CLEVELAND, Ohio -- As a young child, I remember going with my family to powwows and feeling mesmerized by the dancers. The songs. The sounds of jingling coming from dancers’ regalia.
The skill, reverence and athleticism needed to participate in the hours-long gathering. The sense of community. The confluence of all this makes for a unique, uplifting and inspiring experience.
Although I had never learned how to dance, myself — something I lament now as an adult — I knew I was witnessing something special. I still get that feeling at powwows today. Half of my family tree includes ancestors who are Indigenous to the Great Lakes region.
I am half-Anishinaabe, specifically Ottawa. Growing up in Cleveland, my father made it a point for us to stay connected to our Nativeness, although we were hundreds of miles from our ancestral homelands in Western Michigan. Part of that connection was cultivated by staying active as part of the local Native community, here in Cleveland.
That’s why I was delighted to hear the BorderLight Theatre Festival will welcome a highly acclaimed dance troupe, Indigenous Enterprise , to Cleveland. The BorderLight Theatre Festival is taking place now through July 27 in venues throughout downtown Cleveland and is free of charge. The festival is marking its fifth year with dozens of shows, a curated selection of acclaimed international touring productions and new work created by Cleveland organizations in partnership with international artists, according to its website.
Indigenous Enterprise will perform in U.S. Bank Plaza each evening.
Indigenous Enterprise is a dance collective of Native people representing a diverse array of tribes. They have shared their songs and dance at venues throughout the globe. Kenneth Shirley, a Phoenix-based Diné champion fancy dancer, who founded Indigenous Enterprise, said he is excited to bring his group’s talents to Cleveland.
It will be his first time in our city, and he hopes Clevelanders will be inspired to learn more about Native people from Indigenous Enterprise’s performances and the diversity of indigeneity that it represents. “A lot of people don’t know that Indigenous people are broken up in over 500 recognized tribes, and it’s kind of letting them know that even though we are all Native people, we’re all different,” he said. “We all have different languages.
We all have different cultures, different ceremonies. I want to showcase for them some culture and let them know we are still here. We’re still alive.
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I just want them to take away the beauty of it and how powerful it is.” After all, he said, it was not so long ago that Native dance and ceremonies in the U.S.
were illegal, despite the First Amendment protections for freedom of religion that have long extended to other Americans. “It wasn’t too long ago our people were getting arrested, thrown in jail, for what we’re doing today,” he said. “For us to be doing it now, to be celebrated, to be flown out to Cleveland and cheered on, it just means a lot to our ancestors, and it means a lot to me.
” Native dance was prohibited in the U.S. until 1933, when the Religious Crimes Code was amended.
And although dance was removed from the list of illegal acts in the Religious Crimes Code, which sought to Christianize Native People and criminalize indigeneity in the U.S., Native ceremonies would not be fully protected until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.
When people think of the injustices that Native people have experienced, they tend to relegate that to 1492. But these infringements on our rights as Native people happened as recently as my father’s and grandparents’ generations. It’s important to not forget that.
Although I have never been to the BorderLight festival, the inclusion of a Native group like Indigenous Enterprise signals to me — and I am sure others in our Native Cleveland community — that this is a space where I am welcome. “Part of our mission is cross-cultural understanding,” said Dale Heinen, executive and artistic director of the Cleveland-based festival. “We’re trying to bring experiences that are not normally available to audiences here.
” If you happen to attend one of Indigenous Enterprise’s performances, I ask you to reflect on the significance of what you are witnessing. The mere existence of Indigenous people today, despite all of the cruel injustices inherent in colonialism, is an act of defiance. To pass down and preserve these cultural traditions so that they may thrive in our communities today is, in itself, something of a victory.
The thriving Indigenous dancers you’ll see before you are a testament to the generational resilience, fortitude and enduring wisdom of Native people. And thanks to people like them, these traditions will continue to thrive for generations to come. A Clevelander from the Slavic Village neighborhood, Nancy Kelsey started her career in journalism before working in communications.
Her biggest loves are her husband, family, dogs, volunteering, traveling, writing, learning about other cultures and sharing her own. You can reach her at nancy.kelseyPD@yahoo.
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