Haliwa Saponi featured

By Peggy R. Shearin
Observer Correspondent

Vance Granville Community College hosted an American Indian educational event last week at its Warren County campus, focusing on the Haliwa-Saponi tribe.

The event was part of Native American History Month.

The Haliwa-Saponi has about 3,800 tribal members, most of whom reside in Halifax and Warren counties.  They trace their ancestry to the Saponi and Nansemond Indians, which merged during the Colonial period, according to Wenona Anstead, American Indian coordinator for Warren County. She made her remarks during a presentation at the event.

The Haliwa-Saponi have always worked to retain their Indian culture and pass it down from generation to generation, she said. One important part of the culture is the Indian dancers and the stories they tell.

Native American dance is unlike most other dances in the world. It is not only a way to have fun, but spiritual in itself. Dance can be a form of prayer, a way of expressing joy or grief, and a method of becoming closer with man and nature.

Native dancing has been around just about as long as the Native American people have been used in ceremony, as part of powwows, and as a simple way to just pass the days and nights. The dance is also said to have healing powers, not only for the dancer, but also on people close to the dancer.

Native American dance is centered around the drum. It beats in time with the heart of Mother Earth and provides a base for the song. The drumbeat is, as in most dances, the key to Native footwork.

Brittany Anstead, Samantha Anstead and Tokeya Waci Richardson accompanied Wenona Anstead and gave a lively demonstration of tribal dances. Among the dances performed by the teenagers were:

• The Ojibway Dance. This tells the story of a powerful Ojibway chief whose daughter was dying when a vision came to him telling him to have the women of the tribe dance with shells attached to their dresses in order to ward off the evil spirits.  He commanded the women to dance and through their dancing his daughter was saved. 

Even in modern times a woman of another tribe may not perform this dance without the permission of a woman of the Ojibway tribe. Tiny bells sewn on the women’s garment now replace the shells; adult women have seven rows of bells representing the seven days of the week.

• The Grass Dance is a very old dance rich in history that has become very popular. In the old days, it was the job of the grass dancers to flatten the grass in the arena before a powwow.

The name “grass” does not come from the stomping of grass, but it comes from the old habit of tying braids of sweet grass to the dancer’s belts, producing a swaying effect.

Today, Grass Dancers resemble a multicolored swaying mass of yarn or fringe on the dance floor. The Grass Dance is a very fluid and bendable style, with the dancers trying to move their fringe in as many places as possible at once.

• The Shawl Dance. Unlike the earlier styles of the 1900’s which were more calm and gentle, the Fancy Shawl Dance was a splash of color, fringe and butterfly wings, each step so quick and light that the young woman looks as though she is literally dancing on air.

Anstead told of the dance competitions the young tribal members enter all through the United States and that the three dancers performing Thursday evening were all East Coast Champions and honor students in their respective schools.

Anstead finished by inviting all in attendance to the Annual Haliwa-Saponi Tribal Powwow held the third weekend in April. Participants and visitors get to experience the sights and sounds of Native American Culture there, she said.