At summertime social powwows and spiritual ceremonies throughout the Upper Midwest, Native Americans are gathering around singers seated at big, resonant drums to dance, celebrate and connect with their ancestral culture.

“I grew up singing my entire life, and I was always taught that dewe’igan is the heartbeat of our people,” said Jakob Wilson, 19, using the Ojibwe term for drum that’s rooted in the words for heart and sound. “The absolute power and feeling that comes off of the drum and the singers around it is incredible.”

Wilson has led the drum group at Hinckley-Finlayson High School. In 2023, Wilson’s senior year, they were invited to drum and sing at graduation. But this year, when his younger sister Kaiya graduated, the school board barred them from performing at the ceremony, creating dismay across Native communities far beyond this tiny town where cornfields give way to northern Minnesota’s birch and fir forests.

“It kind of shuts us down, makes us step back instead of going forward. It was hurtful,” said Lesley Shabaiash. She was participating in the weekly drum and dance session at the Minneapolis American Indian Center a few weeks after attending protests in Hinckley.

“Hopefully this incident doesn’t stop us from doing our spiritual things,” added the mother of four, who grew up in the Twin Cities but identifies with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose tribal lands abut Hinckley.

In written statements, the school district’s superintendent said the decision to ban “all extracurricular groups” from the ceremony, while making other times and places for performance available, was intended to prevent disruptions and avoid “legal risk if members of the community feel the District is endorsing a religious group as part of the graduation ceremony.”

But many Native families felt the ban showed how little their culture and spirituality is understood. It also brought back traumatic memories of their being forcibly suppressed, not only at boarding schools like the one the Wilsons’ grandmother attended, but more generally from public spaces.

It was not until the late 1970s that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act directed government agencies to make policy changes “to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices.”

“We had our language, culture and way of life taken away,” said Memegwesi Sutherland, who went to high school in Hinckley and teaches the Ojibwe language at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

The Center’s weekly drum and dance sessions help those who “may feel lost inside” without connections to ancestral ways of life find their way back, said Tony Frank, a drum instructor.

“Singing is a door opener to everything else we do,” said Frank, who has been a singer for nearly three decades. “The reason we sing is from our heart. Our connection to the drum and songs is all spiritual. You give 100 percent, so the community can feel a piece of us.”  

In drum circles like those in Minneapolis, where many Natives are Ojibwe and Lakota, there is a lead singer, who starts each song before passing on the beat and verse to others seated at the drum, which is made of wood and animal hide (usually deer or steer).

A drum keeper or carrier cares for the drum, often revered as having its own spirit and considered like a relative and not like personal property. Keepers and singers are usually male; according to one tradition, that’s because women can already connect to a second heartbeat when pregnant.

These lifelong positions are often passed down in families. Similarly, traditional lyrics or melodies are learned from older generations, while others are gifted in dreams to medicine men, several singers said. Some songs have no words, only vocables meant to convey feelings or emulate nature.

Songs and drums at the center of social events like powwows are different from those that are crucial instruments in spiritual ceremonies, for example for healing, and that often contain invocations to the Creator, said Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe language and culture professor at Bemidji State University.

Meant to mark the beginning of a new journey in life, the “traveling song” that the drum group wanted to sing at the Hinckley graduation includes the verse “when you no longer can walk, that is when I will carry you,” said Jakob Wilson.

That’s why it was meant for the entire graduating class of about 70 students, not only the 21 Native seniors, added Kaiya Wilson, who trained as a back-up singer – and why relegating it to just another extracurricular activity hurt so deeply.

“This isn’t just for fun, this is our culture,” said Tim Taggart, who works at the Meshakwad Community Center – named after a local drum carrier born in the early 20th century – and helped organize the packed powwow held in the school’s parking lot after graduation. “To just be culturally accepted, right? That’s all everybody wants, just to be accepted.”

The school had taken good steps in recent years, like founding the Native American Student Association, and many in the broader Hinckley community turned out to support Native students. So Taggart is optimistic that after this painful setback, bridges will be rebuilt

And the drum, with all that it signifies about community and a connected way of life, will be brought back.

“Nothing can function without that heartbeat,” said Taggart, whose earliest memory of the drum is being held as a toddler at a ceremony. “It’s not just hearing the drums, but you’re feeling it throughout your entire body, and that just connects you more with the spirit connection, more with God.”

As dancers – from toddlers to adults in traditional shawls – circled the floor to the drum’s beat in the Minneapolis center’s gym, Cheryl Secola, program director for its Culture Language Arts Network, said it was heartwarming to see families bring children week after week, building connections even if they might not have enough resources to travel to the reservations.

