” she said, with more than 500 attendees. 

In 2021, there were only three people on CPL’s Indigenous services team, Morning Bull noted, so they hired an outside contractor “to come in and pull all of those elements together — the dancers, the drum groups, those cultural pieces.”

“Powwows are a big event to put on and require a lot of people,” added Morning Bull.

Two years later, the team decided that in addition to putting on more powwows, they would host a series of educational workshops for members of the public to learn “about powwow etiquette and protocols, the do’s and the don’ts, and then what to expect when you’re attending a powwow,” she explained. 

“Those patrons who wanted to attend an actual, real powwow were set up for the best experience going into this new adventure for them,” said Morning Bull. 

The library locations were chosen based on the availability of green space for the outdoor events, accessibility for the dancers and drummers, many of whom are coming from their reserves, and the neighbourhoods’ demographics. 

“We wanted to bring a new experience to a library that has never hosted an Indigenous program to that scale,” explained Morning Bull, who is from Piikani Nation.

She added that the event at the Saddletowne location was the first event of its kind there, with “a huge interest of newcomers who are wanting to learn more about Indigenous culture and become versed in it.”

“We want to assure new patrons that powwow are for everyone, not just for Indigenous people,” Morning Bull said. “They’re for everybody to come and celebrate.” 

Based on the reception the events have received, Morning Bull said, CPL patrons understand this. 

“It’s surprising, because you would think people would be very shy, but as soon as you invite people to the dance floor … everybody just gets up. They want to be involved, and the kids have such a great time,” she said.