By Angela Brown

Memorial feast and round dance coming up

Dec 10, 2018 | 4:19 PM

Local residents will have the opportunity to participate in a traditional feast and round dance in the new year. 

It’s also noteworthy that 2019 will mark the fourth and final year of the memorial event to honour both prominent Cree artist Allen Sapp from Red Pheasant First Nation, who died Dec. 29, 2015, as well as the Walking with Our Sisters project.

Leah Garven is co-lead on the committee for Walking with Our Sisters-North Battleford and curator at the Allen Sapp Gallery.

“It was started off as part of Walking with our Sisters in 2016. It coincided with the death of Allen Sapp. At that time it became a memorial round dance,” she said.

Memorial round dances are held for four years in memory of the people or persons who have passed on, as part of Indigenous cultural tradition.

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Walking with Our Sisters is a national travelling commemorative art installation honouring missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. 

Garven said the exhibition is a cause that the committee she is involved with wanted to bring to North Battleford when it was here in 2016, because it is a relevant issue to the local community which struggles with having many missing and murdered women over the years across the region.

She described the round dance and the feast as a continuation of the ceremony which will “bring further honour to those women and their lives.”  

“It also lets the families know the community is thinking of their loved ones,” Garven added. “It brings some healing and some time for prayer, gratitude and reflection. It’s also to raise awareness to this ongoing situation of women going missing and girls, and men,” she added.

The exhibition travelled across North America and will conclude in 2019.

Garven added people attending the feast and round dance will need to follow the protocol of both ceremonies.

“First Nation people are very welcoming and want to share their culture, and would be happy to show you how to do a round dance,” she added. 

Organizers are planning to have a teepee set up outside during the event. There will also be a sacred fire that will be guarded for four days and four nights over the time the event will take place.

“It’s a great chance for our community to get to know each other, and get to understand each other’s traditions,” Garven said. “It’s great to be with our neighbours (and) to be able to work together.”

The feast will take place from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Jan. 28, while the round dance will be held Jan. 31 from 7 p.m. to midnight. Both events will be held at the Don Ross gymnasium in North Battleford. They are free to attend and are open to the everyone.

Garven reminded people wishing to attend that no alcohol or drugs are permitted on the premises.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow