Pow-Wow Oklahoma! Interviews

MW: What is it like to be the emcee of a large Powwow such as a Red Earth or Schemitzun?

WC: First of all you have to analyze how many drums you’re going to have. I remember one time way back in the early 1970’s when you probably had four men sitting around that drum, we almost lost our culture had it not been for those men at the drum. I recall James Chasenah, Edwin Chappabitty, Ralph Kotay, Leonard Cozad, and Jimmy Anquoe as men that really had a strong belief in their traditions. Today, the largest powwow emceed was seventy-seven drums in Connecticut, and all those drums were good. Any one of those drums could have anywhere from ten to fifteen singers including the women. There was a time where you had the best dressed drum group and they would get paid so these guys would wear black hats and vests, those were some really good times. An emcee has to work well with others. You have to work with the Head Dancers and Arena Directors. You become a choreographer, a director, a set designer, and you work to create a picture in a persons mental mind what you want to undertake. Hopefully the Indian people start to understand and they work with you like that. When it comes to an intertribal, Indian or non-Indian you tell them “Come on out, let’s everybody dance”.

But a large powwow becomes a choreographed event and if you don’t have an agenda whereas you’re Arena Directors abide by, sometimes that event will be difficult to complete. My first question to a committee is “What do you want the outcome of your event to be, what do you want to accomplish and we’ll work toward that goal”. For instance, if you want everyone to go home happy, we’ll work that out. If you want everyone to realize this is a sacred cultural event, we’ll work that out. And ultimately there have been times where this has really broadened the horizons of those young people’s minds or these committees’ minds or a communities mind. This is because they don’t realize the power of a powwow. I can go back to 1975 when I made a comment about how Indian communities are changing and the culture in America is a finished product by introducing English only legislation. I believe that the culture in America hasn’t even started to change yet. You ask me where we will be fifty years from now and I can tell you we will still be identifiable Comanche’s because there are people working towards that end now. The culture in America right now is rodeos, tractor pulls, and powwow’s where the culture used to be symphonies and ballets; those have almost gone to the wayside now. They’re trying to revive it but sometimes they call it “elitist” and you can go to a powwow and you could have 25,000 people there.

I remember going to Washington D.C. to the National Museum of the American Indian before they had their first powwow and it was going to be in August so they brought me up there in June to ask me what they could expect. I told them you will probably have ten to fifteen thousand the first day, maybe twenty thousand the second day. They laughed because they had seating for two thousand people and they wound up having close to eighteen thousand that first day. They had people standing ten rows back and they had to put up barriers so people wouldn’t be touching the dancers. You know how it is when they want to get close to you and take a picture it can get scary, but that’s what happened there. They didn’t realize they would have that much success but it takes time, it takes talent, and it takes money to put on a good quality powwow like that. These days we’re kind of getting back to those traditional powwows where there is no contests, people just dance for the fun of it.

MW: Out of all the Powwows that you have had the privilege of being an emcee at, which one is your all time favorite?

WC: There are a lot of powwows that I would consider to be my all time favorites. The ones that I go to on an annual basis are the Little Shell Powwow in Newtown, North Dakota. I went up there in 1988 when I was asked to emcee this powwow by an Arikara man. I sat next to a man by the name of Pete Coffee, a big 6'-5", deep voiced man and he asked me “So you’re a professional emcee huh?” and I said, “Hey, I just came up here to do the job you know”. After awhile I had people laughing and I heard him laughing some. Later he said “So your full blood Comanche and part white huh?” and I said “Yeah” like that, and so he really enjoyed that. He told me the next day I would do the Grand Entry and so I had no problems. So here comes Friday night, and then Saturday we got through it, and that night he told me “Tomorrow, I’m going to take you as my son and were going to honor you”. And sure enough he got on the microphone and told the audience in his Hidatsa-Arikara language that I was going to become his replacement. Little did I know that I would have that responsibility bestowed upon me. He told me “Now I’m going to take you as my son and you won’t even have to change your name” and I laughed and said “Dang, were not getting married are we?” So I have been going to that powwow every year and five years after that, he took a seat on a bench down below the speaker stand. You may see that at various powwows where the elders will sit there and observe what’s going on, well that’s what he did. He observed how they were treating me and how I was relaying information to them. Now I have uncles, sisters, daughters, nephews, brothers and so on. Each year I get over there and they tell me “Welcome home” and that’s a tremendous feeling.

There’s also a powwow in Prior Lake, Minnesota with the Mdewakanton Shakopee Sioux Community. I’ve been going there for the past thirteen years or so and it’s really an honor to emcee a powwow which is a Siouan culture because they have a significant number of emcees from the Sioux Tribe but they ask me to come in there and emcee. After thirteen years it’s one of those that you help them advance and it’s now one of the best powwows to go too. It’s one of the few places where if you don’t win in the contest, you can take your number to the window and they will give you some gas money. It’s one of those powwows where they will feed everyone lunch on Saturday and Sunday. It’s one of those powwows where you can go and be treated with respect and they always have water available. But they put high regard on their Veterans and that’s what I really enjoy. All these powwows that I mentioned, their Veterans are just like ours here in Oklahoma how we bestow prestige upon them. When you go up North and you see the way they do things it just makes you feel good because these Indians are no different than our Indians. I’ve been to Canada several times. I’ve been to Carry the Kettle and Onion Lake and they labeled me as a United States Emcee, so I’ve made that transition from the South to the North to Canada like that. An emcee has to realize that if you really want to go someplace; you really have to have your own line of stories as well as your respect for tradition. You also have to have an understanding of their traditions so you won’t step on anyone’s toes. But a Northern Emcee hasn’t been down to Oklahoma yet. You might get one at Red Earth but you won’t see one at an Osage dance or Greyhorse, they won’t get anybody from out of state. Some of these traditional powwows like the Oklahoma City Indian Club will get someone locally like Tonekei. Like our powwows here at the Comanche Homecoming, were going to get people that know what we want. We try with other emcees but that’s probably one reason why we need a little humor in there too.

