How to Powwow Dance videos a sensation across Turtle Island
By Rick Garrick
TORONTO — How to Powwow Dance instructor Deanne Hupfield’s Pow Wow dance videos include a How to Powwow Dance for Kids video shot on Anemki Wajiw (Mt. McKay) during a visit to Fort William.
“My husband and I hadn’t danced all summer so we went to dance on the mountain,” says Hupfield, culture and traditions teacher at the Urban Indigenous Education Centre in Toronto and Temagami citizen. “I’ve been teaching Pow Wow dance for 17 years live in person, so when I teach children it’s exactly how I made my video. So, we’re silly and we play games and you program the movements in your body. The lesson I shared on Youtube is exactly how I teach my classes when I work with a new group of kids, just to create a positive experience with Pow Wow dance for children.”
Hupfield says she went back up to Anemki Wajiw the next day with a group of friends for more Pow Wow dancing with a local drum group.
“I grew up on Fort William First Nation when I was little,” Hupfield says. “We had our own mini-Pow Wow up on the mountain.”
Hupfield says she began posting the How to Powwow Dance videos in July and now has an audience from across Turtle Island.
“Half of my audience is from the United States and half is from Canada,” Hupfield says. “I have people from the Crow Nation, from the Navajo Nation commenting on my [videos] and it’s interesting because I don’t know much about their nations or their traditions. They’re like, ‘Your videos are helping me learn because I live in the city and I don’t have access to people to teach me in the city.’”
Hupfield says she provides the audience with tools to create their own footwork in her videos, which are available on her How to Powwow Dance YouTube channel.
“Soon, I’ll be making a Pow Wow workout video to help people to be able to dance a whole song,” Hupfield says. “Dancing Fancy Shawl is really challenging — you have to be very strong to be able to move your body jumping up and down for a whole song and having explosive power in your dance step.”
Hupfield also includes information in her videos about some of the traditional teachings on becoming a Pow Wow dancer as well as how First Nations cultural practices were once against the law in Canada.
“There are certain ceremonies you have to do depending on which nation you come from,” Hupfield says. “I mostly work with [Anishinaabe] students but sometimes I have Haudenosaunee students or sometimes I will have non-Indigenous students.”
Hupfield says she is now offering online Pow Wow dance classes for communities, noting she has been teaching an online class through the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre for the past eight weeks.
“I also want to support Indigenous dancers in their own communities to teach Pow Wow dance,” Hupfield says. “So if any Indigenous dancers in Pays Plat or Summer Beaver or whatever Indigenous community want to be a Pow Wow dance teacher, I would mentor them and I would talk to them and support them to be Pow Wow dance teachers in their communities.”
Hupfield says she usually shoots her videos at her home in Toronto because the area in her neighbourhood is so busy.
“I live right downtown Toronto,” Hupfield says. “Sometimes I go in the park behind my house — mostly I just film at my house on my patio.”