Pow-wow attracts crowd, promotes culture

By Shawn White Wolf
Diversity Institute Fellow

11.08.02

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Nearly 20,000 people from across the United States and Canada made their way to the Native American Indian Association’s 21st Annual Fall Festival and Pow-Wow in Antioch from Oct. 18-20.

The event has become the single most important way that Native Americans in Tennessee seek to increase knowledge and awareness of American Indian culture and promote unity, organizers said, and it is largest gathering of its type east of the Mississippi River.

“There is not a huge population of Native Americans in Tennessee, and what happens so often among Native American children in urban areas is they don’t get a lot of their culture,” said Warren Wahpepeh Jr., the association’s vice-president.

More than 15,000 American Indians live in the state, according to the U.S. Census. The majority of that population comes from Cherokee or Choctaw descent, but many other tribes are also represented in the state, association officials said.

“We have grown from a small band of ten or twelve people into a major group throughout this state,” said Executive Director Ray Emanual.

Money raised at the festival and pow-wow is used to support scholarships, an emergency fund and construction of the proposed Circle of Life cultural center in Davidson County. About $140,000 of the $1.1 million needed to accomplish this goal has now been raised, said Sally Wells, the association’s president.

“We want to build it in Davidson County because we have a lot of support there,” Wells said of the center. “It’s a long way, but we hope to get there before I get 90 years old.”

During the festival, Alison B. Sanders, 17, was crowned the association’s Miss 2002-03 Indian Princess. Sanders, who is a senior at Smyrna High School, is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaws. She previously served as the association’s Junior Miss Indian Princess.

In her new role, Sanders will represent the association in the community and at other pow-wows, hoping to encourage other younger American Indians to get involved in preserving the culture, she said.

"I will go to other schools and try to get them to come (to next year’s pow-wow),” said Sanders, who plans to study pre-dentistry once she graduates from high school.

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