Niibin: V. Niimi'idiwin

Niibin is a season of great joy and celebration! We labour long and hard during the daytime, but when the work is done we give thanks to the creator for the harvest. What we do is hold a Pow Wow ceremony, or ‘Niimi’idiwin’. We celebrate with song and dance! The heartbeat of Mother Earth sounds and we lend our voices to sing songs of thanksgiving! But before we can sing our songs we do what we call the Drum Opening ceremony. We place a gift of tobacco on the large circular Grandfather drum. Then the drummers come and begin to beat the drum with their drumsticks causing the tobacco to dance upon the surface of the drum! It dances and dances…until it disappears entirely! When the tobacco is all gone, we say the drum is ‘open’, and now we can begin to sing along to the heartbeat of our Mother Earth. We sing, and just like that bouncing tobacco, we dance! All ages! Starting with the eldest, right down to the youngest. We dance for our families, to honour our ancestors and to celebrate all of G’chi Manitou’s creation. This one is known as the Fancy Shawl Dance or Butterfly Dance. In their brilliant, colourful regalia, the children dance with great joy!