Inter-generational survivors on healing through the power of Pow Wows

While they were once banned throughout the country, Pow Wows have made a comeback in various ways and are growing in popularity.

Pow Wows are a celebration of Indigenous culture, open to anyone who wants to come and witness the drumming and dancing.

While they were once banned throughout the country, they’ve made a comeback in various ways and are growing in popularity.

“It’s given me freedom of expression, it’s given me a sense of who I am and it’s allowed me to reconnect,” Ktunaxa Nation’s Peter White (kanǂupqa kȼiǂmiyit) told Global News.

White is making a name for himself as an inspirational Indigenous dancer by using social media to encourage connection to culture and raise awareness about the impacts of systemic oppression.

The inter-generational survivor says he was adopted at birth into a non-Indigenous family because his parents — struggling from the effects of the residential school system — couldn’t care for him.

“Residential schools have really affected me and I didn’t even realize how much until recently in doing my own trauma healing and getting to know where I come from … that’s how much residential schools have affected me, that 10 years ago I was a totally different person than who I am today,” White said.

In his teens, he grappled with alcohol abuse and homelessness. White says he tried quitting drinking nearly a dozen times and it wasn’t until he was told he had a cancerous tumour on his right foot that he took to dancing.