How To Powwow Dance- Hoop Dance Part 1

in this video i will be going over the story of how the hoop dance came to the nishnabe and some hoop dance moves to get you started if you are an aspiring hoop dancer but first if you have not yet subscribed now's your time to do it hit that little bell to be notified when i post new content my name is ian hufffield and i am uh ojibwe from tomogame first nation in canada i didn't grow up with access to my culture my mom she was a she was scooped when she was a little girl and she was raised in non-indigenous homes so i've spent my life relearning my own culture and everything i learn i want to share with my greater indigenous community so on bail ma let's go dance it's important to remember that powwow dances are not like other dances yes i'm teaching a powwow dance class online but in order to become a powwow dancer it's important that you connect with your local indigenous community and if you're urban like me check out some of the community centers that are meant to support indigenous people because there you can find elders to do the ceremonies to join the powwow circle it is also important to remember that these dances were illegal in canada and the united states well into the 1930s or 1950s so these dances were a part of our resistance and these dances are how we strengthen our bond to the land and how we come together as a community so before we get into the hoop dancing i wanted to share a story that i learned from the from a book by basil johnson called the manitous and in his book he outlines how the hoop dance came to the nishnabe and it was long time ago when our villages were untouched by colonization and there was a woman and she um she fell in love with and had a child with a manitou and in my language manitou means spirit and her youngest son he was different than other babies he was anytime he fussed or got upset you just had to take him outside and if he saw nature or a spider or a bird anything from nature he would get so happy and he would coo in baby happiness and when that baby grew into a child his manitou father wanted to teach him how to be a great warrior and a great hunter but that little boy he never wanted to learn how to hurt animals or fight other people so they got into lots and lots of arguments and this went on for many many years and when that boy became a teenager the fights got so bad that the manitou he said you're not my son anymore you are cut off disowned and from that moment on they named that boy pukowis which means the unwanted the cut off he started to travel to different communities and he started to do dances and miming all the beautiful things he saw in nature and one of the dances he created was the hoop dance so little tuck whis he went into the bush and he got a willow tree and he used that willow tree to make a hoop and with these hoops he told stories of all the beautiful things he saw in nature but one of the things that was forgotten about this hoop dance was this hoop was meant to represent the trauma and the struggles that that we're likely to face in our lifetimes and it is up to us to pick up our traumas and to work through them because no one else can do that work for us it's up to us it's our own responsibility so when people see the hoop dance and they see all those beautiful shapes they forget that the original intent of this dance was about healing your own traumas picking up your problems working through them i made these hoops with plumbers tubing from like my local hardware store and i plug them together with little wooden plugs i use duct tape and electrical tape and these hoops are about two years old so they're really durable so the first move that you want to try to do on your own as a hoof dancer is to spin it on your arm so if you could picture your arm like this and you want to make like strong arm circles and this is phase one of spinning so if you can learn to do that that yeah you're good and then the second step of this move is you want to move it to your other hand and when you're done doing that you want to get it in front of your thumb on your fingers and doing the same thing and then passing and you can pass this behind your back um it has to be your arm is out in front of you the hoop is spinning into into my body like this way this way and then i turn my body keep my my hoop there and then i pass it behind my back and then full time it looks like this and then to take that a step further you can pass it above your head so the next move is a figure eight so you wanna put your thumb up so if you can see here my thumb is up my thumb goes up my thumb goes down thumb up thumb down come up come down figure eight and then of course doing that while dancing to music and then you can pass it under your leg but when you catch it underneath your leg you want to make sure that when you catch it both your thumbs are the same way because that way it'll be easier to pass it to the next one the next move is behind the knee and over the head so my hoop is behind my left knee and i'm holding it with my left arm and i pick it up and i put it over my head with this hand then i take this hand and i grab it closest to my knee and then i could and then it's on my other leg so up over over over over so again same arm same leg i'm grabbing on my inner thigh here and then i'm using this hand to push it over my head and then it's on my other leg and i pull up pull up pull up pull up pull up pull up another move that i'm working on is spinning it in front of me like this and then spinning in a circle while dancing it's actually really hard you could spin it above your head and the technique for spinning above the head you kind of want to like make like a big circle with your arm because then it makes it a little bit easier to get it above your head and another one um about this this one i see a lot of really awesome dancers do um it looks like this you kind of just like flip it over your body but it looks really cool when you're like dancing and you're flipping it really really really fast so it looks like this so my left hand is facing down my right hand is facing up and it might be opposite for you um on the tv so this flat hand is going to stay flat and i'm going to use this up this hand that's facing up to push it over my body until i make an x and then i'm going to go back to start and flip it x start and then that way it looks really cool the next move is skipping skipping with this so you're gonna control it by holding it between two hands and you're gonna like use your hand strength to kind of flip it around and i'm gonna flip it over my body and then i'm gonna bring my hands keep my hands close to my body and then when it gets to my feet i'm gonna jump up so it's close to my body jump up close to my body jump up and the easiest way to go very fast is to keep your body crouched down and small like this you can also go frontward so it's the same thing you jump you jump over it and then you keep your arms close to your body and it comes up and over so the next move is very complex and it looks like this it's driving a car honk hunk okay that's easy kids love that if you are ever teaching kids how to hoop dance you prepare them for a really hard move and then you drive a car they love it so that's all i have planned for today i hope you enjoyed the story about where the hoop dance came from and i hope you learned a couple moves i will be doing a second video to go over more complex hoop dance moves um and i am teaching virtual powwow dance classes in community so if you want to message me if you want to talk about me teaching teaching in your community you can reach me at my website diannehupfield.com and i'll post a link in the description also if you are an indigenous dancer or community worker and you want to host your own powwow dance classes let me know i would love to mentor you and support you to teach in your own community i will share with you all my teaching tactics all my lesson plans i'll i'll help guide you to be a successful dance teacher in your community because our people need a safe space to learn to do this it's um it's really intimidating going out to powwows in front of thousands and hundreds of people so yeah you can reach me at ianhubfield.com beakwech and bamapi i'll see you next week

Channel: How To Powwow Dance

Views: 5,380

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Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020