University Daily Kansan, September 29, 1880
Page 5
Powwow
From page 1
with intertribal dancing in the Haskell gymnasium.
Haskell students, faculty and their families dressed in native traditional costumes and lined the
Fourteen-year-old Tanya Littlewalker, a Ponce
was nervous before the dancing began.
She had been listening to tapes at home to learn the tribal songs, but there are many different kinds, and they are always memorized, never written down, she said.
For instance, the various songs heard at the powwow included "flag songs," or the "national anthems" of different tribes, "starting songs," which signal the beginning of a round of dancing, and "veterans' songs," which honor Indians who have lost their lives in the armed forces.
THE INTERTRIBAL DANCES included war dances, on to anyone, the two-step, where couples formed a train that snaked its way around the room, and more gourd dances.
Another integral part of any powwow are the specials, 'or' dances requested to honor a ceramic person.
Usually, specials are accompanied by "give-ways," in which the family of the person being honored presents gifts to his closest friends and relatives.
Giveways also may take place when a family pays' key members of the tribe for the honor of a memorial.
soldier is on furlough and tribal members give him money and gifts.
For many older members of the audience, the powwow was reminiscent of the Indian gather-
*
Tribal dance is an integral part of American Indian heritage, and Newman Littlewaker Jr. said he was making sure that heritage would be passed on to his daughter, Tanya.
Littlewalker's great grandfather was the seventh chief, or head religious man, of the Ponca tribe. His position of power has given all his descendants the right to speak before the tribe on any matter of importance and to run a powwow.
Like many young Indians, Tanya is learning the tribe's songs, but he said many other traditions and meanings had been lost through the generations.
"When Indians today are asked why they wear their hair in braids, they'll say because it's 'traditional'," Littlewalker said. "But they don't know the real reason behind it."
WHEN THE INDIANS lived on the plains, warriors would dig a hole in the ground and stick a braid of hair into it, he said. Through the braid they could see their horse, which was the location of enemy horses or an animal horn.
Although "powww" is a white man's term for an Indian dance, the gatherings are a good opportunity for Indian children to learn the customs and history of their people, he said.
the 1805s grew out of the beat generation tradition. The band's success allowed Jack Willem Burroughs and other
Later, in the 1960s, these people, along with other writers and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, formed a band called "Pump Up the Radio."
From page 1
Ginsberg
The openness spawned by the beat movement was later to spill over into the 1960s in the form of the sexual revolution and revolutions in art forms and lifestyles.
"I think it diffused throughout the culture, and throughout the world." Ginsberg said.
GINSBERG, A graduate of Columbia University in New York, said that the new openness had made people more aware of the threats posed by nuclear, nuclear power, nuclear war and pollution.
"We opened people's eyes" Glinarb said. "We pop up to the fact they're sitting where they are."
Ginsberg said that because of America's prolonged involvement in Vietnam, "perhaps some time was lost." As a result, he said, there is no way to reverse the current world situation, a change he sees as necessary for ecological and nuclear survival.
"In the '50s and '60s we started out with a statement of hope that if we woke up we might be able to go back."
"I think there's too much addiction to centralization . . . so, it seems it's gotten to important."
make a statement like that—how can one person say that the majority is nuts? But, say, Jew or liberal German in the '30s or '40s could very well sav the country (German) was nuts.
"In the 1960s, people still had the hope that they could save the world. But then, in the 1970s, I think that people realized that the world is unassalvageable. It was too late."
"It was almost like we were already in hell, standing in hell with the shift up to our nose, and if you started making waves, well, you just have to eat more shit."
Ginsberg, who grew up as a communist Jew in Paterson, N.J., is an instructor part of the year at the Jack Kernoua School of Dissimbed Religion and a professor at the Colo. He will teach a literary history of the beat generation there next spring. The course will include an in-depth study of his poem "Howl."
IN "HOWL," Ginsberg writes of the deseration and disaffection of "the best minds of my generation" and of the resulting self-abuse, including the ravages of heavy drug use.
Ginsberg himself was well known, especially during the 1960s, for using drugs and advocating their use. At one time in the 1960s, he told a group of people the people in the government should take LSD.
Ginsberg said he took drugs "because it was a subject, like travel."
"I took some LSD in Wales in '84 and wrote sort of a classic poem, 'Wales Visions', which
is sort of a Blakean pastoral nature poem, full of details," he said.
Ginsberg said he wrote almost all the time by keeping a journal "which is poetry itself."
"I don't try and write unless I have some idea, and I only write when I'm not too busy," he said.
HE SAID THERE were many writers who just spat out information and ideas that they got from other writers and formed opinions without looking at what was really there.
"It just seems like trench mouth going from head to head," he said. "You see, the real scene's in front of them. Poetry's a probe. A probe into death, a probe into sex, a probe into the winds . . . so sometimes the greatest moment in writing is when you write something down and you realize it's so true and so right. And you didn't know you could say it."
"Sometimes I've written something down, and
he back and read it, and it's so true, I just cry."
Ginsberg's publisher will soon release his new book, *The Great American Cereal*; cerning draft registration in the United States.
Ginsberg is in Lawrence "accidentally on purpose." He knew that his long-time friend William Burroughs was speaking in Lawrence, and "decided to rendezvous with him here."
Ginsberg will give a reading of his poetry at 7 p.m. tonight in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
Gunberg and Burroughs will be at the Oread
barn on the Kansas University at 1 p.m. today
for a booth bid.
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