On reservations too, many youths aren’t being raised in cultural ways like singing, said Isabella Stensrud-Eubanks, 16, a junior and back-up singer on the Hinckley high school drum group.

“It’s sad to say, but our culture is slowly dying out,” she said, adding that several elders reached out to her and the Wilsons after the graduation controversy to teach them more, so the youth can themselves one day teach their traditions.

Mark Erickson was already about 20 when he went back to Red Lake, his father’s band in northern Minnesota, to learn his people’s songs.

“It’s taken me a lifetime to learn and speak the language, and a lifetime to learn the songs,” said Erickson, who only in his late 60s was awarded the distinction of culture carrier for Anishinaabe songs, a term for Ojibwe and other Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States.

Believing that songs and drums are gifts from the Creator, he has been going to drum and dance sessions at the Minneapolis Center for more than a decade to share them, and the notions of honor and respect they carry.

“When you’re out there dancing, you tend to forget your day-to-day struggles and get some relief, some joy and happiness,” Erickson said.

NOTE: The original airdate of the video attached to this article is July 17, 2024. 

MINOCQUA, Wis. — A scientist warns that the effects of climate change could ultimately drive Minnesota’s state bird out of the state entirely.

Loons captivate our imaginations and steal our hearts, but they’re literally shrinking. Loon nesting season on Blue Lake in Minocqua, Wisconsin has become a holiday of sorts.

“It is a big deal around here,” said lake resident Brian Colianni “When the chicks hatch, it’s loon watch.”

For 32 years, Professor Walter Piper, a biology professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, has made the trek from the West Coast for this front-row seat. 

Piper Tags and tracks loons with the help of lake residents and young research assistants from around the country.  All hoping to uncover what’s happening with the majestic icons of the north. You can follow his work online.

After cruising in Colianni’s pontoon for a while we spot a pair of chicks with their dad, but having a sibling these days is less common.

“A two-chick brood is almost getting to be a special thing now and that’s a reflection of a thing that’s going on here in Wisconsin,” said Piper.

Loon chicks are shrinking in northern Wisconsin — both in numbers and size — something that’s worsened since the early 2000s.

At one month, a loon chick used to weigh about 3.5 pounds. Now, they’re closer to 3 pounds. That worries lake residents like Brian and Teresa Colianni.

“It’s really disturbing because it’s such a part of our habitat and such a part of what we like up here,” said Brian Colianni.

To understand why chicks are shrinking, you first have to understand how they forage. If you’ve ever seen a loon fishing, you’ll notice they peer below the surface before diving down to grab their next meal. 

Loons need to see to hunt, and to hunt they need clear water. That’s where climate change becomes a problem. Our more frequent and intense downpours wash things like fertilizers and sediment into the water making it murky and hard to hunt.

“Parents simply can’t keep themselves alive and feed the chicks enough to keep those chicks growing,” said Piper.

The rain and heat also allow black flies to thrive. The pests can swarm and annoy loons and that can drive them off their nests.

“That second chick that would have made it 25 or 30 years ago when we didn’t have the water clarity problems that we have now. That second chick can’t make it anymore,” said Piper.

Piper says they used satellite images from over the decades to confirm water quality was dropping.

“It’s very serious,” said Piper.

At some point, Piper thought if this is happening in Wisconsin, it could be happening in Minnesota too. As a result, in 2021, he expanded his research into Minnesota to include places like the white fish chain of lakes near Crosslake, Minnesota. 

But Piper’s early findings in the land of ten thousand lakes are even more troubling than in Wisconsin.

Just 82% of Minnesota’s state birds return after wintering in the south.  That’s lower than Wisconsin’s 88%, and it surprised Piper.

Piper says while the return rate is not equivalent to the survival rate, it is certainly a strong indicator. 

“It’s another thing that’s keeping me awake at night,” said Piper.

His decades of data show loons in northern Wisconsin are declining 6% a year. 

“It means within 20 years we’ll have virtually no loons here in northern Wisconsin,” said Piper.

Others, like the National Audubon Society, say because of climate change, loons simply won’t live here by the end of the century. Despite all of that, we have loon-watching to enjoy in the here and now. 

As loon parents try to shelter their little ones from tough realities, others rally behind the symbolic and captivating creature. 

“My hope is just to hold on to loons. To keep loons around in Wisconsin and Minnesota,” said Piper. 

If you want to help, Piper says you can stop using lawn fertilizers. Planting or keeping native shorelines provides healthy habitat and clearer lakes. Building nest rafts can help, too. You can also get involved: Community scientists help provide important information to save the birds we love.