44 - Sunday, October 4, 1992 - North Shore News

Squamish dancers raise funds for powwow

ELEVEN powwow dancers from
the Squamish Nation are currently
raising funds to finance a trip to
the 18th Hawaiian Powwow being
held Oct. (0 and Tt ar Thomas
Square. Honolulu.

Sy Paul Hughes
Contributing Writer

The dancers — thrze adults and
eight children — have been
holding auctions, car washes and
raffles and selling $0/50 tickets to
pay for the venture.

Said Gloria Nahanee, one of the
organizers of the trip, *'We won't
have time for sightsecing. We just
want to meet the dancers over
there.”*

The trip comes at the end of a
circuit that has seen the dancers
perform af the Poundmaker
Reserve in Edmonton, as well as
in powwows at Kamioops,
Spokane, Puyallup, Ferndale and
Tulalip.

Mental illness

TODAY MARKS the first day of
“Unmasking Mental Illness,"’ as
Canada’s first annual Mental IIl-
ness Awareness Week (Oct. 4 to
10) begins. -

The Canadian Psychiatric
Association, in cooperation with
provincial psychiatric associations,
hospitals, pharmaceutical com-
panies and other mienta! health
organizations, has developed a
series of projects at a national and
local level.

According to the association,
one in five people in North
America will suffer from a mental

—

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Powwow dancing demands
dedication, not only from the
dancers, but from their families.

“Parents have to really commit
themselves to participate with
their children,”” said Nahanee.

Nahanee has been dancing tor
Ain Sears,

Although this style of dance is
not indigenous to the coast -- the
powwow is a Plains Indian tradi-
Gon — Nahanee became interested
while watching performances
staged locally. Plains dancers have
been performing here for years.

“LT realiy felt in my heart as
soon as t heard the drumbeat,”
she said. “The spirit of the drums
was inside me.”’

It took a few years for the shy
Nahanee to actually go out on the
dance floor.

She attended classes at she Van-
couver Indian Centre where they
had a drum group. She kept going
to powwows, listening to the
drums and the singing, and, of

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course, watching the dancers,

Even so, her first scheduled
performance ended before it
began. Too anxious yet to face an
audience, she bolted from the en-
trance line.

“PT turned and ran out lo our
van und changed out of my
regaha,’’ she said.

Sul she persisted. Now, after
several years of performances,
dancing is no longer a source of
fear, Dut of confidence.

“You dance the way you feel
the drum inside yourself. That's
when you're free free of all
anxiety and fear.”

In an excursion partially fi-
nanced by the Squamish Nation,
the performers even attended a
powwow at Albuquerque, New
Mexico, held in April.

awareness week starts today

illness during his or her lifetime.

Also, one in every eight Cana-
dians will be hospitalized for men-
tal illness — the second leading
reason for admissions tc general
hospitals for those aged 20 to 44.

Many who suffer from diseases
like schizophrenia, manic-depres-
sion, and Alzheimer’s disease do
so in silence, masking emotions
and pain because of saciety’s lack
of understanding and mispercep-
tions of mental illnesses.

This year’s campaign focuses on
three target illnesses: anxiety and
depression, schizophrenia and
Alzheimer's disease.

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North Shore public forums dur-
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are being held Tuesday, Oct. 6, at
7 p.m, in the Medical Day Centre
at Lions Gate Hospita! in North
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Hillside middle school, 2295
Queens in West Vancouver, The
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department of psychiairy at Lions
Gate Hospital.

For more information about the
forums, or about Menta) [ness
Awareness Week, call 926-5655.

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Nahance has passed on her en-
thusiasm to the rest of her family.

Her husband Keith has deen
dancing for three years now, Her
two daughters, Riannon, 15, and
Kanani, 12, are respectively this
year's senior and junior princesses
for the Cedar Cottage Neighbour-

«hood tlouse Powwow,

Nahanee looks on powwow
dancing as a method of preserving
the heritage Uhrough the children.

“If you don't teach your kids,
it will be fost,’ she said. “I wish |
had learned when | was young.”*

Nahanee attended Catholic

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boarding schoo! when she was a
child. ‘'The nuns taught us [rish
dancing, Scottish dancing, Dutch,
Ukrainian, All types of dancing,
except our own.””

She has made up for lost time
since.

“Pee spent the fast 26 years
with my elders. IT really respect
them. | want to share what !
heard and saw with my children.”’

She added, ‘I tell them, ‘When
§ die, you go to the fonghousé, to
the powwows. You'll feel my
spizit there.’ °°

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