SFC Debra Mooney (Ret.) Recalls How She Planned a Powwow While Deployed in Iraq in 2004.
After working many 12- to 14-hour days for many months, SFC Debra Mooney (Ret.) felt a powwow would offer a means of reconnection for the Native American Soldiers and offer a source of physical and spiritual renewal to the rest of the Soldiers on post with her in Iraq.
“Of course, the first thing I did was pray about it, because I pray about everything,” said SFC Mooney. “We prayed before and after every meeting to make sure this was a blessed event. We prayed during the powwow. This was a celebration for the Creator, and He blessed us with this day. The main goal was to give Him honor throughout.”
Next, she called her uncle, who is a Vietnam veteran, for advice. After speaking to him, she spoke with a representative from U.S. Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation and asked how to go about planning a powwow.
SFC Mooney brought together a committee of five military personnel. Since the powwow was intertribal, she and her team proceeded carefully. They started with a discussion of basics.
“At first,” said SFC Mooney, who has been attending powwows since she was a child, “I was the mouthpiece, so I decided to eliminate anything that might offend someone. I wanted to wipe the slate clean, so the first thing we did was ask participants, ‘What’s necessary for your tribe? What’s important to you? What offends you? What doesn’t offend you?’ We got rid of anything that was offensive and framed the event around the elements that were most important.”
“For instance,” explained SFC Mooney, “some tribes dance counterclockwise. Some tribes dance clockwise. The direction in which we were going to do the dancing was one of the things we had to decide up front. A lot of the planners wanted absolutely no weapons in the circle whatsoever, absolutely nothing of violence even though we are in a violent place. The powwow is a sign of peace and harmony. We are all celebrating together. We’re all laughing together. We’re all doing everything in unison. No weapon in our hand; no malice in our heart.”
She added, “Some people call it their church, and then some people don’t. It just depends on who you’re talking to, but you don’t want anyone bringing their weapons in your church.”
The committee then had to find ways to get the things they needed. They decided on a two-day event: one for food, which would be Indian tacos, and one for games, which would include stickball, a tomahawk throw, blow darts and Indian marbles. The most important item, according to SFC Mooney, was the drum, which is now on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
“We got a drum maker – SGT Michael Morris. He was our major crafter. He made our tomahawks. He made our drum. He used the plasma cutter to cut the Thunderbirds around the bottom of it. We had armor plating off vehicles that were already blown. He used the plasma cutter and ground it down and made tomahawk heads out of it. The handles we used were broken tent mallets, and we used half for the tomahawks. Then the other half we used for the stickball sticks.”
Because it was an intertribal powwow in a combat zone, SFC Mooney felt there were issues that had to be overlooked.
“There were certain accommodations we had to make being in the military, certain things we had to change and readjust. The music – I knew there was a sequence of songs. You have to have a prayed-in song. You have to have a memorial song. You have to have a flag song. There’s a certain sequence of events. We pulled all the music that we had there, because a lot of the Native Americans had their own powwow music. We tried to get everything we needed for that sequence of events, and there was not a lot of time.”
SFC Mooney continues, “I would say the time restraint really helped us, because we didn’t have time to gripe. We didn’t have time to complain. No nitpicking. If you had a problem, you fixed it before you got to my door because I didn’t have time for it. We had our missions and our duties for that day, and then we worked on the powwow stuff afterwards. It was a lot of moving and shaking.”
“We also had to have the powwow completely taken apart and everyone out of the area by dark, so we were working fast,” she continued. “I had everything – the music, the talking – timed, and we worked on that time schedule. Whenever someone added something new, we had to adjust the time because we were fighting that time limit, and we were going to make sure that we kept people as safe as possible.”
Looking back, SFC Mooney knows the powwow was far more than just another MWR event.
“It sent us back home,” she said. “It gave us a little bit of comfort. We were doing something that we’d be doing if we were back home. We were also introducing something brand new to people that didn’t have a clue, and we were representing the state of Oklahoma. We were representing the Oklahoma National Guard. We were representing Oklahoma Native American tribes and pride, and we were representing ourselves individually.”
SFC Mooney hopes this powwow left a legacy for future Native Americans, especially since many of the tribal cultures are disappearing.
“For Native Americans, all of our stories are oral. So, this is our Families’ story. This does not belong to us anymore. It belongs to our Family. It belongs to our future – children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, grand-nieces.” She hopes those future Native Americans will someday be proud that their ancestors were at the powwow in Iraq in 2004.
“When we were tearing down the powwow and getting everything back in the truck, the guys were whooping and hollering just like we would at a regular powwow,” she said. “It was one of those things to stand back and watch. I am older than most of those guys by at least 10 years, and I’m watching these kids be kids. I’m watching the hardness of the Soldier go away and the softness of the child come out because of this powwow. We’re dancing into this circle and just five feet away or so, whatever the distance is, there are our weapons. Our weapons – our battle rattle – are just five feet away from us.”
SFC Mooney said she is always glad to share her Choctaw culture with others and takes every opportunity to do so.
“If you cover something up,” she said, “it will either ruin or it will grow. Like if you put a yeast bread under darkness, it will grow. But if you keep it under darkness, it will spoil. Our culture is dying – and that’s no joke. There are a lot of Native people that don’t even know their own language. They don’t know their history. If you can educate people about something, they are no longer afraid of it. You know, educate people about spiders and they’re no longer as afraid of spiders because they understand them. Educate people about your Native American culture, and there are going to be a lot less jokes, a lot less poking fun of Native American kids that have long hair – calling them hippie or calling them girls or different things like that. You bring that same small child into an exhibition where there’s a powwow with his hair braided and his feathers going all over the place, and he becomes a star by just educating his peers or by just exposing his peers to that one little bitty part of his life. Then all [of a] sudden the jokes about his long hair are gone. It opens the door for communication and understanding.”
Story Provided by OKLAHOMA NATIONAL GUARD Photos by SFC Kendall James, OKLAHOMA NATIONAL GUARD
