"Last year as they labored on the earth lodge at the Great Platte River Road Archway, Indians from North Dakota and Oklahoma re-established a kinship between their clans and spiritually reconnected with ancestors who once lived in Nebraska.

The thirst to embrace traditional ways drove the Arikara and Pawnee workers to erect cottonwood beams weighing many hundreds of pounds into the circular skeleton of the lodge.

“There’s a reason the skeleton of this lodge looks like Stonehenge. At one time all people were tribal,” observed Jazz Young Bear, one of the leaders of the crew from North Dakota.

Young Bear’s observation expressed something about the lodge’s healing and spiritual role for its builders.

Those thoughts ought to be recalled on Friday and Saturday as the third Dancers of the Plains powwow exhibition unfolds at the archway. Remembering that all people were at one time tribal is a good frame of mind in which to experience the 2011 powwow."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Powwow a chance to be tribal for a weekend (The Kearney Hub 6/17)

Also Today:
Two full days of powwow events welcome Otoe-Missouria back to Nebrask (The Kearney Hub 6/17)

Related Stories:
Dancers of the Plains powwow in Nebraska from June 17-18 (6/8)