Bismarck, North Dakota.

The weekend of September 9-11, 2016 gave Lynn and me plenty to do. I needed to be in Bismarck for a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) activity on Saturday and Sunday featured the fly-in featured in last week’s Travel Tuesday post. We arrived in Bismarck on Friday evening and I prepared for Saturday’s activity. However, that is not the topic of today’s post.

We left the fly-in a bit early as we needed to be back in Fargo that evening and that meant we needed to leave Bismarck by around 3 PM. We wanted to make one more stop in Bismarck before heading home. This weekend the United Tribes Technical College hosted the 47th annual International PowWow. This three-day event concluded on Sunday. Around 11 AM we left the fly-in and drove less than a mile from the airport to the PowWow arena at the technical college. We bought our tickets, parked our car and wandered in. The grounds were strangely quiet and we would soon discover that the day’s activities start at 1 PM every day. We had two hours to kill, and more importantly, with our need to leave Bismarck early, we realized we wouldn’t get to see much of this year’s PowWow. We headed back to town, had a leisurely lunch and arrived back at the arena in plenty of time for the opening of the day’s activities, the Grand Entry, the subject of the opening photo above.

On this day, the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington D.C., a special commemoration was held at the opening. Several Native American veterans groups were featured in the parade of colors. Two of those groups are featured in the image above.

At the beginning of the opening ceremony, the American Flag was flying at full mast. The next part of the ceremony featured the playing of taps while the flag was lowered to half mast in honor of those lost on 9-11. Following the opening ceremony, the participants in the PowWow were introduced in a march around the arena. All the participants in all of the categories of entry were introduced and passed in review. By the time this review was completed, unfortunately it was time for Lynn and I to head back to Fargo. Next year we will have to visit Bismarck during the PowWow and stay for more of the event. In the gallery that follows, photos of participants were captured while they passed in review. Click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner