Sweetgrass powwow is this weekend

American Indian culture will be on display this weekend, as Montana State University-Northern hosts its 40th annual Sweetgrass Society Powwow Friday and Saturday.

Festivities will take place in the campus’s Armory Gymnasium, opening with a grand entry at 7 p.m. Friday. Two more grand entries will follow at noon and 7 p.m. Saturday.

For four decades the event has heralded the beginning of the local powwow season.

Erica McKeon-Hanson, associate director of the Little River Institute, which will be hosting an education conference at Northern this year that overlaps the Sweetgrass Society event, said the powwow has deep meaning for the American Indian community.

“So it really gives our students, especially our Native students, a sense of belonging and place that coordinates with the powwow, because they are hosting this powwow, this regional event here on campus.” Hanson said.

This year those hosting and attending the celebration will be looking back at four decades of memories, with programs for purchase that will feature photographs from past powwows and other Sweetgrass Society activities.

As always there will be dancing, drumming and other displays of culture celebration.

So far, they have ten vendors coming who will be selling American Indian arts and crafts, bead work supplies and other items, Hanson said.

Information booths will be set up to distribute information about issues of importance within Indian Country.

Overlapping the powwow, Northern will host its first Little Rivers Institute Indigenous Education Conference, a two-day symposium with students, faculty and presenters from Northern, tribal colleges within the region and high schools with large American Indian student populations.

Last fall the university received a $2 million grant over five years through the Department of Education’s Native American serving non-tribal institutions program.

Speakers will include Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction and Democratic congressional candidate Denise Juneau, the first Native American woman to hold statewide office, and former Lt. Gov. Angela McLean, who now works as director of American Indian and minority achievement and K-12 partnerships with the state’s office of the commissioner of higher education.

Hanson said Northern faculty will give presentations on how they enmesh Indian Education For All into their broader curriculum.

Through the grant the university will seek to integrate Indian Education for All into its broader curriculum and to offer academic and social support services to American Indian students, support that will help increase their rates of retention and completion at universities.

“So we want to start integrating our American Indian culture and indigenous cultures into everything we do on campus,” Hanson said.

She said this will be done through increased academic and social outreach to students such as providing them a space on the top floor of the Student Union Building in the former Crowley Conference Room, where American Indian students can congregate to study and socialize.

“So that is really a home,” Hanson said. “We are providing a home to our students now.”

The conference will be geared toward three groups: one for students, one for faculty and another for student support.

“So we are really providing good conversation but also development for our staff and our faculty and our students here on campus,” Hanson said.

Admission is free for both the conference and the powwow.