Lancelot Gumbs sits beside a large wooden frame drum. Animal hide is stretched over the rim. Gumbs reflects on the drum’s importance in his life.
He’s played since he was about nine years old. Its rhythms, he says, are “almost otherworldly.”
When drumming, he says, ““you’re really deep into the songs. It takes me to another place personally.”
For generations, the drum has pulsed at powwows across New England and North America.
It’s a sound of strength, heritage and tradition: the heartbeat of powwow celebrations.
As Native communities face continued challenges to their overall well-being, many find strength in cultural heritage and tradition. Today’s powwow gatherings are a chance to reconnect with family, culture and values.
Gumbs is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Long Island, New York. Today, he’s traveled to Connecticut for Schemitzun, one of the largest powwows in the Northeast. It’s hosted by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
Tribal members dressed in regalia were lining up for the Grand Entry. Eagle feathers, ankle bells and colorful beads in geometric designs adorned the clothing. People wore armbands, moccasins and wampum jewelry made of quahog shells.
They paraded in, carrying flags of their Native Nations.
Many Hearts Lynn Malerba is Lifetime Chief of the Mohegan Tribe. She was appointed U.S. Treasurer under President Joe Biden, the first Native American to serve in that position. She says powwows pass on strength and tradition to the next generation.
“For me, it means continued survival,” Malerba says. “I think that’s what’s most important, that we’re still here to celebrate our culture, all the Native nations in [the] United States.”
A place to heal
Over the past 400 years, Native Nations’ survival has been challenging. They’ve endured epidemics, enslavement and warfare.
Today Indigenous peoples live on a small fraction of their ancestral homelands. Most live in urban areas.
Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Councilor Daniel Menihan says his people were forced to be resilient. And still are.
“We have a lot of collective trauma as a people,” Menihan says. “And often we’re able to look within our culture and find those mechanisms to heal.”
One way to heal?
Tapping into the strength and cultural heritage of generations.
Keyokah Fawn Mars-Garrick is a citizen of the Narragansett Tribe and a special education teacher in Connecticut.
Each year, the Narragansett Indian Tribe hosts its annual August Meeting in southern Rhode Island. It’s the oldest continuously held powwow in North America, first recorded in 1675.
This year marks the tribe’s 350th celebration.
For Mars-Garrick, the gathering is a time to dress in Native regalia, clothing she’s designed. It’s a way to honor her community and express her unique personal taste.
As the celebration progresses, Mars-Garrick steps inside a circle to dance the traditional Eastern Blanket Dance.
“Suitors stand outside of the circle in traditional times,” she says. “And women would dance around with their blanket and choose their partner by dropping their blanket.”
These days Native women may find other ways to choose their partners, but Mars-Garrick says the Blanket Dance still moves her.
“Just the pride in leading my own life, being a strong and independent woman and knowing that that decision is always mine to make,” she says.
A pride she is passing down to her son, Quincy, 6, as she helps design his own regalia.
Children like Quincy need to understand their family history, said his grandmother, Narragansett Tribal Councilor Heather Angel Mars-Martins.
“This location that we’re in right now is what we call Holy Land,” she says. “It has never, ever, ever left the ownership of the Narragansett people. Our children need to know their history, their culture, their heritage. They need to know that it is a history full of richness and love not just for each other but for the land.”
Disparities
Nationwide, Native Americans continue to face pervasive disparities that stifle their economic mobility, according to a 2022 Congressional report.
Some tribes in the Northeast have had economic success largely due to casinos, but overall, there’s a wealth gap between Native and non-Native households.
Cedric Woods researches the economic well-being of American Indians in the Northeast. He’s director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at UMass Boston.
“It’s better than in some parts of the United States, but probably not as robust as New Englanders may want to think,” he says.
Those disparities extend to home ownership and finishing college, he says.
He calls on New England states to do a better job reaching out to Native communities.
“I think the states need to engage with the tribes and take an honest look and assessment at state policy that has hindered and still negatively impacts Native communities, and make a commitment to developing a partnership with Native communities,” Woods said. “That’s step one.”
The University of Connecticut has announced a partnership with the five state-recognized tribes. They hope to attract more Indigenous students to the Avery Point campus and build a special culture of support for Native students. They’d also like to explore ways to ‘Indigenize’ certain courses.
“It's a wonderful idea. We need that type of thing here in New England,” says Darlene Kascak, an educator at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut. She also serves on the Schaghticoke Tribe’s Women’s Traditional Council.
“It would mean access to education that has that two-eyed seeing point of view. An Indigenous perspective along with scholars,” she says. “Because we need both.”
'Our people are here ... forever'
For centuries, the Indigenous perspective was lost in the narrative of U.S. history. America came into being at a cost to Native peoples.
And that cost has not gone away.
Still, Native Americans are resilient.
Still, they are here.
“I want people to know that we’re not killed off in some old cowboy and Indian black-and-white movie,” says Clan Mother Shoran Wapatuquay Piper of the Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe. “We’re still here.”
“We, as Northeastern tribes, have survived and we are still here,” says Chris Newell of Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township.
Native Americans are still here, with stories and lessons to share, according to Nakai Clearwater Northup, who’s of Narragansett descent and an enrolled member of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.
“Our people are here, have been here and will continue to be here,” he says. “Forever."
Read more from Still Here: Native American Resilience in New England
Chapter 1: For Native Americans, an enduring spiritual connection to the land
Chapter 2: The hidden history of Indigenous slavery in New England and beyond
Chapter 3: 'Unsung hero:' How runner Tarzan Brown put the Narragansett tribe on the map in the 1930s
Chapter 4: Amid mist and music: A Native American reverence for water, celebrated on the banks of the CT River
Chapter 5: Power of powwow: A cultural connection echoes across generations of Native Americans
