No Powwow Equals Camping! by Cliff Taylor

We bought our plane tickets. We crossed our fingers. We hoped against all hope. And then, as expected, the Ponca powwow was officially cancelled. 

“I get it,” I said, looking at Aislinn, my girlfriend, on the couch next to me, both of us with our laptops in our laps. “It’s risky. God forbid something bad happen. Everyone’s going to be bummed but they’ll all understand too.”

“It’ll still be good to go back to Nebraska.”

I looked at her, feeling home just at the mention of the word.

“You’re right. It will.”

We put on our face-coverings and braved the travel situation, feeling not too afraid but also trying to be as conscientious and considerate as possible. Mountains and clouds passed by outside the oval window; Doctor Strange played on the screen in front of me. When we landed my brother found us at the airport, loaded us up into his big truck.

“I’m in no rush. You guys want to grab a bite in Fremont?” Fremont was the halfway point between Omaha and our hometown, Columbus.

“I’m starving,” Aislinn said from the back. “Almost all the restaurants in the airport during our layover were closed.”

“Dad said that he wanted to go pick some sage in Niobrara this weekend,” I pitched in. 

“How about we get some burritos?” My brother replied, Omaha roaring around us. “I was thinking we could all go camping up there this weekend. What do you think?”

Aislinn and I looked at each other; we were thinking we were going to have to rent a car for a day to get up there but it seemed like it was just all coming together.

“Cool. That sounds great.”

“Burritos it is then,” my brother said, staring ahead. 

Before we all piled into our pair of vehicles with our totes of gear and coolers and tents and such, we all got to do what has become one of my favorite things in the past couple years since I left Nebraska: just hang out at my brother’s with my niece and nephew, watching Netflix, walking over to play putt-putt golf, hitting up this one antique store in search of treasures, barbecuing, playing Unstable Unicorns, lounging, and just loving up on the little rascals and my mellowing brother too. Maybe when you’re young you want adventure and encounters with real-life Native Jedi and to see the leftover mountains of Atlantis but then when you get older you just want to give your niece cool gifts that she’ll remember you by after you’re long gone and wrestle with your three-year-old mini-Godzilla nephew on the living room floor. Funny how the story changes as we get older, right? Funny and beautiful too. 

“Look out!” I yelled over to my brother, seeing my nephew’s eyes widen and flash with intensity. “He’s beginning to transform! Here he comes!”

And then we were rolling up Highway 81, a caravan of two, my brother, Aislinn, and me in the one vehicle, his girlfriend and the two kids in the other vehicle; my dad was going to meet us up there. 

We zipped through Norfolk, where my dad and his generation was from, took the old route through Pierce and Plainview, stories from the childhood parts of our memories coming out, grandpa and grandma and relatives no longer around visiting us as we remembered them and talked about them. “That’s where grandpa always used to like to stop and get a whole bunch of meat. Dad said he’d been going there since he was a kid.”

It was a trip I’d been making since I was a little guy, always going back to Niobrara, where my grandpa and grandma and their generation was from, for funerals and powwow and visits and Sundance and other things. The road back to the Ponca homelands. Always a little different every time we went back; always monumentally full of our people’s soul. This would’ve been Aislinn’s first time at our powwow; I really wanted to share it with her. 

We hit Verdigre and went beyond, the landscape becoming raw, wild, original, no longer grids and cornfields and flatness. This is where it got good. A familiar awe and love filled my consciousness. My eyes just kept looking and looking.  

“Can you feel how it’s different up here?” I kind of excitedly asked Aislinn, a geek to my core. “Can you feel all the stuff that’s still alive up here?!”

We wound up camping out in the smooth hills of Niobrara State Park. We’d decided on one spot and then after paying discovered a better, more spacious spot. “You all stay here,” my brother said. “We’ll go back to the office and see if we can switch over to this one.” (My brother the following day: “The office was closed when we went back. We decided to not tell you guys and just stay anyway.”)

We set up our tents down in this clearing that had a perfect shelter of treetops, felt the happiness of being away from TV and the city, felt the work/presence/history of our ancestors circling around the edges. We’d brought enough stuff to survive a week or two but really we were just staying for two nights. The little guy ran wild. My niece double-checked to make sure we had the stuff for s’mores. 

