Pow Wow Succumbs to Pandemic for Second Straight Year

For a second straight year the Echoes of a Proud Nation Pow Wow in Kahnawake has been cancelled due to the pandemic. In a Facebook post Wednesday evening the committee wrote: “It was not an easy decision. The safety of our community is what we looked at.  Although 74% of the community has been vaccinated… that is 74% of the adult population. The new variant does not discriminate. It is also going after the young.  To us this was just the best decision to be made at this time. See you all in 2022.”

Pow Wow Secretary Lynne Norton called the decision heartbreaking. “We met last month, in March, and we had a little glimmer of hope because numbers weren’t as crazy as they are now,” Norton said. “We were debating and said let’s give it another month. We can get everything ready by April. I know we can do it. And the vaccine was just rolling out. But when April came and we looked at the numbers and we said no, we can’t do it. It’s just too crazy to have a gathering. The whole thing of a Pow Wow is to gather, gather the people. And that’s just something we cannot do.”