DANC_2303_Dance_Appreciation: Articles and Databases

cholars have often overlooked the vital knowledge in movement forms with Indigenous roots, such as powwow dance and yoga. This article offers the framework of settler colonial choreographies to describe how U.S. structures come to bear on the bodies and movements of Indigenous people and more-than-humans in ways that infringe on their freedom and futurities.

Includes genealogical and local history materials for tracing family lineages and American culture, beginning with the 13 original colonies. Contains information from towns and families of all 50 states as well as Canada, England, and Ireland. Search by title, family name geographic area, or subject. Includes searchable U.S. Census images from 1790 to 1940, genealogical reference books, Revolutionary-War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant application files, and Freedman's Bank (1865-1874 - African-American) records.
http://www.heritagequestonline.com

The Totonac Indians who live near Veracruz on Mexico's eastern coast perform a rain dance on Corpus Christi that dates back more than a thousand years. Four men climb a 90-foot ceremonial pole, wind ropes around its top, and attach the loose ends of the ropes to their ankles. On a signal, the dancers suddenly leap outward, head first, with arms outspread. The ropes quickly unwind and the men spin around the pole, swinging in wider and wider circles until they reach the ground. As they descend, which takes about two minutes, a Totonac priest on a platform at the top of the pole chants, “Mother Earth is everything, Mother Earth is life and death. Without rain, there is no life.”

American Indian religious revivalist movement that spread through the Plains Indians and other ethnic groups in the 1890s. In January 1889, a Paiute Indian named Wovoka had a vision that the old ways would be restored, the buffalo herds would return, white people would disappear, and the Indians would be reunited with friends and relatives in the ghost world. This vision became the nucleus for the Ghost Dance, in which American Indian peoples engaged in frenzied trance-inducing dancing, believing it would eliminate the whites and leave only the Indians and their ancestors. The movement spread rapidly, creating a fervour and unity among the various ethnic groups that caused fear among white settlers, and which ultimately contributed to the massacre at Wounded Knee after government agents called on the US Army to quell the movement.

originally honored victory in battle as part of a four-day festival. Kiowa, Comanche, Ute, and other tribes use this dance. The dancers move slowly to the song of a drum. Each dancer carries a gourd rattle, though modern dancers may choose a metal rattle. The dance purifies the dancing grounds before a powwow begins. Sometimes a gourd dance event stands alone, without a powwow. Kiowa legend says a red wolf gave the gourd dance and its songs to a lost warrior who shared them with his people. The howl at the end of the dance honors the red wolf. Men perform the gourd dance in the central circle; women may participate on the sidelines.

The Snake Dance is the grand finale of ceremonies to pray for rain, held by individual Hopi tribes in Arizona every two years. Hopis believe their ancestors originated in an underworld, and that their gods and the spirits of ancestors live there. They call snakes their brothers, and trust that the snakes will carry their prayers to the Rainmakers beneath the earth. Thus the Hopi dancers carry snakes in their mouths to impart prayers to them.

Powwows are festivals of Native American music and dance that have become emblematic of the Indian cultural renaissance of the last 30 years. Although rooted in ancient forms, the powwow is a modern pan-Indian cultural manifestation that is continually adapting to reflect forces at work in contemporary Native life. The word powwow comes from the Algonquian pauwau, meaning “he dreams,” referring to a traditional healer or a traditional healing ceremony. Early non-Indian settlers had little understanding of Indian rituals, and in 1646 the Massachusetts General Court decreed “that no Indian shall at any time pawwaw, or perform outward worship to their false gods, or to the devil.” The word powwow was often used to describe any Native council or ceremony, but by the 20th century, it specifically came to refer to a secular social gathering featuring singing and dancing by men, women, and children.

The sun dance was the most conspicuous religious ceremony of the Plains Indians in the nineteenth century and is probably the most famous of American Indian rites. The name “sun dance” is actually a misnomer, stemming from the Dakota term wi-wanyag wachipi (“sun-gazing-dance”). Among other tribes it was known as the “thirsting dance” or else was named for the characteristic enclosure where it was held. Its function varied from tribe to tribe, but it was usually intended as a ceremony of tribal unity by which the whole people, through the actions of the selected participants, demonstrated to supernatural beings their deservingness of abundance of food and resistance of human enemies. It was neither a rite of sun worship nor a rite of manhood initiation, as some observers interpreted its self-torture aspect to imply.

The Green Corn Dance is a Native American religious rite. Not much is known about the historical development of this and other religious belief systems among Native Americans. Most of the information available was gathered by Europeans who arrived on the continent beginning in the sixteenth century C.E. The data they recorded was fragmentary and oftentimes of questionable accuracy because the Europeans did not understand the native cultures they were trying to describe and the Native Americans were reluctant to divulge details about themselves.