Attending a Powwow in Prison

Saturday I attended a powwow at the Federal Correctional Institute. I went as a representative for the American Friends Service Committee at the request of Charmaine, a Navajo woman who has become an advocate for American Indian inmates in Arizona. Charmaine asked AFSC to send someone to accompany her because she has learned that the corrections officers and administrators behave themselves better when they know they are being observed. I'm glad I went.

Travel Log: Star Date 10/17/09

8:30am:
Pick up Charmaine.

9:00am:
Pick up "N," a Tohono O'otham young woman who has volunteered to dance and sing at the powwow today.

9:30am:
Arrive at the Federal Correctional Institute on Wilmot, south of I-10 to meet the other volunteers: a Navajo flute-player, his relative and an O'otham apprentice, and Charmaine's Lebanese friend. Everyone but the apprentice and I wore some sort of traditional dress, but N is the only one who committed to dressing up all the way. We fill out forms stating our names, addresses, vehicle information and purpose for the visit, as well as a declaration that states we are not bringing in narcotics, firearms, pocket knives, metal cutting tools, recording devices, cameras, wallets, electronic devices, marijuana, weapons, ammunition, purses, pocketbooks, change purses, watches, pens, or pencils. In order to attend the powwow, each of us had to submit our social security information to the chaplain so she could do a background check. The chaplain did not "get to" two of the volunteers in time to run their background checks. One of them was a traditional dancer.

10am:
N puts her street clothes in a locker after emerging from the bathroom in stunning regalia. She decided to leave her more involved regalia at home because she didn't want to deal with transporting her fans and feathers. Her friend's Ojibwe mother sewed her a bright turquoise healing (jingle) dress with pink, fuchsia and purple patterns. As she walked the cylindrical metal cones brushed against each other, like she was a metallic eucalyptus tree in the breeze. A friend of hers had beaded her matching, knee-high moccasins, star barrettes with mirrors in the middle for her two braids, another for the back of her head, and another still hanging from a beaded choker-- not to mention the beaded earrings and a band she wore like a crown. On top of her dress she wore a brown leather belt with metal circular studs and hung a pink, purple and white Coach scarf onto the belt (off to the side).

We are herded through the metal detector and get stamped with an invisible ink.

One of the chaplains meets us on the other side of the metal detector and brings us through a locked door where we pass the invisible ink on our hands underneath a black light. We are then escorted out another locked door into a small, minimally landscaped yard where we follow the chaplain into the cafeteria.

10:30am:
We are served the first lunch of the day. Each of us gets a dinner roll, beans, a chicken patty with a piece of lettuce and raw, white onion, three sugar cookies and red Kool-Aid or coffee. The trays are dark green, sturdy plastic with deep indentations for the different kinds of foods and two cup holders. The cups are like smaller Pizza Hut cups but ugly olivey-brown in color. The inmates who chose to participate in the powwow today were supposed to meet us in the cafeteria for lunch but the guards were not notified in time for us to eat together. N and I make small talk with the chaplain and learn that there are 5 different religious groups that he presides over in this prison. The chaplain says that he converted to Catholicism as a prisoner in Vietnam and that he thinks priests who work in prisons do more work than those on the outside. He also tells us that during Christmas the inmates will get an extra cookie or two and have started to call them "holy cookies."

11am:
We are escorted out as the native inmates are escorted into the cafeteria. Our volunteer groups meet the head chaplain, Chaplain Barnett, a blond white woman who towers over our group. She seems chipper as she goes over the ground rules: no touching other than hand shakes, and no giving or receiving of anything, period, without a chaplain's consent.

11:15-11:30am:
We are escorted into the chapel and take our seats in the circle around a traditional powwow drum. There is a giant wooden cross nailed to the wall at the from of the room; a couple ceiling fans; locked, upright metal storage shelves; and the chaplains' offices at the back of the room. Once we're seated the inmates start filing in. Each inmate shakes the hands of the people seated around the circle and sits. I hear greetings in various languages. I can't remember ever being in a group where everyone shook everyone else's hand in such a deliberate, respectful way. There are two elder inmates in wheelchairs, four with some sort of tribal solidarity bandanna, and all the inmates in khaki pants with white or khaki tops, and a khaki belt. Their last names and Department of Corrections Identification Numbers are printed on a white label just above their left chest pockets.

11:30am:
An older inmate, "Bootchi," welcomes the group to the annual powwow. I never counted how many of us there were, but my guess is that there were about 30 in attendance. I heard some people asking where everyone else was-- apparently the chaplains had scheduled the powwow on a visitation day. I learned later that more than half of the inmates who could have come decided not to, and that before Chaplain Barnett started running things, the native inmate got one full day of seminar and another full day of powwow-- and now they get 3 hours of one or the other.

