HINCKLEY, Minn. (AP) 鈥 At summertime social powwows and spiritual ceremonies throughout the Upper Midwest, Native Americans are gathering around singers seated at big, resonant drums to dance, celebrate and connect with their ancestral culture.
鈥淚 grew up singing my entire life, and I was always taught that dewe鈥檌gan is the heartbeat of our people,鈥 said Jakob Wilson, 19, using for drum that鈥檚 rooted in the words for heart and sound. 鈥淭he absolute power and feeling that comes off of the drum and the singers around it is incredible.鈥
Wilson has led the drum group at Hinckley-Finlayson High School. In 2023, Wilson鈥檚 senior year, they were invited to drum and sing at graduation. But this year, when his younger sister Kaiya graduated, the school board barred them from performing at the ceremony, creating dismay across Native communities far beyond this tiny town where cornfields give way to northern Minnesota鈥檚 birch and fir forests.
鈥淚t kind of shuts us down, makes us step back instead of going forward. It was hurtful,鈥 said Lesley Shabaiash. She was participating in the weekly drum and dance session at the Minneapolis American Indian Center a few weeks after attending protests in Hinckley.
鈥淗opefully this incident doesn鈥檛 stop us from doing our spiritual things,鈥 added the mother of four, who grew up in the Twin Cities but identifies with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose tribal lands abut Hinckley.
In written statements, the school district鈥檚 superintendent said the decision to ban 鈥渁ll extracurricular groups鈥 from the ceremony, while making other times and places for performance available, was intended to prevent disruptions and avoid 鈥渓egal risk if members of the community feel the District is endorsing a religious group as part of the graduation ceremony.鈥
But many Native families felt the ban showed how little their culture and spirituality is understood. It also brought back traumatic memories of their being forcibly suppressed, not only like the one the Wilsons鈥 grandmother attended, but more generally from public spaces.
It was not until the late 1970s that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act directed government agencies to make policy changes 鈥渢o protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices.鈥
鈥淲e had our language, culture and way of life taken away,鈥 said Memegwesi Sutherland, who went to high school in Hinckley and teaches the Ojibwe language at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
The Center鈥檚 weekly drum and dance sessions help those who 鈥渕ay feel lost inside鈥 without connections to ancestral ways of life find their way back, said Tony Frank, a drum instructor.
鈥淪inging is a door opener to everything else we do,鈥 said Frank, who has been a singer for nearly three decades. 鈥淭he reason we sing is from our heart. Our connection to the drum and songs is all spiritual. You give 100 percent, so the community can feel a piece of us.鈥
In drum circles like those in Minneapolis, where many Natives are Ojibwe and Lakota, there is a lead singer, who starts each song before passing on the beat and verse to others seated at the drum, which is made of wood and animal hide (usually deer or steer).
A drum keeper or carrier cares for the drum, often revered as having its own spirit and considered like a relative and not like personal property. Keepers and singers are usually male; according to one tradition, that鈥檚 because women can already connect to a second heartbeat when pregnant.
These lifelong positions are often passed down in families. Similarly, traditional lyrics or melodies are learned from older generations, while others are gifted in dreams to medicine men, several singers said. Some songs have no words, only vocables meant to convey feelings or emulate nature.
Songs and drums at the center of social events like powwows are different from those that are crucial instruments in spiritual ceremonies, for example for healing, and that often contain invocations to the Creator, said Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe language and culture professor at Bemidji State University.
Meant to mark the beginning of a new journey in life, the 鈥渢raveling song鈥 that the drum group wanted to sing at the Hinckley graduation includes the verse 鈥渨hen you no longer can walk, that is when I will carry you,鈥 said Jakob Wilson.
That鈥檚 why it was meant for the entire graduating class of about 70 students, not only the 21 Native seniors, added Kaiya Wilson, who trained as a back-up singer 鈥 and why relegating it to just another extracurricular activity hurt so deeply.
鈥淭his isn鈥檛 just for fun, this is our culture,鈥 said Tim Taggart, who works at the Meshakwad Community Center 鈥 named after a local drum carrier born in the early 20th century 鈥 and helped organize the packed powwow held in the school's parking lot after graduation. 鈥淭o just be culturally accepted, right? That鈥檚 all everybody wants, just to be accepted.鈥
The school had taken good steps in recent years, like founding the Native American Student Association, and many in the broader Hinckley community turned out to support Native students. So Taggart is optimistic that after this painful setback, bridges will be rebuilt
And the drum, with all that it signifies about community and a connected way of life, will be brought back.
鈥淣othing can function without that heartbeat,鈥 said Taggart, whose earliest memory of the drum is being held as a toddler at a ceremony. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just hearing the drums, but you鈥檙e feeling it throughout your entire body, and that just connects you more with the spirit connection, more with God.鈥
As dancers 鈥 from toddlers to adults in traditional shawls 鈥 circled the floor to the drum鈥檚 beat in the Minneapolis center鈥檚 gym, Cheryl Secola, program director for its Culture Language Arts Network, said it was heartwarming to see families bring children week after week, building connections even if they might not have enough resources to travel to the reservations.
On reservations too, many youths aren鈥檛 being raised in cultural ways like singing, said Isabella Stensrud-Eubanks, 16, a junior and back-up singer on the Hinckley high school drum group.
鈥淚t鈥檚 sad to say, but our culture is slowly dying out,鈥 she said, adding that several elders reached out to her and the Wilsons after the graduation controversy to teach them more, so the youth can themselves one day teach their traditions.
Mark Erickson was already about 20 when he went back to Red Lake, his father鈥檚 band in northern Minnesota, to learn his people鈥檚 songs.
鈥淚t鈥檚 taken me a lifetime to learn and speak the language, and a lifetime to learn the songs,鈥 said Erickson, who only in his late 60s was awarded the distinction of culture carrier for Anishinaabe songs, a term for Ojibwe and other Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.
Believing that songs and drums are gifts from the Creator, he has been going to drum and dance sessions at the Minneapolis Center for more than a decade to share them, and the notions of honor and respect they carry.
鈥淲hen you鈥檙e out there dancing, you tend to forget your day-to-day struggles and get some relief, some joy and happiness,鈥 Erickson said.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP鈥檚 with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
