Board approves powwow at Great Northern Fair

Editor's note: This version clarifies that Northern Winz Casino wants to bring powwow events to the 2021 Great Northern Fair.

The Great Northern Fair Board heard a proposal by Jazz Parker, manager at Rocky Boy Indian's Reservation's Northern Winz Hotel and Casino, who said the casino wants to bring a powwow to the Great Northern Fair this year.

The fair this year runs July 14-18, and the board confirmed most of its schedule at its May meeting.

Parker said the Chippewa Cree Tribe is looking to build some bridges with the fair board and community at large and they’d like to become more involved in the fair.

He said solid plans haven’t been made because they wanted the blessing and advice of the board, but they want to bring a powwow and some food sellers to the fair on the Thursday of fair week.

He said they would sell food, but the event itself would be free and the tribe’s goal isn’t really to make money with the event, but instead to draw more of their people to the fair and bring people in, hopefully covering their costs with food sales.

“Foot traffic is foot traffic, the more you have the more money that flows,” Parker said.

Board members were receptive to the idea, as they would only need to provide the area and the tribe would take care of the rest.

Board Chair Josh Heitzenroder, however, said, if they can, he would like to see such an event go through the full week, including Sunday, which in recent years has been a bit short on events.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing it on a Sunday,” he said. “I know it seems like everyone’s just packing up, but everyone is packing up and going home because there’s nothing to do.”

The board also discussed normal fairgrounds matters like possible equipment upgrades.

Board member Bob Kaul said he recently learned about a number of auctions going on in the area with tractors available.

Kaul said the board really should look into getting one for the fairgrounds.

“We definitely, as a fair board, need to own and have in our operation at least a 100-horse power tractor with a three point in hydraulics,” he said.

The board discussed how to go about getting one of these tractors but no firm plans were made.

The next meeting of the board will be Thursday, July 22, at 5:30 p.m.