Kiwehnzii

Sloppy writing probably. Musta wrote the wrong number or the person writing the numbers didn't put the number down clearly. The person who transfered the number to the final winners list just entered the name what they thought was the correct name that coincided with the number.

Did he keep the prize?

chazziff

alot of committees are goin the computer route these days - just need an excel type program and viola! instantaneous calculations as you enter in your contest points -
but the only draw back is you have to be extra careful when entering in the names and corresponding contest numbers ... guess it would be the same as paper/pen calculation sheets.

i made one at home (both excel and that one in microsoft works spreadsheet program) and have emailed to friends to use for their pow wows, it adds up all points entered automatically .... and just print and everyone can see the tabulations if they want

this one year my sister and i were asked to do calculations for our first nations pw and when it came to the men's traditional contest, there was this number that kept coming up in all the judges' sheets that wasn't one of that categories delegated numbers (they used series of numbers for each category (1 - 50) for junior girls jingle, (50 - 100) for junior boys grass, etc., so each category had its own series of numbers). and this cut down all those teen dancers trying to get into adult only specials .. lol.

well i was wondering why this one dancer was NOT getting any points AT ALL and he was/is a well known dancer. so during one intertribal, i checked out his number, it was an OLD number from the pw he was at the last weekend!! he didn't change/or didn't notice he had lost his number for this pw. sooo i asked the pw committee president what should be done, she said give him the points he was awarded. so, we went back and recalculated his points, he ended up getting first.

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ndnMSW

Lol....I saw something similar at a powwow here. A Northern traditional dancer got called as 1st or 2nd in Men's Southern straight. By the time the committee was calling his number back to straighten it out, we all saw his van pulling out of the powwow grounds........lol.

When I was on the receiving end of this situation, I was dancing in a 35 and over contest and there were only 3 of us. I had been given a number for the younger adults when I registered and they didn't catch it until grand entry. They gave me a new number, and I asked one of the ladies to make sure my grand entry points got switched over to my new number. She checked and reassured me they had. I ended up getting called for third, and after we got our envelopes, I saw that same lady take off for the back booth. Pretty soon the announcers called my category back to the booth, where we found out that the lady had run back to double check on my grand entry points after they announced the winners, and she showed us all where my points hadn't been moved over, and showed us how when she added them in, then I should have gotten 1st. She gave us the order of where we should have placed. She just asked us to switch envelopes right then, which we all did. I thought that was very nice of the ladies in my category, because they didn't have to do that voluntarily. I know it's a grim situation when that happens, but I believe that a committee has to do the best they can to address the problem and make it right.

When that happened at a powwow we were running, they called a number and name for 1st of a dancer I had never seen before. The head men's judge came up after and asked to see the tabs for that category because he thought a dancer would have placed and got shut out. When we checked, we found out there was a number mix up and the dancer he was checking on was supposed to have gotten first. The head judge said, "That guy is right there, just get the envelope from him." I told him we couldn't do that because it was our mistake and that we had the money to pay both dancers. So we had our MC announce the mistake, apologize to both dancers and announced who the actual first place winner was and paid him 1st place money.

kneegrow_native

I was at one pow-wow in 2004 where they paid out four places in the adults, two grass dancers who placed only danced Friday night, two other grass dancers tied, one got 2nd, the other got shut out. That was the only contest that it happened in that year. The two grass dancers who only danced Friday grabbed the money and split real fast.

Having a pre made spreadsheet is a good thing.

A couple of us here ran a good sized pow-wow with a bunch of other people who had never helped out before. Believe it or not, we turned the tabulating over to the rookies, along with a pre made self adding spreadsheet. It worked out awesome. Our tabulators were not familiar with popular names so they were not influenced, and the data entry process was fast, we knew within one song after a contest whether or not there was a tie.

One other thing we made sure to do was to leave all names off the tabulation worksheets, so that all you see is a number.

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It is so sad that a family can torn apart by something as simple as a wild pack of dogs.

jed

He tried. But they couldn't figure out what happened, so he ended up getting to keep his winnings.

Kiwehnzii

Funny.

chazziff

yea that spreadsheet(s) that i made up was contest numbers only - no names.

but i was wonderin WHY this one number kept showing up sooo i watched the intertribals to find out WHO it was. and it was the same guy who wasn't gettin any points ...

yea it really really speeds things up ... you know right away if a tie-breaker song is needed.

there are pow wows out there that have incorporated those UPC scanner code devices (points get uploaded to the laptop/computer they are using) into the grandentry/spotcheck system ... every number has a UPC code in the corner and all they do is scan the code and the points get calculated automatically.

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dmoccasin

undefined Knee grow that is one awesome avatar!!

Yeah these pow wow stories are very similar to what I've seen in Montana and Oregon. I would like to see that magic spreadsheet if at all possible.

Don

Kiwehnzii

Dang.... that is awesome chazzif. UPC codes. I commented on this a coupla years ago right here on this website. Where do they have this? Whatta!......really nosey now.

I'd like to contact them folks about it.

ndnMSW

When my husband was the dance contest coordinator for Red Earth festival in OK, he used the UPC codes on the dance numbers and had the tabulators use the scan guns for Grand Entries. We got the idea from Maynard Kicking Bird from Browning, he was telling me how they used those for Browning Indian Days. It worked great for Red Earth when we were inside, but it got messed up when we tried to use it for the parade. The scan guns don't work in direct sunlite unless it has a hood attachment, which we didn't that first year we tried to use them during the parade.

chazziff

yea a friend of ours told us about them ... she saw them used at a couple of pws in california casino pws (don't remember which ones though).

and my sister used to work in a casino gift shop and she said it would be real simple to set up using the software/system that comes with the upc scanner. but she never did elaborate on it ... i'm sure ndnMSW could though since they used it already ...

i could send the one that i made but its on my home computer for a look see and i'm suppose to be working right now .. lol

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ndnMSW

Lol........no I can't. Red Earth used to use computer techs from Tinker Air Force base to do all the computer scoring. We just told them what we wanted and they brought all their own equipment.

chazziff

she was trying to explain it to me ... wasn't listening .. lol. she said that you scan the upc and it gets sent to the computer and that's where you enter in what you want that particular upc to be ... for her since she worked in a gift shop it was the price of the item. and she said it would be too hard to have it correspond with an amount say 25 points for grandentry or a spot check.

i was asking her if it was possible to have that amount go to a spreadsheet program and she said you'd probably have to have it go to a data base (microsoft access) program then to the spreadsheet. that's where i got lost .. cuz then you'd need to data base all the information of your pw participants (name, contest number, address, etc.) ... i used to know how to do that sort of stuff (school) but i've forgotten ...

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Neaman@netscape.net

Good Topic. Especially with the Big Contest Prize Money these days and bending the rules for some of the judges favorites can win. It does happen quite regularly and has since money became involved with contests.

I remember once when I danced in the 1970s a dancer came up to my brother and I who let us know the contest was fixed. We were young and could not believe it until it happened. He told us who was going to get 1st, 2nd and 3rd, he told us he was going to get 3rd and you know what it happened exactly the way he put it.

In respects to the dancer who now is deceased I will not name him. I also see some big money posters of these really elaborate money prizes and you know what? I don't believe some of them. Because I know some of the group of individuals are about as crooked as can be. Especially, when the tribes involved are about as poor as poor then all of a sudden they have this big money. The only thing I can figure maybe some of the tribal council are part of the fix. Oh well, I have said too much. Just a note to some of these people, groups, "Hey some of us know"

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Northwest MH

Wakalapi