MW: Do you see the typical format of a modern Powwow changing much over the next twenty years?

WC: I’m what you would consider a rare breed, I’m an example of my uncles in that when I go to a powwow I wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. When you look at a powwow now, your going to see very few of us, were disappearing. Now days, you see singers wearing cut-off jeans or shorts and tennis shoes and ball caps. That’s the transition that I’ve been seeing and I try to tell them that if this is the way it’s going to be, then you’re in for the money and the commercial side of it. They would never allow that back home, back home you’ve got to be respectful. I’ve seen drum groups trash powwows and they have no respect for their cultures and many times they’re not invited back and that says something. But at the same time, I’ve seen some boys come up with some songs that really move and impress me. I’m impressed with how much regard they have for their traditions. I think their traditions will always hold fast but you have to understand that powwow is new to some cultures even in Oklahoma. You have some tribes that don’t have powwow as their culture but they’ve incorporated it into their lives or adopted it into their communities and it helps make them feel good about being Indian. Powwows in Oklahoma are still by far the greatest and back when I was a young boy there was the Comanche Homecoming, Carnegie 4th of July, Pawnee Homecoming, Tulsa Powwow, and the Indian Fair and that was about it.

MW: What is your favorite sight to see at a Powwow?

WC: I’ve seen a lot of wonderful things. I’ve seen a marriage performed; I’ve seen a man ask a woman for her hand in marriage, I’ve seen several people who have lost their lives in the arena. I’ve seen that arena hurt somebody. If you get in there and clown around you’re going to have to play that role as a clown. If you get in there with traditional regalia on during intertribal and they’re clowning around it will hurt you, I’ve seen it many times. If you don’t treat it with respect, it has no use for you. So when you walk on those powwow grounds, you have to think of it as a sacred place. When I go to a powwow for the first time, I stand on that ground and smoke a cigarette and offer tobacco and tell it “Aho my friend, I’m glad to be here”. I have told those people that have come to me for advice how I treat it and they understand. I went to a powwow in Thief River Falls Minnesota on Memorial Day Weekend and towards the end of the powwow I told them what I did when I first came up here. I told them I stood up and talked to that arena and I said “were going to have a Memorial Day celebration here, were going to think of our soldiers and our Mom’s and Dad’s whom we have buried. And when we come into the arena we might bring our tears, but were going to look forward to better days ahead”. So I’ve done my job and I called for a drum group to sing a Memorial Song and asked everybody to please stand. When they got through with that Memorial Song, I asked for an Intertribal Song and that arena was full. That tells me those people listened to what has been said. If you touch their hearts and minds they will listen and come forward. Those are the changes I have seen so if you have a person that has grown up in that arena, they will have a more traditional way of looking at things. But if you have someone that comes from a commercial background; that’s all your going to see, just commercial contest dancing and that’s it.

I’ve gone to powwows out West where I see these dancers wearing black shawls that come from Comanche’s. I ask them “Where did you get your shawl?” and they usually say “Well, I just made it myself”. Those traditional ways have to be earned. I’ve seen girls that wear a Comanche dress with that little “saabe” (pronounced: 'saa-vay' a fabric insert on the side of a Comanche Dress) on the side “Who made your dress for you”, “I did”. So these cultures don’t understand that you have to be bestowed with that right, you have to be given the authority to wear these certain things. That’s what I see that were getting away from. Several years ago my brother lost his daughter to a bout with cancer. He later adopted a young girl as his daughter, so we brought her out into the arena and laid out a blanket and put her in a dress, a belt, leggings, and dressed her right there in that arena. He said “From this day, this girl will be my daughter” and he dressed her Comanche. So that girl was overwhelmed, she’s an Osage girl but she never wore Comanche clothes or never figured she would be given the right to wear those clothes. Later she came to a Peyote Meeting we had down here last January and she sat there and cried. I looked at her and asked her “Why are you crying?” she said “The music is so beautiful, I’ve never heard music like this”. When you learn things in that arena, or inside the tipi, or the sweat lodge, that’s where you will get those gifts. If our people don’t start looking at that, it’s going to be totally commercial, very commercial. And I’m sorry but I had a part in that too, but there was what I call a renaissance about 30 years ago. Years later this movie called Dances with Wolves was on and I said lookie here, being Indian is really popular now. Rodney Grant is my little brother, I’ve known him when we lived up in Nebraska but I made a comment that these young boys that are taking to this music so much that they are going to incorporate music into their lives. In fact, when a little baby is born, the first thing they hear is Indian music and a little pair of moccasins. I still have my daughter and son’s moccasins from when they were little babies and so that is what you prepare them for.

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