Friday, May 18, 2012

Drums On The Pocomoke Powwow and Festival

By Bill Kerbin
POCOMOKE CITY -- The 19th annual Drums on the Pocomoke Powwow and Festival will be held on the banks of the Pocomoke River, Cypress Park in the Downtown area of Pocomoke City on May 19 and 20.

The event will be hosted by the Assateague People of Delmarva, a Native American tribe recognized by the Maryland Department of Indian Affairs.

On Saturday and Sunday, powwow grounds will open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., with the grand entry at noon. Several tribes will be represented including the Assateague, Cherokee, Cree, Navajo, Apache, Accohannock, Nause-Waiwash, Occanechi, Ojibwa, and Nanticoke tribes.

This year's host drum will be Na-Ma-Wo-Chi of North Carolina. Event hosts said this a powerful drum and singing group consisting of 10 members.

Their highest honor was in 2008 when they were invited by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to perform a sacred pipe ceremony honoring Native American veterans at Arlington National Cemetery, Va.

The host tribe called the powwow an opportunity for the public to interact with Native American dancers, singers, drummers, artists and craftpersons. There will be fun activities for children such as face painting, storytelling, the candy dance and the friendship dance. Patrons will have the opportunity to be entered for door prizes.

Powwow venders will be selling crafts like dream catchers, moccasins, pottery, drums, rattles, beadwork and turquoise jewelry.

The Accohannock Tribe of Marion Station will be cooking buffalo burgers, fried bread, tacos, and oyster fritters.

This year a wristband can be purchased for the two-day event; adults pay $8 and children under 11 pay $6. For one day of fun, adults are $5, children ages 5-11 pay $3 and children 4 and under and those with a military ID enter free.

The Delmarva Discovery Center will be offering half price admissions for anyone with a powwow wristband or hand stamp.

Source

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Has Elizabeth Warren been invited?

Your friend,
Slim

Anonymous said...

We’re thrilled to be beginning our 3rd year in beautiful Pocomoke; it truly has been the “friendliest town on the eastern shore” for us, thus making our rather frightening encounter in Cypress Park (on Wednesday 5/16) all the more distressing.

After a great early evening cruise around the city on our bikes we, unfortunately, rode past some downed barricades near the kiddie park intending to proceed over the footbridge to return home. My husband is 69 years old, I'm 53 and to date we’ve never been mistaken for super villains of any kind.

Suddenly, a person emerged from the direction of a parked trailer near the skateboard area, he was yelling something at us. Finally we realized he was saying that the park was closed (fine but we where just passing through) he then began approaching us while simultaneously waving his arms and hurling obscenities. We'd never seen this rather disheveled gentleman before, my 1st thought was that his person must (sadly) be a mentally disturbed person, perhaps a panhandler. We are from a part of the world where if you see a (forgive me, but this was my observation at the time) a ranting crazy-looking person coming at you, you try to keep moving. We had no idea who he was (and still don’t) or why he was trying to make us stop. Slowly, we came to reason that he and the other trailered individuals must be camped-out and somehow related to this weekends’ pow wow.

Being physically closer, the man seemed to focus most of his venom on me. While keeping my bike between he and I along with as much space as I could manage on the narrow path leading to the footbridge, I repeated screamed thank you thank you (for telling us that the bridge was closed) but he still was ranting obscenities demanding to know why we didn‘t stop when he TOLD us to and inquiring as to whether we were deaf. At this point I asked if he was a police officer, which he never answered but mockingly daring me to call the police if I wanted them to kick us out. I didn’t believe this could possibly be a city employee spewing such language (of which I‘m omitting his specific words). We were stunned and I advised him that no one appreciates being spoke to in such a manner. I then motioned to my husband and said “we'd better leave, apparently we are not allowed here in this park.” At this the very agitated man repeated accused me of being "racial" and advised that “he can be racial too.” Huh? I have to admit that I DO wonder what made this person feel so comfortable talking to us in such a manner. (We have no way of knowing but) if this man was one of the Native American pow wow participants or organizers and I, being African-American with my lovely husband being Day-Glow Anglo I’m not sure which race I was being accused of being -- “racial” about. The whole incident has been very disappointing not to mention most disconcerting.

E. Hutchinson
Pocomoke Md.

Anonymous said...

Geez he could have been civil.
Every person they meet is a potential customer.

jmmb said...

Anon 7:48 I agree with you. However, I am glad this incident was brought to my attention.

To E. Hutchinson: I forwarded your comment earlier this afternoon to someone I thought may be able to check on this unfortunate situation. Please feel free to email me. My email address in on the right side of this page beginning with bwbw. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

To Slim, now that's just plain funny!

To E. Hutchinson, sorry for your unfortunate encounter with that individual. I sincerely hope it was an isolated incident, maybe that person was having a bad day, not that that would be an excuse for them treating you that way.

Rob Clarke

The Public Eye said...

Mrs. Hutchinson;
This is very aggravating for me to read and I am truly sorry that you had such an unpleasant encounter and probably somewhat frightening situation from a person or persons that is supposed to pride themselves in the fact that they are such peaceful and peace loving peoples.

Here's the facts of your venture into the park. It matters not that any barriers were down or that the park was closed, or even that the section of the park that you and your hubby rode your bikes into or through was off limits. If that was the case, this person has ABSOLUTLY NO AUTHORITY over anything that happens in that park, the only course of action they have is to pick up the phone and call the police.

Again I must apologize to you and your hubby for our rude visitor. I do not like to make assumptions and I very rarely do but I am going to on this one. By the way that you described this situation and how this person was so voicetress, following you around and in your face, my guess is that there was sprits involved..., you know the kind in the bottle. I have so much more that I want to say on this matter but I'm holding back for a couple reasons at the moment.

So... Mrs. Hutchinson, with all that said I think the least that they can do at this point is give you and Mr. Hutchinson a two day pass.

And that's my two cents worth for today.

Thanks for reading
PPE

Anonymous said...

We went sunday, 10 bucks to get in, walked around to each vendor, bought a little trinket. sat around past noon to see if anything was going to happen and nothing did, left by 12:20. I bet there were no more than 6 people visitors the entire time we were there.