The Pow Wow: An immersion in a whole new world

The First Nations are the predominant Aboriginal peoples of Canada and for thousands of years
have been in Canada and share their culture and knowledge with others. At the Ranch, I met a
few First Nation peoples and they always share their culture and knowledge with us, especially
the food. The culture can be shared in a lot of different ways: art, food, medicine, clothes, music,
food, history ... I first jumped into the First Nations culture by eating some of their specialty food,
bannock- which is a kind of a bread, wild salmon, Indian sooppolallies ice cream.

At the beginning of August we found that one of the most popular Pow Wow was in Kamloops,
and so with all the team we decided to go to this cultural festival for learning more about the
culture of the First Nations. I was really excited about the Pow Wow and all the new things I am
going to discover. The Pow Wow is once a year and it's principal goal is to share some parts of
the First Nations cultures.

I went to the Pow Wow on the second day of the festival and the most important attraction tha
day was the dance competition. We arrived in the arena and were already going with the flow,
hearing the drums and seeing the people dress up with all these colours. The competition lasted
all day. There is different categories, dancers are separated by gender and by ages. It started
with the youngest ones and finished with the adults. There are different dance categories:
traditional, chicken, jingle, grass, fancy feather, fancy shawl, golden age.

For a person without any knowledge about all these things we might think that all the dances
and songs are all the same but we can see some differences and the show is really spectacular.
All the music is hand made, groups of people bang on drums and sing, it is actually another
competition on the side of the dance competition.

The Pow Wow was a great experience and was a great first step to learning about the First
Nations cultures.

- Cynthia, France