The twenty sixth annual Harvard Powwow was a household affair for famend American Indian scholar Tink Tinker of Osage County and his great-niece Lena Tinker ’25, Osage Nation.
“I so respect Lena. I’ve watched her develop up,” he stated. “We knew while you had been little that you simply had been good. Now you’re nearly a Harvard graduate.”
Lena smiled as she remembered her uncle supporting her choice to return to Harvard. “Now attending to have him right here my senior yr may be very particular,” she stated. “It’s good to have household right here.”
Regardless of the generational variations, the Tinkers had been completely happy to attach with different Natives on the Sept. 28 gathering. “I just like the ingredient of pondering again on the powwow historical past that we now have on this nation as this place the place we come collectively to collect in neighborhood,” Lena stated about this yr’s theme, “In My Powwow Period.”
Lena Tinker ’25 makes a ribbon skirt for the powwow.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Workers Photographer
Tink, a professor emeritus at Iliff Faculty of Theology, attended the powwow forward of the primary of 4 journeys to campus as visiting Indigenous Non secular Chief. The four-week residency, a part of a collaboration between the Memorial Church and the Harvard College Native American Program (HUNAP), will see Tink working with college students, collaborating with school and workers, and publicly presenting his work.
“It feels good,” he stated of the powwow. “It looks like Indian Nation. For me, coming from Denver and being Osage from Oklahoma, I’m hooking up with family right here. I can hear their voices on the microphone and within the songs. I can see them of their dance steps.”
Following in her nice uncle’s service-driven footsteps, Lena has been an energetic member of the Native neighborhood on campus. As a first-year, she joined Natives at Harvard School (NaHC) and now serves as co-president of the coed group.
“My first reminiscence of assembly Native individuals on campus was on the steps of Widener Library on a phenomenal, sunny day,” she stated. “I keep in mind that first yr questioning what the Native neighborhood was like right here and slowly getting to fulfill everybody over the course of my 4 years right here.
HUNAP hosted a neighborhood constructing occasion that included a friendship bracelet-making session.
Photograph by Jodi Hilton
“For lots of us, NaHC is residence on this campus and people individuals are like household. It’s an area that feels particular and completely different from anyplace else on the College,” she added.
Whereas reflecting on their favourite reminiscences of the coed group, Lena and classmates introduced up those that had graduated, affectionally referred to as their NaHC elders. “We maintain that reminiscence within the tales we share with one another on campus,” she stated.
Karen Medina-Perez ’24, who has ancestral connections to the Lambayeque and Caxamarca area within the Andes and Afro-Indigenous ancestry from Aroa, Yaracuy, is one such NaHC elder who returned for the powwow to reconnect with outdated pals and “have fun our existence.”
Within the days main as much as the powwow, HUNAP hosted a number of community-building occasions. College students gathered to work on regalia, particularly ribbon shirts and skirts, friendship bracelets, and even took classes on social dancing from Kabl Wilkerson of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a doctoral candidate within the Historical past Division.
For the elder Tinker, the facility of powwows is their capacity to bridge the hole amongst generations of Native individuals. “That’s the Indian world,” he stated. “Far again as I can bear in mind, the social occasion meant all generations had been current, from the littlest to the oldest, and particularly the in-betweens.”
“Harvard Powwow is a second for our neighborhood to return collectively and have fun,” stated Jordan Clark of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah, appearing government director of HUNAP. “After we consider neighborhood that phrase is all-encompassing. It spans the College, the area, and generations.”
