Diversity and Cultural Events: Moundville Native American Festival

On October 7th, I and fellow Anthro-Teach members went to the Moundville Native American Festival at the Moundville Archeology Park. We were conducting research for the Anthro-Teach Native American Presentation that are going to be held at the Botanical Gardens on October 24th. Moundville is located right outside of Tuscaloosa and about an hour and half drive away from Birmingham. The park itself used to be thriving town for the ancient Mississippian culture, composed of mysterious mounds that scholar believed members of high social society used to reside upon. When the town was thriving, it was 300 acres large and housed about 1000 inhabitants. Because of the close proximity of artifacts, its highly likely that there were many houses built around the mounds, somewhat like a town around a castle, but all that is left now are the mounds.
Driving up to the park, I saw the big open field and the mounds that surrounded it. There was one that was bigger than the other and I was told that the Chief lived on the top of that one. I expected the mounds to be a lot bigger than they were, but when I actually got to the base of them they seemed pretty large. I also reminded myself that it has been hundreds of years since the town had been abandon and the mounds were much larger back then.The mounds actually were burial grounds for their dead. The Choctaw buried their loved ones into the floor of their houses. So since the mounds acted like a platform for prestigious residence, they were also a burial ground fog high authorities.

The Bad:

The Festival was actually really disappointing to me. I LOVE Native American culture and was really hoping the experience was going to be authentic. I had imagined I would walk around the festival and there would be fires set up with Native Americans dancing around them, along with the steady beat of the drums and chanting. There would be demonstrations of games and cooking, such things like that. And don't get me wrong there were some exhibits like that, but the majority of the Festival was made up of people trying to sell you things. All the booths that were set up were booths that had arrows and dream catchers, t-shirts and hats, jewelry and decorative trinkets, pretty much anything the buyer could think of that related to Native Americans. The whole festival it seemed was really trying to capitalize on that. Some of the things they were selling were authentic. Some vendors had sage that was burned for cleansing and prayer. Other booths were chipping away stones and making arrows. There were a lot of artists, mostly carvers and some (two or three) musicians. So it was neat seeing some of that stuff, but I felt I saw the same things over and over again. If I was coming to shop, all I would have to do is go to the first three booths and I would have seen everything being sold a the festival. Some of the things they were trying to sell didn't have anything to do with Native American culture either. there was one booth I noticed that was selling picture frames made out of bamboo! Last time I checked bamboo was not native to Alabama.
And then were booths that were selling food. When I first saw the sign for food I thought, "Oh cool! Authentic Native American food!" I imagined they were age-old recipes passed down from generation to generation but instead, the Native American festival decided to sell its guests elephant ears and cotton candy. It was food more fit for a carnival than a festival celebrating a culture.

The Good:

Even though the event was about 80 percent exploited, there was still some people that grasp the true meaning of the festival and wanted to tell guests about ancient culture. There was one women that stood out to me. She was in her seventies and was selling books about Native American life, but she also had another booth set up that show cased things that were not for sale. She asked if we would like to hear about her people and the significance of the artifacts that laid on the table. Of course we said yes and she began telling use about creation beliefs. She took a conch shell and pointed to the carvings on it and told us the legend about the afterlife. When you pass away you are taken up to the sky in a boat on the milky way. There are certain things that have to be accomplish for you to succeed in the after life and find a place in the sky as a star. As she told us this she pointed to the corresponding carvings in the shell. She also talked to use about certain books that she had laying out and answered any of our questions.
After about an hour of us walking around it was finally time for what we had come to see in the first place. There was a stage set up that had a PA equipment and bleachers for people to sit. They had been showing people native birds of Alabama but it was finally time for a demonstration of Native American dancing. We found  our spot on the ground and watched as the people began explaining the dances and their meaning. One of the dances that we ended up using in our presentation at the Botanical Gardens was called Bear Dance. This one was only danced after the children went to bed because it could get really racy, it was a mating song. What the Native Americans did was find a partner and walk around in a circle to a steady beat picking up acorns from the ground. When the beat sped up really fast they would turn towards each other and pretend to be attacking one another. It was a really playful dance, I guess it was an ancient way of flirting. We picked this dance only because we thought it would be really easy to teach the kids and if done right, would be completely innocent. Another dance was the Snake Dance. Participants would line up in two lines perpendicular to each other and follow the leaders of the line dancing and moving in a symmetrical way to each other.
Some of the people were dressed up in the traditional dress and that was neat to see. That was the kind of thing that I had been expecting to see.

I really enjoyed this glimpse into the ancient Native American life. I feel like I might have romanticized the culture alittle bit and expected to see unrealistic things because there is no way, no matter how hard you may try that you can re-create life like it was over 500 years ago. I was content with the tiny taste of what I got. I would really love to come back and do some excavating at some of the sites down there. I'm happy I went, we got a lot of research accomplished and I learned a lot of new things.