Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium

Sharon Hoogstraten is a tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma. She is a professional photographer, animator, and graphic designer. Hoogstraten has produced a coffee table-style book, complete with a brief essay about the tribe's history and photographs of magnificently regaled Potawatomi dancers representing veterans, grandmothers, storytellers, tribal Elders, and more. She says she does not consider herself a photojournalist or an artist—she is, in the words of an Anishinaabe Elder, a “visual storyteller” (p. v). Accordingly, storytellers are the “guardians” of tribal history. Hoogstraten's objective for this book was to “create a compelling visual record that becomes a permanent archive for our place on the timeline of Potawatomi history and American history” (p. v). Additionally, her travels while making this book took her to Potawatomi groups living in Oklahoma, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Ontario, not only to view the regalia among the other eight Potawatomi bands but also to document the differences in the regalia styles between those who remained in the Great Lakes region and those forced to migrate further west.Hoogstraten starts by introducing the reader to the book, including why she took on such a unique venture and what she hopes to accomplish with it. Next, she explains how and why she employed the nineteenth-century technique of using dark, muted backgrounds of forest, lake, and landscape scenes behind and in stark contrast to the brightly regaled subjects in each photo. Included with each portrait is, as Hoogstraten calls it, is “a priceless addition” (p. ix) of handwritten reflections. The author also dedicates two pages to explaining traditional arts and then provides a brief history of the tribe from first contact with Europeans to modern times.Each of the book's nine chapters includes brief narratives from tribal members that tell their stories, including, for example, how nature is interpreted in regalia. Also explained is how materials used to make regalia change because of geographic considerations, including where the tribe once lived and where they later relocated. Particularly interesting is a section in the first chapter dedicated to Potawatomi veterans about how the regaled dancers combine devotion to the tribe as well as dedication to the United States by employing Native American imagery, beadwork in some cases, with uniforms, flags, and military branch insignias. And these veteran dancers carry the US flag “in an honored position” (p. 246). They are proud of their military service in spite of their mistreatment by the US Government.The “Grandmothers” chapter includes musing and sayings in reference to grandmotherhood, one of which I found particularly reflective. According to one of the grandmothers, “That is my responsibility as a grandmother—help to plant our children in the Body of Mother Earth.”The chapter on “Dancers” is insightful because it explains some of the workings, rationale, and intricacies of Potawatomi dance. For example, according to one dancer, the “chicken dance” is a medicine dance based on “the movements of the prairie chicken” (p. 56). Incorporated into his regalia are woodland influences displayed in plains style. Another dancer notes that, as people suggest, the eyes are the windows of the soul, and therefore when she dances, she either looks above at the skies or below at Mother Earth, “always giving thanks” (p. 62). It is interesting to note, too, that the eagle in Potawatomi tradition represents a carrier of messages “to the Creator that people on this earth are still doing the right thing, so the sun comes up and the Earth lives another day” (p. 26).A few notable books written specifically about the Anishinaabe people include William W. Warren's History of the Ojibway People (1885), Frances Densmore's Chippewa Customs (1979 reprint), and R. David Edmunds's classic The Potawatomi, Keepers of the Fire (1978). These books are history and ethnographic publications concerning the tribe, whereas Kitchigamig Anishinabeg: People of the Great Lakes by Alan R. Kamuda and Bucko Teeple, with an introduction by Bernard Bouschor, published by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians (1994) is, like Dancing for our Tribe, a beautifully produced coffee table-style book that tells the Anishinabeg stories in text and in images of the Chippewa Indians. This book, however, goes beyond Kitchigamig Anishinabeg. It tells the story of Potawatomi culture, customs, and dance in today's world and it does it artistically and powerfully.In summary, Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium is a beautifully produced book that gives the reader artistic, cultural, and historical insight into Anishinabeg dance, regalia, and symbolism.

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