Pow wow slated for this weekend

In celebration of Native American culture and tradition, First Nations of IU will present the first annual Native American Pow Wow this Friday and Saturday in the IU Fieldhouse. Organized by Wesley Thomas, a professor of anthropology, the pow wow is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Friday.\nAlong with the pow wow, a lecture series is also being held. It started yesterday afternoon and is scheduled to run through today.\n"The pow wow is an event of not only celebration, but of remembrance, renewal, and also it is a statement of survival," Thomas said.\nThe pow wow will have six different Indian drum groups from Ohio, Nebraska, Minnesota and within Indiana. The event will also feature approximately 50 Native American dancers and 40 vendors of authentic arts, crafts and handiworks.\nA typical pow wow can have up to 400 or 500 dancers, but because this is the first year for the event here, it will be scaled down.\nSam Cronk, manager of the digital archives for American Indian studies, said the event will be very authentic.\n"It's sort of a traditional pow wow in a way," Cronk said. "It's not competitional this year, because we don't have any prize money."\nCronk, who has helped organize the pow wow, believes this year will set a precedent.\n"That's really what this first year is about -- getting people's attention," Cronk said.\nYolanda Trevino, the assistant dean of the research and university graduate school, said this kind of event will help bring in more diverse groups of students to IU. \n"We're going to have an information table that's going to talk about graduate school and undergraduate admissions opportunities," Trevino said. "So we're using that as a recruiting tool for students to consider Indiana University as a place to come and study."\nFor the 2001-02 school year, the Office of the Registrar reported only 60 Native American undergraduate students, 19 Native American graduate students and two Native American professors.\n"I know that we have University students coming from Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and from all around Indiana," Trevino said.\nPaul Tamburro, one of the few Native American students at IU, will participate in this weekend's pow wow.\n"I'm really, really curious in how it's going to be received," Tamburro said. \nTamburro is a Native American from the Shawnee-Abenaki tribe, which is located in Indiana but is not recognized by the state.\n"Indiana does not recognize any Indian tribes. Every state has the right to recognize any individuals they want to," Tamburro said. "Basically, the state ignores us."\nThomas is curious as to how the administration will react to the pow wow.\n"(The pow wow) is something new for them, so they really don't know how to react to it," Thomas said.\nThere will be two speakers in the lecture series today at 10 a.m. in the Fine Arts Building, Room 015, and at 1 p.m. in Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union. Both the lectures and the pow wow are free and open to the public.\nThomas hopes students, faculty and members of the community are able to come and participate.\n"This will let them know this is a part of the world that they haven't seen," Thomas said.