pow wow

on the 26th of april, sterling attended the 37th annual head start pow wow. it was held at the ronan event center aka ronan middle school. he didn't have school that day. so i gave him a bath and after that i made him put on his outfit. which was a good things since he refused to wear it that evening. i spent about a week sewing the outfit for him. it wasn't my best work and i cut a few corners but i'm mostly happy with the way it turned out. i like his breech cloth better than his shirt. 

sorry about the blurriness, someone's fingerprints were on the lens. the front and back of his ribbon shirt look pretty much the same. 

here is another picture of the whole outfit. he is signing yellow. making a Y in asl is hard and takes practice. but after a little thought and work he can do it.

i had him lift up his shirt so that you can see his breech cloth. while i took these pictures with sterling while he was just wearing underwear, boys normal wear some sort of pant under their breech cloth. he also was going to get some moccasins, but they had lost his foot tracings so he didn't get them until he got to the pow wow. not that it really matter, since he didn't want to wear anything. while i still have them, i have to keep them in a bag because they smell awful. 

they made arm bands at school. above you can see sterling is taking the feathers off of his. it was really loud in the gym. a little after 5 they had the grand entry, which had the kids line up with their school. arlee got to lead this year. we walked around the gym until the last school was in the gym. they did a little opening/ intro and then it was free dance time. 

we just went back to our seats and ate a sack lunch that they provided for the kids. sterling didn't want to do anything, except sit on my lap or follow me around. thankfully andrew was able to get of early to attend. i'm sorry the next couple of pictures are blurry. my camera isn't good with movement.

andrew actually knew the man dressed above. i think he said his name was willy. 

here was two other samples of native dress. one is the woman, she had a dress with matching pants, moccasins, and several other things that i don't have the names for. same goes for the blurry boy. while most of the head start boys wore ribbon shirt and breech cloths, you could tell which boys are tribe members by what they wore. 

while i took the picture for the little girl in the purple and the man in orange, i can now see several examples of jingle dresses in the picture. the girls could wear ribbon dresses (like ribbon shirts, but as a dress) or a jingle dress. the man in orange had bullet casings on his anklets. some men had bells (think small cow bells). 

a better one of the man in orange and the jingle dress in motion. i think the feathers on his back are cold a bustle. 

a ward member was also their with her granddaughter and took two pictures of us, but i haven't gotten them from her yet.