Stories from the road: Seneca Nation

Greetings from the pow wow trail, this is Gillian. This weekend Alyssa and I packed up to attend the Marvin “Joe” Curry Veteran’s Seneca Nation pow wow in Salamanca, New York.

The drive down was quite confusing, we got lost once on the way there and once on the way back! The drive was very scenic nonetheless.

We stayed at the Hotel Westgate, which was very nice! I especially loved the Indigenous art on the walls in the lobby of the smoke dancers.

We have never been so close to the pow wow grounds before, we were only one minute away from the grounds which was nice...we got to sleep in!

There were so many dancers at this pow wow, it was great to see so many families traveling from Canada and the United States to come together and celebrate all the wonderful things that a pow wow has to offer.

Under the big red tent Nanabush and the bridge building activity was a hit this weekend. Our friend River broke the record for the strongest bridge. He was able to design a bridge that held the whole bag of rocks AND 200g worth of weights.

We interviewed River and asked him to explain his thinking process. Here is how he built this amazing bridge. It started out that his bridge could only hold 8 rocks, and then 12 rocks, until it finally supported the whole bag of rocks, which is over 20 rocks!

(Video of River to come)

Next weekend Sabrina and I will be at the Six Nations of the Grand River pow wow. Come check us out!