A celebration of Native American culture was held over the weekend at the Return to Mauch Chunk Pow Wow at the Mauch Chunk Lake Park.

The event featured dancers, drummers and singers, plus vendors, food and drink.

“This is a gathering of the people, many different nations,” said Barry Lee, emcee for the Pow Wow. “Musically, we have a variety of styles represented. We have the northern-style singers, southern-style singers, we have northeast-style singing, and we have western coming out. It’s the spirit of being together.”

Each day’s program started with the Grand Entry, the flags, and dancers.

“We’ll have a flag song which is in honor of the flags,” Lee said. “And then we have Veterans Honor, which anybody who’s a veteran or first responder would come in to be a part of the group.”

Veterans and first responders were honored by carrying the flags.

A prayer was recited in the traditional Native American language, and again in English.

“They’re sort of struggling hard to preserve those languages,” Lee said. “That’s all across America. That’s from East Coast to West Coast, south and north to preserve those languages. The easiest way to lose a culture is to lose your language.”

Host Northern Drums were performed by the Gray Cloud Singers, and Host Southern Drums performed by the Stone Dog Singers.

“Northern means ‘northern plains’ and their songs will be more higher pitched, as compared to a southern drum which is lower, more guttural,” Lee said.

Additional Drums and singing were performed by Medicine Horse, Stoney’s Boys, Mwenkenay Kshuwsu Asuwichik, Spirit of the Mountain, and Red Storm.

“We feature the social dances of the northeast,” Lee said. “These are songs that are from this land, from the Lenape, which extend from Maryland up to central New York and east to the ocean.”

Several of the dances during the event included the grass dance, men’s traditional and women’s traditional.

The Lead Man Dancer was Matt White Eagle Clair. His wife, Chris Mourning Dove Clair, was Lead Ladies Dancer.