Powwow Dances Back Into Riverfront Park City, Tribes Work Out Differences To Stage Event

Just a month ago, the phone rang off the hook at the American Indian Community Center.

People were outraged. “What can we do?” they asked. “How can we save the powwow?”

Their efforts, along with those of Mayor John Talbott and others at City Hall, have brought the annual powwow back to Riverfront Park.

“The response was overwhelming and highly emotional,” powwow spokesman John Guenther said Friday at a press conference. “We will have the ninth annual powwow. We will have the best powwow ever.”

The Spokane Falls Northwest Indian Encampment festival was canceled in late May because the committee and city officials were unable to resolve differences.

But the mayor, City Manager Bill Pupo and other officials mounted a last-ditch effort to save the event. They met with powwow committee members to see what concessions they could make.

“A lesson’s been learned,” Talbott said Friday. “More importantly, a tradition has been firmly reestablished in Spokane.”

About 20 people showed up at Riverfront Park’s Lilac Bowl to hear the news. The meeting brought together city officials, festival organizers and concerned citizens. Members of Eastern Washington tribes came and decorated a table with eagle feathers, a medicine wheel and other objects significant to the native community.

Riverfront Park is a sacred place to the Spokanes, Plateau Indians and other Northwest tribes. Before settlers moved to Spokane, Native Americans would gather by the falls to fish and celebrate with friends and family.

”(The powwow) is a time for us to reclaim the falls,” Guenther said. “This place is very special. It’s a very spiritual event.”

It wasn’t so much the city’s fees and noise ordinance rules that upset the powwow committee, said Sophie Tonasket, director of the American Indian Community Center.

They simply wanted the mayor and other officials to “sit at the table” with them and talk, she said, to get together and resolve problems.

The two groups had different ways of communicating, she said. Until recently, it seemed that the city didn’t understand Indian culture.

Now that the groups have come to terms, the organizing committee is working on raising money.

So far, the committee has about half of the $50,000 needed, Guenther said. The money has been donated by several agencies and individuals, including writer Sherman Alexie and Washington Mutual Bank.

“Honoring Lakes and Rivers” will be this year’s theme.

“Spokane is a collection of different people,” Talbott said. “We’re here to serve our people.”

SCHEDULE The ninth annual Spokane Falls Northwest Indian Encampment and Powwow takes place Aug. 28, 29 and 30 at Riverfront Park.