06 Nov Q&A: Courtney Cummings Reflects on Past Powwow, Promotes Next

Richmond Powwow Committee and Northern Cheyenne member Courtney Cumming sat down with Contra Costa Pulse to talk about the upcoming Richmond Powwow.

Interview and images by Denis Perez-Bravo

Richmond will celebrate Native American culture Saturday with its 15th powwow at the Memorial Auditorium and Convention Center in Civic Center Plaza.  

Ahead of the event, Courtney Cummings, a member of the Richmond Powwow Committee and Northern Cheyenne tribe, sat down with Contra Costa Pulse to watch and reflect on video from the 2024 powwow. 

As she watched the dancers, songs and stories, she spoke with pride and reverence for the traditions that unite Native peoples across generations. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. 

 

CC Pulse: What do you see when you watch these videos? 

Courtney Cummings: I see a beautiful Native American community and visitors. I see a lot of participants of the Native American community coming to Richmond to share their exhibition style of dancing that has been carried down from generations to generations as a Native people.

CC Pulse: What is exhibition dancing? 

Cummings: Exhibition is where we come out as a people and share our special way of regalia, our special form of dancing in public. There are some dances that cannot be shared, because they’re sacred and spiritual and used only for medicine … in a private ceremony. But a powwow is a chance for all of us to come together and share our story, our history, with people who are interested and want to know more about the truth … of our Native community. 

 

CC Pulse: What do you want people to understand about regalia? 

Cummings: Our outfits are not costumes … happened to me recently where my regalia was referred to as a costume. It’s a highly offensive word. We’re not a pretend item. We’re real people. Our regalia is not something we put on lightly or once a year. Our regalia is sacred to us, and it’s medicine.

Once you put on your regalia, you become very proud of being a Native American, and you understand why your people fought so hard to keep your traditions and your culture. 

 

CC Pulse: How would you describe what’s happening in the drum songs? 

Cummings: This is a northern-style drum song. And as a Native people, we have northern-style, we have southern-style. Our songs were not written down.

Our songs are all oral, verbal, and … passed down from different ancestors and taught to different age groups. So you’ll see many young people and many people of different ages. But it’s not a song that you can find in a music store. You cannot find this song in a music book or taught right now in schools. It’s taught locally at many places that still host drum circles to teach anyone who is interested in learning the truth and how to speak the language. 

 

CC Pulse: What is the mother-daughter special and what is it?  

Cummings: What that means is that all the mother-daughters that are powwow dancers were called up to participate in this special. As the outgoing princess, Aaliyah was sponsoring this special. And as you can see, there are many participants of mother-daughters dancing together, and it’s such an honor to see so many, the families keeping the powwow circle going in a positive way. 

 

 CC Pulse: These dancers moved with agility and grace; who are they? 

Cummings: This is called the Fancy Shaw dance. They’re fancy dancers, and their style of dancing represents the butterfly. If you watch a butterfly in nature, you’ll see how it glides smoothly, and that’s what this dance symbolizes … You can see, like the wings, how they spread out their arms to emulate the wings of a butterfly and how they glide smoothly across the floor.

 

CC Pulse: You mentioned the Jingle Dress dance. What makes it special?

Cummings: The Jingle Dress, it’s a medicine dance, and it’s a medicine dress. The story attached to this is that this girl was really sick as a child. And so she prayed and prayed for healing because her illness would not go away. And then a vision came to her, and she was taught how to make the jingles and told how to dance these steps to heal herself and her people.

It’s very special. Not everybody is meant to dance the Jingle Dress style. You’re supposed to ask permission. There’s three individuals in the United States that can allow a person, a young lady, to dance the Jingle Dress.

CC Pulse: What did you feel seeing these memories? 

Cummings: Wow. There’s so many people that are not with us. So videotaping it is really a good thing because it keeps these people alive and shows them in their best light and their best moment.