“Do you wanna go look at Niobrara from the shelter up that path?” I asked Aislinn. 

“Yeah, let’s check it out.”

Up the path there was a shelter on a hilltop overlooking Niobrara, the Missouri River, the bluffs, and South Dakota; it was one of the best views I’ve encountered of the area, beating out my previous favorite of the high point at the cemetery even. 

We stood on that open hilltop and looked at the swirls and breathing earth and beauty of everything. We were silent, happy. Neither one of us needed to say a word. 

That first night we made brats and a vegan burger for Aislinn and then s’mores; my dad finally showed up and he got himself all set up too, offering commentary on anything and everything, three coolers of drinks in tow, proud to be with his family. 

When it got dark he went off to use the restroom and then told us when he got back, “I saw a falling star.” He was gruff, sensitive, our resident elder, spoiler of the grandchildren. 

“Do you want to go look at the stars from the shelter?” Aislinn asked.

My niece, myself, and her walked back up the path returning already to the magic of that viewpoint. The skies were so clear, the stars infinitely visible, the Milky Way stretching and streaking through them all like an ancient celestial highway. We stood on the same spot we’d been earlier, me telling my niece all sorts of things I thought it’d be good for her to hear.

And then we saw a falling star, big, bright, almost fuzzy.

“Did you know that when you see a falling star sometimes that’s a little person coming down onto our planet?” I asked/told my niece.

And then we saw another falling star, slipping down through the brilliance of the other stars. 

“Thank you for getting us to come stargazing, niece,” I said. “All credit goes to you!”

My niece crunched up her face. 

“You are the greatest Jedi of them all!”

The next day Aislinn and I borrowed my brother’s truck and went to our Sundance grounds in Santee. I had saved up two week’s vacation and my tax return so that we could for sure make it this year and then the global pandemic happened. At least we were going to get a quick visit in while we were up there, say hello, walk around, and touch hearts with the place. 

Like a lot of bridges in the area, the bridge near the grounds was out and we were almost stumped until we saw that you were just supposed to drive down into the creek and go around it; it would’ve sucked if we’d come that far and then been denied access, you know? We were so happy to get there though and when we hopped out of the truck and saw it all we could’ve done some sort of really sacred honoring dance and yahoos and got right to the teary part right away. I’ve danced 8 years and plan to keep dancing more; many memories on those grounds, many more to come. 

We hung out there for a couple hours, fed a horse that was tied up there, checked out a huge new garden, blessed ourselves at the spring, left some offerings by the creek, prayed at the tree, sat around, noticed some new fallen trees, and sang some songs by where the sweat-lodges usually are. So much of our culture is about the upkeep and renewal of relationships; nothing beats the in-person version of this when possible. I was very grateful to come to the grounds and feed my connection to the place, to the ceremony, to my family there. 

“If we’d come by ourselves we would’ve camped here,” I said to Aislinn, looking at the arbor. 

“I have a feeling come next year we’ll all be here together,” she said, ever the optimist.

“How does that sound?”

We got back and did a musical chairs thing with the vehicles, with my brother, his girlfriend, and the berserker going to Santee to visit his grandparents on his mom’s side, and my dad, Aislinn, my niece and me going for a cruise over to the powwow grounds and the cemetery. 

We drove along those roads that’re engraved in so many of our memories and my dad did most of the talking, sweeping back and forth between fond, distant memories, how much we needed to clean the coffee pan we’d borrowed and burned from his aunt Beverly, and a number of his takes on all the things he had running in his mind. It was actually a warm, wholesome drive. A sign of how far we’d come as a family; how much we’d, believe it or not, healed. 

We circled through the powwow grounds, waving at a bunch of relatives who were all sitting out by their campers -more folks who came to Niobrara even after the powwow had been cancelled. We grinned at the new showers and restrooms, admired the cool work that was being done on the arena, took in the layers of life present in that space, and peered at the statue of Chief Standing Bear standing tall a little ways up in the distance. “He’s supposed to be overlooking everything,” my dad said. “That’s why they placed him there.”

Then, we went to the cemetery.

