The University of Minnesota student-run and led American Indian Cultural Student Center, or AISCC, hosted their 27th annual spring powwow on April 26 at Maturi Pavilion.
The powwow kicked off around noon as dancers, drummers, singers and vendors gathered for the two Grand Entries at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Under 100 dancers registered in categories like jingle, juniors, tiny tots and golden age.
At the Twin Cities campus, 1.5% of students are Indigenous, while Morris is 31% and Duluth is less than 1%, according to the University’s student data.
Louie Favila Renville, co-president of AISCC and a third-year student, said hosting a powwow at the University’s Twin Cities campus is important because, as the state’s largest educational institution, it carries a heightened responsibility to represent and include the local Native community.
“I think it’s very important that people come to this event because it’s one of the biggest ones that we host,” Renville said. “It’s the best way to educate people and bring communities together all around the metro and even the whole state of Minnesota.”
The spring powwow started being held annually at Maturi Pavilion, earlier referred to as the Sports Pavilion, in 1998 by AISCC as a way to amplify Native student voices and engage the wider Twin Cities Native community, according to a 1998 Minnesota Daily article.
Minneapolis is a significant city for Native people due to the Minnesota Indian Removal Act that forced Native people to move to Minneapolis from their reservations and is a direct result of the U.S. Dakota War of 1862, which exonerated Dakota people from Minnesota.
Marla Mesarina, a first-year student who is Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Dakota, said she felt grateful and excited that the AISCC chose her and Sidney Kingbird-Haugen to serve as head dancers for this year’s spring powwow.
Mesarina started dancing in her early childhood and said she chose the University to study Ojibwe and early childhood education.
“I’m really grateful that the AISCC thought of me because it gave me and other head dancers a time for us to plant our feet in this university,” Mesarina said. “It gave us our own space and helped me meet new people in AISCC and helped me become more involved in AISCC so I am really glad I was given the opportunity and I am now running for (AISCC) treasurer.”
In 1973, the American Indian Student Association formed during an era of targeted threats and was the main American Indian student organization until the early 2000s. However, Native students have organized events since the 1950s.
AISCC is located on the second floor of Coffman Memorial Union but was originally established in 1975 in Jones Hall as a meeting space for Indigenous identifying students, according to Cultural Centers CMU.
“I feel like the University, all they do is just acknowledge that they’re on Native land, but they don’t really enforce anything and nothing goes beyond that,” Mesarina said. “I think that’s why it’s amazing that we have AISCC because we enforce that, but having cultural awareness is accepting and being able to acknowledge that you’re on the land of the people. Being able to acknowledge students in your own classrooms.”
Lili Jampsa, AISCC’s community outreach coordinator and a third-year student studying sociology of criminology and justice, said her favorite part of the spring powwow is seeing the changes in attendance throughout the years.
“I like the drastic difference of how many people come,” Jampsa said. “Sometimes there’s a lot of people, sometimes there’s less people than the next year and then sometimes there’s a lot.”
AISCC plans the spring powwow six months ahead of time in order to avoid miscommunication and last-minute barriers, according to Renville. AISCC is responsible for arranging invited drum groups, the powwow’s emcee, color guard, communication with Maturi’s director and reserving space at the pavilion.
This year, AISCC faced some challenges in coordinating the powwow, Renville said. The challenges included multiple vendors not showing up, reservation time and Maturi Pavilion officials informing AISCC that food trucks could not be permitted. Both are staples at powwows.
“Apparently Maturi ran out of cultural exemptions to allow outside foods for the year,” Renville said. “And that’s something we weren’t expecting and we didn’t understand why they only have two exemptions for a certain year to allow outside food in.”
Renville said AISCC had a compromise with having inside concessions through Maturi, along with being able to bring in food trucks, but since Maturi had used all of their cultural exemptions for this year’s events, AISCC was not allowed to bring in outside food.
“We wanted to serve our community, our own community’s food, you know,” Renville said. “It’s pretty upsetting, but it’s just something we had to compromise with.”
AISCC relies on the University’s Student Services Fee fund for the powwow, according to Renville and Jampsa.
Jampsa said the University needs to work more closely with student organizations like AISCC in order to understand applications for funding more efficiently.
“We lost out on a lot of money that we should have got due to a tiny error on the SSF application,” Jampsa said. “It was really disappointing.”
The location of the spring powwow creates convenient access for students and the broader Twin Cities community, which increases representation for Native students, Jampsa said.
“I love dancing. I dance. It’s something I get to do like once or twice a year. I don’t travel far to dance,” Jampsa said. “I feel like my work has paid off or like, I’m getting rewarded for the work that I’ve put in otherwise. It’s kind of like studying for a test, and you get a good grade back and you’re like, ‘God, I earned it.’”