White Eyes Travels to Dartmouth Pow-Wow

Roger White Eyes at Dartmouth. Photo courtesy of Roger White Eyes. Copyright Red Cloud Indian School.

White Eyes Travels to Dartmouth Pow-Wow 
By David LaDeaux '13

The 41st annual Mother's Day pow-wow kicked off last weekend at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. One of our own teachers, Roger White Eyes, served as the arena director. With this job comes a great deal of responsibility that includes making sure he has the veterans carry the flags and have them in order, ensuring the dancers are ready and in order, and making sure that the drum groups are prepared to sing. The arena director organizes Grand Entry and makes sure that everyone is working together.

“This was my second year as the arena director,” Roger said. He had to fly out on Thursday to Boston and then take a bus to Hanover, NH where the pow-wow was scheduled. Roger traveled with the Cante Tinza drum group and they returned on Monday with a great stories to tell. Roger's daughter, Autumn, is a student at Dartmouth.

“The Dartmouth annual Mother's Day pow-wow is the largest student-run pow-wow on the East Coast," stated Roger. They had a lot of different social dances, including the traditional potato dance, two step, switch dance and a singing contest. Other dances included the traditional pow-wow dances, the smoke dance, Eastern blanket warrior dance (only seen on the East Coast), traditional war dance, and the women blanket dance.

"When you see something from other tribes it's interesting," said Roger. Most of the pow-wow songs are the same but the other tribes have their own songs, like a Micmac Mother's Day honor song.