Pow-wow as an enhanced Indigenous performance

From pow-wow performances on the University of Ottawa and Carleton University campuses, to Yukon First Nations arts festivals, to meeting his wife through the performing arts, the sounds of Brock Lewis’s pow-wow performances have carried him far.

During the summer of 2018, he was a prominent performer in Yukon, armed with his animal-hide drum and resonant voice. Key engagements included the National Indigenous Peoples Day celebration in Burwash Landing, where his wife Marissa Mills is a member of the local Kluane First Nation, as well as at back-to-back performances at Moosehide Gathering, near Dawson City on Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in land.

He says that the oldest pow-wow activities in his home province of Ontario come from his Wiikwemkoong First Nation community, on Manitoulin Island.

It was Lewis’s father who introduced him to singing, and he’s been around pow-wow for as long as he can remember. Now in his mid-twenties, Lewis has been singing full-time since 2010.

Lewis spent his young adult years in Ottawa. He notes that there is much activity in the way of Indigenous arts and culture in the National Capital Region.

“We definitely have a tight-knit community and everybody respects each other, and we usually have a good time,” he says of the area’s pow-wow groups. 

For Lewis, pow-wow has been his gateway to the world.

“When you pow-wow, when you go to a new place, you meet people from all over,” he says. And in today’s digitized age, he enjoys connections that extend beyond the initial encounter. “You meet people, you add them on Facebook, you make that connection. And then who knows, maybe they want me to come sing at another pow-wow somewhere.” 

In his experience criss-crossing North America to perform, audiences are appreciative of Indigenous cultural performances and he is regularly well-taken care of.

“It really shows the hospitality that people have for groups that come from all over the place. They’re like, ‘Oh this group is from Ontario, we really need to pay them some respect for coming all the way out here to come sing.’ ” 

Lewis’s performances follow a pre-planned structure based on the song. He normally sings with at least one other person – the more singers, the more concrete the structure. The style is called pow-wow singing, which originated in the North American plains but is sung across the continent by many different First Nations groups.

Before the spectacle, preparation is crucial to a performance. Aside from the technical obstacles of vocal control and training, another key barrier is getting over personal insecurities.

“Once you get past that threshold of fear, you got the whole world ahead of you and you can go sing at any pow-wow you want to,” Lewis says.

Lewis says his musical identity has become inseparable from his personal identity. “When you learn how to sing, it really develops who you are as a person,” he says. “It really boosts your confidence, if you’re not a really smart guy!” he laughs. “It really changes your life, so to say. Like, maybe you thought you couldn’t do something before, but you’re like, ‘Hey I’m a singer, I can do anything.’ So that’s sort of how it empowers me – ’cause I’m not afraid to speak up or to say something, just because I can sing. I have that confidence now to do other things.”

For a time, Lewis studied political science at the University of Ottawa. But he doesn’t find commonalities between the worlds of his studies and his art. “From a political science perspective the strength of our connection to the land is still there, but it is faded,” Lewis says. “From an arts perspective, I just sing for the people and the really strong connection to sound and the voice really carries people to come talk to me.”

For him, the university setting is a part of the colonial settler legacy. It is difficult to isolate those elements from society today: from purchases, to the possessive concepts of citizenship and territoriality, to keeping time, Lewis says these are all foreign concepts to Indigenous Peoples.

He throws out a challenge to non-Indigenous people:

“You really have to really think about all those things that are assumed in everyday life, in order to get away from it,” he reflects. “That might lead to a conversation where we’re talking about politics, and what it means to be an Indigenous person in Canada.”

The irony is, pow-wow didn’t gain traction in society until the 1880s, when William Cody developed a Wild West representation of the traditional dance. Lewis explains that Cody, better known today as Buffalo Bill, also popularized the “Fancy Dance,” which introduced an element of showmanship, presentation and style. This proved popular with crowds and remains a popular form for competition pow-wows. In the competition pow-wows Lewis has been a part of, the dancers from competing groups face off against each other, followed by the drummers.

But Lewis still considers pow-wow performance to be a part of new age Indigenous culture: today’s First Nations pow-wow performers have adapted what already came before and turned it into their own unique voice.

“We never had so many colours before, and fabric,” Lewis says. “All those things help us create a sense of who we are. We adapted so we could create a sense of who we are as Indigenous People, as an inter-nation gathering.

“It’s something that people embrace and unfortunately it’s not originating from Indigenous culture, but it’s definitely something we do on a regular basis that makes us feel proud of who we are.”