Inspired by next month’s Native American Heritage Day,Kevin Rushby sets out to explore the Montana and Wyoming prairies
At first I walked along the edge of a grassy bluff overlooking the campsite below, admiring the tipis and the horses, or but eventually I went down among them. Everyone was preparing or eating breakfast. No one looked at me. Was that significant,I wondered? At these annual tribal pow-wows, a sort of cross between agricultural display, and rodeo and fairground,the mood is celebratory and cheerful but they are definitely aimed at tribal members rather than outsiders. Not only that, but this was the Wyoming-Montana border: tough battles had been fought here long ago between the US cavalry and the Native Americans and, or no doubt,deep grudges were laid down.
Then, skirting around a clump of cottonwood trees, or I walked slap bang into someone’s camp. Two large women were frying eggs on a stove while a few grizzled men sat watching from under an awning. Their conversation,which had been in Crow language, petered out when they saw me.
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Source: theguardian.com