After a week’s worth of rain, the attendees and participants of the 19th Annual Indigenous Peoples Day Pow Wow were glad to have sunshine out on Oct. 8 as the event started with the grounds blessing at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley.

Since 1992, the community event has always been held on the nearest Saturday to Columbus Day, drawing nearly 2,000 to 3,000 people every year, both Native and non-Native American people.  Nearly 100 nations out of 500 were represented at this year’s celebration.

While the idea of an Indigenous Peoples Day had been talked about as early as 1977, it wasn’t until 1991 when the Resistance 500 Task Force, an Indigenous leadership, brought a proposal to Berkeley City Council to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.

Before then, it wasn’t well known that Christopher Columbus, a military leader as well as an explorer, was responsible for many actions against the native people of the Americas that would today be referred to as genocide.

Upon reading and fully understanding the proposal, on Oct. 22, 1991, the Berkeley City Council officially declared Oct. 12 as Indigenous Peoples Day.

For John Curl, organizer of this year’s festivities, the pow wow was a way to celebrate the miracle of the native peoples’ survival despite all that they faced.

“They were close to the earth, they were balanced and they have a living philosophy of community staying close to the earth and keeping their customs and that kept them alive through centuries of being repressed,” Curl said.

Curl went on to say we are currently in the middle of resurgence, where non-native people are taking the time to learn from the native people how to respect the earth and live in harmony and balance with it.

There was a lot of dancing by Native American people from many different tribes.

While some participated to win the dance competitions, others did it to honor the day.  Some of the dances even allowed audience members to partake in them as well.

In addition to the dances, there was a market that sold Native American-based items such as dream catchers, traditional drums, traditional clothing and jewelry.

Asked what he hopes visitors went away with, Curl said he hopes they took away a greater understanding of the Native American people and ability to communicate with them.

“There are native people all over.  On the street they look just like anybody else,” he explained.  “This is a cultural event where the native culture and the mass culture are coming into contact and I hope people will be coming away from this event with a much deeper understanding of the meaning of the Native culture and the gifts that the native culture has to offer to the modern world.”