Bootchi invites everyone outside to smudge with sage. From what I know, smudging is an act of purification and blessing: burning sage rids the user of bad energy and protects them against bad energy or spirits. One of the inmates used an eagle feather to fan the smoke over my head, torso and legs and then I did the same thing using my hands.

11:45am:
The Red Shield drum group plays a grand entry song, a flag song, and a veteran song ("Soldier Boy.")

12pm:
Bootchi calls Charmaine up to the podium to introduce herself. She talks about how thankful she is for this experience to feel reconnected to her people. Then Bootchi calls up Lenny, a spiritual advisor and activist, also Navajo. Lenny will be going to see political prisoner Leonard Peltier at Leavenworth the end of November, then to the American Friends Service Committee's national office, and then to meet with one of Obama's advisors about granting Peltier executive clemency. I just finished Peltier's "Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance" before I attended the powwow because it seemed like a good way to familiarize myself with some of the issues facing American Indian inmates in federal prisons. If you are unfamiliar with Peltier's case, the basic jist of it is that Peltier was a prominent activist in the American Indian Movement in the mid-to-late 70s and was framed for the murder of two FBI agents who were killed in an FBI-instigated shoot-out on the Pine Ridge reservation of the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota. Peltier was sentenced to two consecutive life-sentences (30 years each) plus 7 years for trying to escape after he learned that two fellow inmates had been coerced into attempting to kill him. All of this may seem hard to believe, but there are many, many sources/people who have documented every part of the FBI's wrong-doing, including Peltier's lawyer, former Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Ramsey Clark. "Incident at Oglala" is a great documentary on the subject; as is the 600 page book, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's war on teh American Indian Movement"; and online the greatest resource may be the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee...I guess this whole Peltier thing needs to turn into its own post. Before moving on though, I will mention that one of the highlights of the powwow for me was meeting an inmate who was directly related to various different people involved in the historical events surrounding Peltier's case-- I feel awkward naming his relatives that appear in "Prison Writings" just because I don't want to cause any drama for him or his family, but the revelation for me was that the AIM movement didn't just happen in an isolated place in the distant past, but that there are cousins, nephews, grandchildren, etc. whose elders were involved in some of the most bad-ass, righteous kinds of direct-action any movement in the U.S. has ever seen-- and that those descendants know what went down and what's still going down.

If you're still reading this, thank you.

It's hard to know where to go from here. Some of the highlights were seeing different inmates around the room nod in agreement when Charmaine told the group that she had taken on prison work because when her uncle, who had started working with native inmates in the 70s, had passed on, she decided to heed the call to leadership-- even though it was hard and she didn't want to do it, she knew she had to for her people. As we were leaving, one of the younger guys came up to her and said that next year he was going to do a traditional dance as part of the powwow-- which was good, because only Charmaine (briefly) and N (for a couple more songs) had done anything traditional in addition to the basic step that anyone can do.

And I guess there are some things that happened that were unexpected-- like crying. One of the guys started wiping his eyes and was asked up to the podium to address the group. He told us that this was the first time he had felt broken, that the powwow had reminded him of how much he missed his community and being able to practice his culture, of how beautiful ceremony and gatherings could make him feel. In talking to one of the volunteers they warned me that I might see them crying because they knew they couldn't help but think of their relatives in jail/prison. And I cried when I found out that Jewish prisoners were given 30 days of special food and the first and last (full) days of Ramadan to spend in the chapel. Just how racist is it to give a population that could potentially represent the 600+ tribes in the U.S. 3 hours to practice their spirituality while another group is allowed that much consideration for one holiday? I want to look into the federal prison policies to see if Chaplain Barnett is breaking any kinds of rules that she can be pressured into abiding by...otherwise I plan to write her a note describing, in detail, the things that seemed disrespectful to me-- like the fact that she and the other chaplain repeatedly opened and closed their heavy metal doors and were walking in and out of their offices and carted in the water chest during moments that should have been reserved for spiritual reverence. There was also the fact that they didn't have enough film to take more than 3 randomly shot photos (there was supposed to be enough to take process photos as well as group photos at the end).

Charmaine asked me if I would like to attend the state powwow in January and a Talking Circle sometime in the next couple of months. I said yes. From what Charmaine told me, talking circles are set up so that native inmates can get a chance to talk to each other in a safe setting about whatever they feel inclined to talk about. As someone who has done anti-racism work before, I know those conversations have the potential to be very validating and inspirational. I'm also looking forward to the powwow at the state prison (Charmaine is allowed to organize one powwow in a federal prison and one in a state prison per year.) I guess the inmates in this particular unit at the state prison can buy and recieve the materials they need to furnish themselves with the kinds of regalia one could find at a powwow on the outside-- the kind of showy, gorgeous regalia you can see if you google fancydancing. Actually, that seems like a good note to end this on.