Help fund the 3rd Annual Odenong Powwow

Aniin/Hello, my name is Justin Beatty and I am raising money for the 3rd Annual Odenong Powwow. The Odenong Powwow is a Native American-run cultural gathering currently held annually in Amherst, Massachusetts. This year the Odenong Powwow will be held Memorial Day Weekend, May 27 & 28, 2023. We are hoping to raise $20,000 to put toward the cost of funding the powwow which is a free event & open to the public.

The Odenong Powwow is a celebration of Indigenous cultures and a means of providing a quality cultural event for the Native American communities in Western Massachusetts and the surrounding areas. It was also created to operate as a means of supporting & raising the visibility of Native American, Indigenous, & First Nations people in the area, as well as to educate and build relationships with non-Native people by allowing them to see and interact directly with members of living, dynamic Indigenous cultures. So far, the event has gone a long way in breaking down stereotypes and misconceptions about Native American, First Nations, & Indigenous people including those who live in the area and those who live all over North, South, & Central America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. It is also an opportunity for Native people to visit the area to connect with other Native folks who live in and around Western Massachusetts, rebuild and renew old friendships and kinship ties, pass on traditional knowledge, and contribute to the continuing evolution of Native, First Nations, & Indigenous cultures.

Founded in 2021 as a virtual event, the first Odenong Powwow had over 84,000 views on Facebook. The 2nd Annual Odenong Powwow was held in person last year during Memorial Day Weekend at the Amherst-Pelham Regional High School. We were working to have the powwow on the Amherst Town Common as was our original plan last year, but due to a complication created by town policy after we secured the space we were unable to hold the powwow there.

There is an important historical reason for holding the powwow in the Town of Amherst. 264 years ago the town of Amherst was founded and named after Jeffrey Amherst, a British General who advocated the use of smallpox-infected blankets as gifts to Indigenous people here in the Northeast.

In 1763, he wrote a letter to a Swiss mercenary named Henry Bouquet, stating:

"Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

And in a second letter also to Bouquet, he wrote:

"You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race. I should be very glad your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect, but England is at too great a distance to think of that at present."

Here in Western Massachusetts, and the surrounding areas, the visibility of Native Americans, First Nations, & Indigenous people has been difficult to maintain. The histories of the people whose homelands encompass this part of the country are rarely discussed in public education locally and almost entirely ignored on the national stage. One of the important ways visibility has been increased over the years has been through cultural events, academic presentations, and activism. However, the number of powwows in western MA has been greatly reduced over the last 10-20 years. The Odenong Powwow has been, and with your help will continue to be, an important opportunity to show that WE ARE STILL HERE! To hold a powwow in a town named after a man determined to destroy Indigenous people is no small statement in our eyes and it has the potential to be a stepping stone in reconciliation between the town's history and the local Native communities.

At the 2nd Annual Odenong Powwow held in 2022, we were able to hold the powwow in person and as a two-day powwow for the first time! We were able to secure the Amherst-Pelham Regional High School's gymnasium as the space to hold the powwow. We were blessed to have dancers & vendors from multiple Indigenous nations throughout North, South, Central America, and the Caribbean. Three incredible drum groups provided wonderful songs to keep everyone dancing on both days. We were also able to have traditional flute music performances and Eastern Social Dances exhibitions. The Odenong Powwow held two important dances, one to honor our two-spirit & LGBQTIA+ relatives & a "Stomp Out Addiction" Stomp Dance to bring awareness to the public about drug addiction in our communities. We provided meals on both days for elders, powwow staff, and dancers in a space that was disability-friendly and accessible. We were able to pay out over $10,000 to Native, First Nations, and Indigenous dancers, singers, & head staff. Our best estimate based on donations, soft counts, and other information from local news outlets is that we had almost 3,000 visitors over the course of the weekend.

What's next?

Our hope for 2023 is to expand on what we were able to create in 2022, but we need your help. We want to ensure we can pay traditional knowledge keepers well for their contributions to the powwow. We want to invite more drums to sing and pay them well for their time and effort. We want to make sure we can feed and provide refreshments for more elders & community members. We would really like to hold the powwow outdoors this year and that comes with added expenses. We would need to rent large event tents, chairs, and tables for the head staff, drum groups, and elders. There are a lot of other needs including, but not limited to, disability-accessible portable bathrooms, hand washing stations, appropriate trash receptacles & removal, event insurance, a first-aid station, and police detail as required by the town for outdoor events expecting over 100 people. We also want to provide honorariums for our head staff, drum groups & special guests who will provide services such as our opening prayer, being flag bearers, & invited performers. One of the local universities, UMass-Amherst, has switched its graduation ceremonies to the same weekend as the powwow this year. This has led to a severe rise in the cost of local lodging for the weekend which makes it almost impossible to put our head staff & drum groups up in nearby hotels. We have a few options, none of which are ideal. They include things like putting folks up in hotels almost 40 minutes away from the powwow grounds, paying upwards of $300/room while placing folks at different hotels across the area, compensating local community members who put people up in their homes for the weekend, and other creative ideas.

Last year, Native American LifeLines provided toys for our tiny tots/kids' dance special where all children in attendance were invited to participate and take home toys. This year we would love to be able to expand on that by providing toys, books, & art supplies. Last year, we weren't able to provide the discounts we would have liked for Native elders and Native veterans that are vendors. we would love to be able to offset some of the costs through fundraising and provide those community members with discounts allowing them to save money and hopefully make some to support their financial situations. While we were able to make do with limited advertising last year, in order to help the powwow grow we need to be able to advertise in diverse ways. This includes flyers, online advertising, signage, radio spots, and potentially local tv advertisements. For the last two years, some community members sponsored some of our dance competitions. One of the notable ones was our "Golden Age" dance competitions for our elders. Unfortunately, those community members are unable to sponsor those dances this year and we would love to be able to still hold that category with at least the same prize amounts as last year. These along with many other expenses make the powwow a difficult but in our opinion supremely important undertaking and we really could use your help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read about our event and our hopes for making it happen. While our primary hope with this GoFundMe campaign is to reach our financial goal, we appreciate any and all help you can give. Please share this far and wide so we can increase our chances of providing another wonderful event for the community.

Miigwetch/Thank you