Eagle Spirit Drum Group

Pow Wow Brings Native American Culture Back to Woburn [VIDEO]

Drums sounded Saturday and Sunday on a field in North Woburn. Not the drums of a marching band or rock band or orchestra. The drums of a celebration of life.

Richard ThunderCloud and Gary LoneWolf were among the drummers.  Members of the Sacred Spirits from Maine, they were one of the five drumming groups at this year’s 9th annual “Gathering at Berry Meadow”—a native American pow wow—here in Woburn.

“A pow wow is a celebration of life, a gathering of peoples together,” said Grandmother Guiding Hawk, aka Barbara Casey of Woburn, who said she grew up here and is Mohawk on her mother’s side of her family. Guiding Hawk organizes the event sponsored by WREN, the Woburn Residents Environmental Network.  WREN is a “grassroots organization of volunteers dedicated to reserving Woburn’s natural environment.”

Guiding Hawk had gone to pow wows “for years,” she said, and, simultaneously belonged to the city’s Historical Commission when the commission decided to hold a pow wow.The local gathering gives the weekend with friends, she said.

The local event has increased, according to managers Hawk and stormy, a drummer of the Sacred Spirits to five this year, from as far away as Canada, with native dancers, including Don Barnabas form Listuguj, Quebec. A Migmaq First Nations, he wore the traditional costume of the North, he said, including a stirring of eagle feathers.

“You get something spiritual out of this,” the drumming and performances, said Jim Webber, who lives in Wilmington, just over the line from the pow wow on the field in front of the Altavesta Elementary School . Webber said this pow wow is one of his favorites, not only because it’s close by but also because “a kind of local group meets here.” This part of history is left out of school lessons, he said. Webber's granddaughter, Hayley Mills, of Saugus, had fun, he said, meeting native children at the gathering.

Too many people are “disconnected” from the spirit, LoneWolf said. A pow wow, he said, is about bringing people of all nations and colors together.

The Newton family of Woburn—Jonathan, Caitlin and 16-month-old Benjamin—also stopped by the pow wow Saturday afternoon. They had never gone to one, according to Caitlin. She had the chance to learn about Native American culture firsthand when she lived for a while in Barrow, Alaska, with the Inupiaq tribe.  The languages of the five tribes in that area are almost extinct, the former Salem elementary school  teacher said. She made the trip, she said, through the Peabody Essex Museum.

NORVAL MORRISSEAU BLOG: Norval Morrisseau Prints (Part XIV)

"This blog is published in honor of the Spirit of Norval Morrisseau aka Copper Thunderbird - Grand Shaman of the Ojibway. Also, it is the first and only blog incepted during the life of Norval Morrisseau. It is dedicated to the preservation of its artistic heritage with the presence of Ojibway life of peoples in North America "" I was looking for all the books in my life -. Books on American Indians. All I could find that was civil and interesting addition to what my grandfather told me the Iroquois and others. There isn’t very much written about Natives in the art and history books we read today. The only thing that was written was about the Iroquois slaughtering the Jesuits somewhere and Sitting Bull and his followers being chased out of Canada." "I have always been attracted to religious paintings, but only the ones that had that mystical or supernatural quality in them, especially Saint Teresa by Bernini. Just looking at Saint Teresa I get some kind of vibrations from it. I can close my eyes and feel them. That's great art, and it brings on that tingling sexual feeling. Other saints, like Saint Sebastian, do that as well. But the Christ figure was always the one that was dominant for me.That's why I say that Christ to me is still the greatest shaman, and that is why some religious visions are so complex, and so very hard to explain to people." "Today we wonder and are distracted by the white man's ways that we cannot cope with. Those of us who are lucky have made it. But a lot of us are still behind, by trying to live like our white brothers and their religion, ignoring our great ancestors' culture. If one has an intelligent mind we could live side by side with our ancient ways and same time get us where we should be." "When the Jesuits came, the Indian was already around. The Indian did not understand them. He tried to understand them, what they were up to. He knew that they were going to be there for awhile. He knew how sad it was, seeing his people, how low they were put, how they had previously enjoyed living and needed to live freely again. How do we go about doing that now? We need images. We’re going to use images ourselves." "The Ojibway believed the thunder to be a great massive bird called thunderbird, whose eyes shoot out lighting and thunder.

Soaring Eagle, Spirit of the Wind

Buffalo Woman comes singing, the spirit song of a rainbow medicine woman

White Eagle Medicine Wheel

Culture & tradition

The Ojibwa Dance Drum, Its History and Construction