Siksika Nation Fair Powwow hosted at Memorial Arbour
By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
John Watson Photo
The Siksika Nation Fair Powwow was hosted at the Memorial Arbour, June 27-30, attracting both competitors and fans from across North America to participate in the festivities.
“We started planning this event early this year. Myself, I was to coordinate the powwow which consists of dance and drum competition. I always tell people it is very similar to rodeo; we have different go rounds, competition in different age brackets for different amounts of prize money,” said Chris “Nugget” Bullbear. “This has been going on for many, many years, I am not sure. I was thinking (about) 30 to 40-plus years since that this has been going, and it has grown every year. With time and everything evolving, and throwing in more money to this and people travelling from all over North America, it is getting bigger and bigger.”
Bullbear added this year, Siksika Nation decided to line up several of their annual events all into the week leading up to Canada Day.
This series of events consisted of a market, competitive hand games, a fastball tournament, softball, golf, and a rodeo.
“This year, this powwow is one of the biggest powwows that I have ever seen in years … we have not really thought of a theme or anything, but we really want to put it out there that everybody is always welcome,” said Bullbear. “People tend to think, ‘oh, it is only for native people,’ but no, that is not the case. We have opened it up to everybody – anybody and everybody is welcome … we do have dances where we invite people out to dance and participate with us.”
Response to both the powwow and the events taking place throughout the week leading up were reported to be overwhelmingly positive. Athletes, dancers, musicians, and attendees travelled from the United States and across Canada to participate.
On Saturday, June 29, a live stream of the powwow gathered over 300,000 viewers from 66 countries to be a part of the festivities and competition.
Bullbear added it is not a new idea for several events to be conglomerated into one week, as a similar idea was formerly hosted in August. The series of events was migrated to June due to ease of scheduling.
The format of the event seeing the success that it did, according to Bullbear will aim to be repeated, as it attracted exponentially more people to Siksika in order to participate.
“I can only imagine this getting bigger and bigger if we keep having this all together because in families, some are hand game players, some are softball players, some are dancers – so this has something for everyone to enjoy with all the festivities going on,” he said.