mortonkid

This was a disappointing experience I'm sorry to say. I traveled from New York to dance at this pow wow....and I have danced in pow wows in Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina for a number of years now and I have never been asked to pay a dancer's fee. I registered to dance over a month ago...and no where on the Great Salt Water website did they mention that there was a fee. The organizer waited until the day the pow wow began to let dancers know they had to pay to dance.....after traveling the distance. Which I feel was extremely inconsiderate. There were over 150 dancers registered to dance and by Sunday's grand entry there were only 34 dancers left. Some had just decided not to dress....when I asked them why....they said that they just weren't feeling the spirit at this pow wow....others just went home.

To make matters worse....this pow wow was seriously undermined by the fact that it was over-vendored. This created a very unhealthy spirit.....especially after the thoughtless way the vendors were treated by organizer. This energy did not go unnoticed by the public....it was felt by everyone.

However, in spite of the negativity outside the circle those of us in the circle danced and drummed with spirit. The energy inside the circle was great....I was asked by several people where we were going next....

Its a shame at how badly organized this pow wow was especially since it was connected to the veterans.....and there was such high hopes for its success.

Great Salt Water could have been great.....but wasn't.

Hummingbird

Kiwehnzii

You mean you had to pay for helping out the powwow committee by dancing for their audience?

I thought Skaroreh said they were hospitable.

mortonkid

Yes, they advised us when we arrived at the door. Many of the dancers decided not to dance which was disappointing because there were a lot of fine dancers that showed up.

In addition, the grand entry was scheduled for 7pm on Friday, but didn't have lights set up for night dancing. The MC, 3 drums, dancers and the public waited around in the dark until 8:15 when lights were provided by the local rescue squad...grand entry finally started at around 8:30...

They didn't provide water for the drums or the dancers....as a matter of fact we were told to walk to the American Legion Building (at least 150 yards away) to use the water fountain! Have you ever heard of an organizer doing this?

They were too many vendors at this pow wow...especially since they had some who had come as far as Canada and upstate New York. I understand she had consulted with an experienced pow wow organizer months ago, but chose to ignore his advice.

It was evident that she lacked experience in organizing this pow wow.

lovlie1

I too like you had to drive quite a ways, I came from Atlanta. I felt that this was going to be a great one, especialy for this region. Even though I enjoyed myself, becuase I will let nothing or no one stop me from doing that! I had the chance to meet new folks and that is always great. Even though the rest of my family went to Niceville for comp, I choose to go there becuase I am a veteran.

Saturday night when we were lining up one of the royalties mumbled under their breathe that they wish that people would line up right acoording to their dance categories(Looking directly at me). I just briefly looked at them and uttered out Oh, aren't vets suppose to go in front of royality, being that I am a vet! I did not get mad with them becuase after all we did not have an arena director.

Other then that little comotion Saturday night and like you said having to pay, I still enjoyed the singing and dancing. Hopefully it will be great next year.

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Stomp dancing all night long

mortonkid

This pow wow was advertised as one to honor the veterans. And you are right....veterans and dignitaries are to follow the native american honor guard at grand entry followed by the princesses and so forth.

We did have an arena director however, he was out front. Please allow me to suggest that going forward you should go to the arena director and let him know what's going on, that way you are not put in such an uncomfortable position. There is no reason why she should have dealt with that situation the way she did.

I agree with you, however what makes a pow wow a success is that all elements of the pow wow (dancers, drums and vendors) are treated with equal respect and consideration. These people come from great distances to dance, vend and perform and you can't have a successful pow wow without any one of those elements operating in good spirit. What may be a mere attraction to the public or to the organizers is a way of life for us.

The organizers seem to forget that many of us dance at the same pow wows all the time and have close relationships with the drums and the vendors. We are family, so what you do to one, you do to all. You don't treat people that way, and you certainly don't treat native people that way.

Try to make to Hawkeye this weekend.....its a pow wow that I believe you will really enjoy!

Kool Breeze

You mean to tell me that Blacklodge being there didnt make everything at the powwow work out perfect? The way this powwow was advertised you'd think that just having Blacklodge was gonna make everything great. "Oh, no water for the dancers... its ok we got Blacklodge!" "Hey is there an AD around anywhere? Oh well it doesnt matter, Blacklodge is here!" "Did the staff remember to get lights for the evening sessions? Dude, dont worry about that... we got Blacklodge, remember?"

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Today I'm gonna try really hard to give a $hit about what you have to say.

lovlie1

:rofl2:

When and where is Hawkeye?

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Stomp dancing all night long

skaroreh

I'd just like to address a few things:

1) There were just under 60 dancers who registered to dance. I have no idea where these other numbers like "150" are coming from. I have the dancer registration logs and no way does it add up to 150. I'm not sure why the rumor started several weeks ago that there were a hundred dancers registered, but I can assure you that it is not true.

That would really be something!

Unfortunately, the pre-registrations that came in were lost due to a technical snafu.

From what some friends of mine have told me (who are far more experienced with organizing powwows than I am), though, having as many dancers as we did show up for this first annual powwow is quite an acheivement... especially considering that a lot of first time powwows around here are luckly to have a dozen dancers show up.

2) I sincerely apologize that Friday night there was no water placed out for the dancers.

The staff did put out water for dancers on Saturday (it was in two locations-- in a large blue cooler next to the drum arbor and there were other cases of water put out just to the side of it), but unfortunately, from what I'm hearing, some dancers got the water, and for some reason, others didn't know about it. At no time would we have advised anyone to go get water from a water fountain. If this happened to you, please e-mail me and describe the person or name the person who told you this so we can deal with that.

