After successfully producing and establishing the 3rd Annual “Rock, Rattle And Drum American Indian Pow Wow” in the Berkshires as a signature cultural event with its premier “Spirit On The Mountain Music Festival” at Eastover Resort in Lenox, MA, this past Labor day weekend, the Healing Winds producers and Pow Wow committee have decided to produce the 4th Annual Rock, Rattle And Drum Pow Wow in Stephentown on August 8 and 9 of 2009. At the Eastover event over 30 local and regional bands performed over the three day weekend holiday including Jefferson Starship and two other Grammy Award winning national acts.
The official Pow Wow and festival site for 2009 is a beautiful grassy level 600 acres with a gorgeous backdrop of forests and mountains and the Zephyr Wind Turbine rising over Jiminy Peak. The site is the driving range and field behind Gardner’s Ice Cream Shoppe near the intersection of Routes 43 and 22.
The selection of the Stephentown site is in keeping with the original vision of the committee to create an American Indian Pow Wow in the fashion of a “movable feast,” moving to and from various locations throughout the region’s eco-footprint to include the picturesque hill towns and bustling urban centers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Vermont. This vision and movable feast application was right in line also with the Upper Housatonic Heritage Foundation’s own vision of supporting activities and programs that connect all forms of cultural and educational activities associated with the Housatonic River wherever its waterways flow, regardless of state lines or community borders. This dynamic approach to sharing Native American history, culture and tradition is quite unique and very practical given the close proximity of hill towns and urban communities in a region where several states share so much parallel history, themes, culture and a similar environmental eco-footprint.
Early Native Americans understood such a world view in their shared and cooperative development of hunting and gathering, their agrarian lifestyle and establishment of villages and centers for “trade and commerce” with other tribes and eventually with early European adventurers, settlers and colonists. In fact, Albany’s Hudson 400 promotion and celebration of Henry Hudson’s traveling from Holland to the banks of the Hudson River and making contact with the Mohican people is a timely and appropriate window to bring the 4th Annual American Indian Pow Wow and Spirit on the Mountain Music Festival to New York State’s Stephentown.
The Pow Wow this year will include a competition aspect with cash awards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place dancers and a best drum group cash award. Featured also will be the regular line-up of exhibition dances by past favorites, Jerry and Jeanie Thundercloud and their Eagle Dance, the Aztec Dancers and the Shenandoah Family Iroquois Social Dances. Another new addition will be a horse and skills contest with cash awards in pole and barrel racing, roping and trick riding. Special MCs and Saturday night performances by the Navajo Duo Comedy team of James and Ernie will also spice up the weekend Pow Wow and festival. Also by special invitation will be the Stockbridge Munsee Drum Group from Wisconsin with their 16 person singers – they were the inaugural drum group for the 1st Annual Rock, Rattle and Drum Pow Wow in Pittsfield three years ago.
On the music side of the festival, Bill Miller, a Stockbridge Munsee Mohican and two-time Grammy award winner, will also perform by popular demand. He provides a great Bob Dylan set of songs and impersonation that is a crowd favorite and festival-pleaser. There will be local music favorites included in this year’s line-up as well. Go to our web site at www.healingwinds.net for updates on those special performing artists and groups.
There will also be a Children’s Peace Village and Green and Alternative Energy workshops as well as a Healer’s Circle. Discussions are happening right now with Jiminy Peak to shuttle Pow Wow and festival guests up to the wind turbine – The Zephyr – for a workshop on renewable and alternative energy initiatives in the region.
Other Future Projects
Healing Winds is also planning a collaborative project with the Housatonic Heritage Foundation to identify and designate a Mohican Heritage Trail from the Hudson River in New York into Copake, Stephentown, Lebanon Springs and through into Massachusetts, Hancock, Richmond, West Stockbridge and finally into Stockbridge. It was Stockbridge where the Mohicans established an Indian settlement and town but were later forcibly relocated to Wisconsin where they have their current reservation community and tribal government today. The Mohican Heritage Trail would receive the same federal and state acknowledgements and protections as does the African American Heritage Freedom Trail.
During Easter of 2009, Healing Winds Co-Directors Fidel Moreno and Susan Jameson will be traveling with area high school and college students to begin a Mohican Tribal Archive Project. This will be done in conjunction with the Mohican tribe and community and will include interviews with 30 or more Mohican elders over the age of 80. Mohican Tribal youth will also be trained in basic camera operation and editing to support the Archive project and continue tribal interviews in the future.
Another related long term project is the development and construction of a Mohican Longhouse and Interpretive Center on Route 22 in Stephentown. A Stephentown community member has come forward and made available a 20 acre tract of land to host this Center.
Fidel Moreno and Susan Jameson also produce a weekly radio program on 89.7 FM, Healing Winds, Native Voices, American Indian Music, Arts, Culture and News every Wednesday morning from 9 to 11 am. For a direct internet audio link, please go to www.wtbrfm.com.