Culture, family, youth focus of annual Arlee Celebration
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ARLEE — Vendors, youth, and campers of all ages bustled about the powwow grounds, and especially the basketball court, during quieter moments that preceded the traditional song and dance contests of the 125th annual Arlee Celebration Powwow last week.
By late Wednesday night and into the early hours of Thursday morning, many powwow campers had already settled in their temporary sleeping quarters including tipis, tents, truck beds, and RVs.
With the 3-on-3 youth basketball tournament starting promptly at 8 a.m. Thursday, players had just enough time to shower, catch a quick bite, and warm up on the warming pad of asphalt as sprinklers on nearby agriculture fields acted as a mirage, with the sun beginning to beam down on a day that would soon climb to temperatures of nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Activities wrapped up in the evening with a youth powwow sponsored by Nkwusum, a Salish language school in Arlee.
Citing growth patterns in the number of basketball teams that have signed up since the tournament started three years ago, one attendee said they were encouraged by increased participation and enthusiasm among area youth. “We’ve even had our graduating seniors wanting to come back and participate,” he said.
Serving burritos and coffee to youth players, as well as adults rising early to come and watch the games, Hellgate Middle School principal Jamie Courville, three years ago decided to open a food booth, and relates the event to his time coming to it as a child, saying, “I think it’s important for the tradition and for the community to have a powwow of this magnitude and it’s pretty impressive.”
The small town of Arlee, population of 725 as of 2020, draws thousands of participants annually to its powwow from tribal communities throughout the United States. Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States, was well represented at this year’s powwow, with numerous license plates hailing hundreds of miles away from Arizona, as several merchants from the area set up shop among the dozens of stands.
The “Everyone Loves Frybread” stand, operated by a merchant from Cedar City in Southern Utah, was one of the first to open - serving Navajo burgers and tacos, alongside their frybread.
A few stands down, Grandma Janice’s Frybread, a favorite at the Arlee powwow for nearly 50 years, was clocking in long lines of customers by lunchtime, as her grandchildren worked the storefront. A basic recipe consisting of just flour, baking powder, powdered milk and sugar, Grandma Janice kept busy in the back, handcrafting batch after batch herself.
On the outskirts of the event within the Arlee Community Center, Bailey Chalfant, an environmental health specialist who ran food inspections at the powwow on Wednesday night, was preparing to host a 9 a.m. presentation on safe food handling, a program that enables merchants to receive their required ServSafe certifications. Chalfant says her goal is to raise the sanitary standards of local communities by offering easily digestible food safety material that anyone can quickly learn and apply to their businesses. “[Some people] don’t know they’re supposed to have the sink set up to wash their dishes, even if they’re just vending with a tent and grill,” she said.
In addition to food vendors, a wide variety of artists also operated stands at the powwow. Shana Yellow Calf of “10 Buffalos Art,” based out of Gig Harbor, Washington, fuses traditional Native American symbology with modern formats. Yellow Calf says she’s the only seller and manufacturer in the nation of 3D-printed nightlights and lampshades that feature cultural art. A member of the Washington Indian Education Association, Yellow Calf also sells teaching kits that include arts and crafts centralized to each tribal region, in an effort to address what she sees as a “gap when it comes to non-Native teachers teaching Indian education to students.” Having just finished and self-published her children’s book, “Frybread Trails,” Yellow Calf was headed to Butte after the Arlee Celebration in order to speak at the Montana Folk Festival. “I’m not just an artist, but I’m an educator and a storyteller,” she said.
Representatives from CSKT Tribal Health were also present at the powwow with their new mobile mental health unit. Health professionals will travel in the new RV to provide free services to reservation youth in area schools, in partnership with Logan Health.
CSKT Tribal Police officers were also on-hand for the annual celebration to ensure no fireworks, alcohol, drugs, or weapons were brought onto the powwow grounds. “We want to protect our people and our kids that are wanting to come here and spend time with their families,” said Captain Louis Fiddler.
Many elders came to watch Thursday’s youth activities, and some, such as 74-year-old sound technician Clarence Hunter Skaw, who has worked with names as big as Megadeth, Stephen Stills, and Eric Clapton, still work tirelessly to put on the best events possible. Recognizing the powwow’s transformation over the years from a “dusty little powwow” to what it is today, Shaw says that the music, timeless in nature, has largely not changed, though some youth have begun to innovate. “The younger generations are creating their own material with traditional sound,” he said. “I [also] hear kids putting in rap to it, and it’s interesting. Not my generation, of course, but it’s interesting.”
CSKT elder Johnny Arlee was also in attendance. Arlee, who played in the 1972 Western film “Jeremiah Johnson” with Robert Redford, is named after his great-grandfather Chief Arlee, the father of the township and celebration, who passed away on the powwow grounds on July 5th, 1957.
Arlee has helped grow and shape the substance-free powwow since it came under the leadership of the Arlee Powwow Committee in 1976. “Alcohol came in and upset a lot of the old timers,” he said. Though it brings a smile to Arlee to see how youth have sobered up from alcohol, he now views modern equivalents like methamphetamine as even more of a peril to the Native way of life. “I don’t have answers for that,” he said. “Each generation has to deal with the evil that comes in to tempt everybody and destroy our ways.” Arlee hopes that by abiding to substance free rules, youth can enjoy time at powwow with other sober youth, leaving them with a healthy feeling inside as they return to their homes afterwards. “For us, we pray before the whole celebration, for the grounds, for the people coming, the journey here as they leave their homes. We’re following the steps of our ancestors, you know, they pray for everything. Everything here on Mother Earth.”