Since my early twenties I’ve come and walked our cemetery, putting tobacco on graves, praying, and singing. An immeasurably large chunk of our tribe’s root-system is located there; I went to my first funeral there, my baby cousin’s, when I was 7 or 8. But this time we all followed my dad’s lead, listened to him talk and recount family history, tell stories, tear up, describe important things that were not to be forgotten. At times you could feel the spirits pretty clearly; I paid especially close attention to what my dad got to talking about then. I felt very good that my niece was getting to have this experience; it would nourish her in the future in ways she couldn’t conceive of now; that was some Indian stuff right there.

We stood by the fence, looking for the buffalo, all the graves behind us. 

“Touch the fence,” my dad told me.

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

My dad got a little misty, while also trying to hide it. 

“Your grandpa was rough. That’s what he’d tell me. He’d point at a fence like that and say, ‘Touch that fence.’”

“All right then, here I go…!”

(I did not touch the fence.)

The second night, after s’mores and enough ghost stories around the campfire to give more than just the kids the heebie-jeebies, I crashed out first, climbing into the tent feeling pretty bushed, and then a humongous, earth-shaking thunderstorm came.

“Get up!” Aislinn said, shaking my leg. “It’s here! It’s here!”

The one thing I miss the most about the weather and climate of Nebraska are the thunderstorms, mountain-sized, spine-tingling, pure reminders of the power of Mother Nature. But I was too dang tired to roll out of bed and Aislinn got to finally experience her first real Nebraskan thunderstorm without me but with my family. 

They staked my dad’s tent down (don’t ask), hurried some chairs and totes into this rudimentary shelter that was there, and just rode it out as it rumbled and struck and showered down upon the land. I kept waking up, hearing them all, smiling inside at the joy and fun I could hear in their voices. 

“Was it better than the falling stars?” I asked Aislinn the next morning.

“Don’t make me choose,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Don’t make me choose.”

We took off pretty early that Sunday morning, which would’ve been the last day of the powwow, because my brother’s girlfriend, who actually worked at our casino, had to work that night and needed to get some sleep. It was amazing how fast we broke down camp and loaded things up. My dad said, “I’ll meet you guys in Columbus. I gotta make a couple stops first, visit some friends.” Somehow, he’d be cool to the very end, tough and unbreakable; the Poncas of his generation are still leading the way. 

I was bit up, red around my socks and waistline with chigger bites; I was looking forward to a shower, air-conditioning, downtime with the family in the living room. But before we left I wanted one last look. Everybody loaded up and I walked the short bit back over to the shelter and its viewpoint. 

We Poncas are tasked with the blessing of trying to fathom the huge stretches of land and life we’ve inherited from our ancestors, that we’ve woken up into the vast, unending story of. It’s like unearthing a million sacred artifacts that were buried in our hearts by the ancestors before we were born. So much, such a legacy, such a mysterious, generous, complex gift. 

I looked at the land of Niobrara and tried to feel with my spirit all of the spirit that was there, in the rivers, the trees, the hills, the birds, the whole sweeping spread of it before me. 

I took it all in, felt mighty good, and then rejoined my family, everyone ready to get back to Columbus. 

We spent a couple more days chilling with my brother and dad and family in Columbus and then we travelled back to Astoria, Oregon, where we’ve lived for the past year and a half. As far as I know, I am the only Ponca here. 

The global pandemic has been a doozy, to say the least. So much cancelled, so much chaos, so much time collectively spent in the dark of the unknown, so much unfortunate/tragic actual death; hopefully things ease up as the rest of the year unfolds, hopefully everyone stays safe and finds abundant silver linings to all of this craziness. No powwow this year, no Sundance, but may we all still find those much-needed, much-sustaining experiences of precious togetherness. 

“Next year you’ll get to experience the powwow full-on!” I told Aislinn as we unpacked into our messy apartment. “I’ll figure out a way to get you a vegetarian Indian taco and everything. 

“Next year it’s going to be on!”

By Cliff Taylor

Cliff Taylor is a writer, a poet, a speaker, and an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He has written a non-fiction book about the little people and recently completed a memoir, Special Dogs, about coming-of-age in Nebraska. Contact Cliff @ tayloc00@hotmail.com