Skip to content

A short history of a never-ending dance (20 pow wow photos)

Becky Beaudry came from Wikwemikong to demonstrate hoop dancing at this weekend’s Garden River Pow Wow

New beginnings and no endings.

That’s how Wikwemikong’s Becky Beaudry describes the hoop dance.

Hoop dancers perform with interlocked hoops fashioned from willow wood, often using them to form the shapes of animals or birds.

While popular in some other parts of North America, hoop dancing is less common around Sault Ste. Marie.

"It's rare to have a hoop dancer show up at a pow wow,” Beaudry tells SooToday. “

“There would be one or two dancers that will show up."

Beaudry has been hoop-dancing for 18 years in Wikwemikong.

On Saturday and Sunday, she attended Garden River Pow Wow to demonstrate hoop dancing and hoop making, the first time she’s done so outside her home territory.

“Many tribes lay claim to the hoop dance,” said Dennis Zotigh, a pow wow historian and co-founder of the World Championship Hoop Dance Contest, in a 2007 article.

20170813-GRPowWow-JK-1Becky Beaudry of Wikwemikong gave children lessons in traditional hoop making at the Garden River Pow Wow on August 12, 2017. Jeff Klassen/SooToday

“It wasn’t until the 1930s that a young man named Tony White Cloud, Jemez Pueblo, played an instrumental role in its evolution and began using multiple hoops in a stylized version as founder of the modern hoop dance,” Zotigh wrote. “The hoop designs that White Cloud invented are still the foundation of hoop formations and routines in modern hoop dancing.”

“It started as stories passing down from one generation to another,” Beaudry told SooToday.

“It was the hunter who brought in this teaching of new beginnings and no endings. His teachings started off with one hoop representing the seed, a circle of life. The hoop represents balance like the circle.”

As Beaudry recounts the story, a hunter forgot his tobacco, a necessity to pay respect for animal lives taken.

He’d been carrying a year’s worth of tobacco, but was unable to locate it even after repeated searches.

“He asked the Creator, he prayed to help him,” Beaudry said.

Nothing happened, so the hunter found some pieces of red willow wood and started playing and dancing with them.

“And when he was dancing, he noticed the tobacco started coming out of the ground. He added more willow hoops and he started dancing more. And he made animals. He made a flower.”

“He danced so much that tobacco grew all around where he was dancing. He knew that was significant of new beginnings and no endings, that things keep going forward and there’s nothing that will stop as long as you keep creating.”

“You make the changes and you create something and something else will come from it. That was his teaching. Keep moving forward and keep moving on.” 

 


What's next?


If you would like to apply to become a Verified reader Verified Commenter, please fill out this form.




David Helwig

About the Author: David Helwig

David Helwig's journalism career spans seven decades beginning in the 1960s. His work has been recognized with national and international awards.
Read more