3) There was a $5.00 dancer registration fee for the whole weekend. (For adults... for teenagers it would have been $4.00 for little kids it would have been free.) This was done because all of the dancer registration money was supposed to go into one "pot" so to speak to be doled out all weekend for dancer raffles. This should have been explained to each dancer when the registered. If it wasn't explained to you, I apologize.

Now... let me say this about the raffles. I'm looking into this right now. I know how much was set aside for numbers to be called, but I'm getting mixed reports as to how many raffle drawings the MC did and whether all the money was claimed.

If anyone can offer me any information on this, I encourage you to please, please e-mail me or PM me. We would like to find out who all of the raffle winners were and make sure they were all able to claim their money.
The only dancers I'm aware of who complained about the registration fee were friends of the MC, or at least claimed to be with him. These individuals protested and we happily refunded their money. It was not our intention to upset anyone with this. We wanted to be able to have day money drawings for the dancers who were there, but were not sure how much money could be set aside from the money going towards paying for everything else for the powwow (drums, MC, head man dancer, etc.) so it seemed the fairest way to handle this would be to simply have the dancers pay a small registration fee and that would cover them for the weekend and give them a chance to win $40 during each of several drawings.

If anyone else was upset about the dancer registration fee and this caused such discontent, I really wish any of these individuals would have made it a point to speak with myself or one of the other event organizers about this. It would have been no problem for you to get your $5 back.

We did our best to address anyone who brought their concerns to us. The individuals admitting people into the powwow and registering dancers were only following the directions they had been given as to what to do.

4) I agree. There were too many vendors at this event, but that was done intentionally.

We are not personally familiar with all of the vendors, (many were sent to us by the MC) but we allowed a large number of vendors to come to showcase their wares at this first event so we could better determine who we will be inviting back next year.

We have received very positive feedback from the vast majority of the vendors who were there. I think the ones who were complaining were perhaps disappointed because they didn't do very well due to the great amount of competition. Some of this probably has to do with quality versus prices of merchandise. There were 2 or 3 vendors who packed up and left Saturday night. One can only guess as to why they left.

There were a few vendors who we donated spaces to. One was the Dine' mother of a young woman stationed at Camp Lejeune. Another was an Indian Vet and activist when it comes to POW/MIA issues. There were a few others as well.

I can assure you that next year there will be less vendors. We only want people involved with this powwow who WANT to be involved with it and who think it's striving to serve a good purpose. In the future, we only want vendors with high quality, reasonably priced merchandise.

I would encourage anyone who has constructive criticism about how this event could be made better next year to please submit them to me via e-mail or PM.

So far, we've gotten back far more positive feedback than negative... and most of the negative seems to be coming from one corner of the room, so-to-speak.

5) Regarding the Arena Director not always being available. I'm not sure what happened there. The MC had told me that he had someone who would be there to assist the Arena Director we had (who is an elder & veteran who volunteered for the post), but perhaps that person wsa unavailable.

On a very positive note, there will be a lot of new things to look forward to next year...

We'll have a whole new head staff next year. I'm getting some good suggestions for MCs, drums, etc.

A couple of the guys from Cedartree have offered their encouragement and advice as far as planning things next year. We've also had lots of encouragement here locally from some individuals who've also made some good suggestions.

It's likely that this powwow will be held on base at Camp Lejeune next year... because the Marines were so happy with how it turned out. In particular the Sgt Major (I think that's his rank) in charge of the musem over on base (He is Mohawk.) He was a huge help in getting some of the technical issues that came up taken care of.

We have received a number of e-mails and phone calls all weekend and since yesterday and today from Veterans and active duty military families thanking us for this powwow.

I just want to say, on the contrary. We want to thank them for giving us something to celebrate.

mortonkid

Here is the Hawkeye Pow Wow information...

November 12-13
Hawkeye Native American Cultural Center
Raeford, NC
910-843-9484

lovlie1

Oh fuzzelsnaps! That is the same as Orangeburg! Crackle, snap, Pop!

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Stomp dancing all night long

Kool Breeze

You have to be extra careful when having a powwow on govt land. You may not be able to charge admission or raffle things off. You may not even be able to sell things... I'm not sure about that. Just something to think about.

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Today I'm gonna try really hard to give a $hit about what you have to say.

skaroreh

That might not be a problem. It's also a possibility that if we have it on base, that the base will be able to pay the thousands and thousands of dollars it takes to pay the drums, the lodging for everyone, the MC, etc. etc.

The point is, we wanted to have a really good powwow that had something for everyone who came... whether they wanted to actually dance/sing/participate, or whether they were just there to take it all in and pay tribute to the Veterans.

If the base can help us acheive that goal next year and we're able to do it WITHOUT having to charge admission to cover the high expenses, I think that would be fantastic.

In any case... we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully everyone will remember that this was a first-time event and the Coastal Carolina Indian Center (the non-profit org that put this powwow together) is formally only a year old. When we put this event together, we did so without the luxury of having a large budget to work with from prior events.

I hope everyone will take time to visit the powwow website one more time this year to see the list of thank yous we posted today. There were some individuals who were so amazing throughout this powwow and I know for me, personally, really represented a source of strength to get through a long and busy weekend. Go here to see thank yous: www.greatsaltwater.com