Aug. 7-9: Rock, Rattle & Drum Pow-Wow & Music Festival, Stephentown, NY

This year’s pow wow will be a competition pow wow. Dancers ranging in age from toddlers to elders compete in several styles of dance: fancy, tradi-tional, grass and jingle dress, wearing traditional and contemporary regalia. Drum groups provide vocal and rhyth-mic accompaniment to the dancers as they compete. Cash prizes are presented to winners in all the competitions.

In addition, there will be American Indian vendors, traditional and contem-porary native arts, crafts and workshops, children’s arts & crafts demonstrations, a special American Indian Art Market, a children’s Indian tipi village, storytell-ers, petting zoo and a delicious variety of food vendors including buffalo chili and Mary Blackmountain’s famous Indian tacos.

Aaron Athey of the Mohegan Nation will return to be our Master of Ceremonies for the fourth year in a row. Bruce Curliss of the Nipmuc Tribal Nation will join Aaron this year as Co-MC and arena director, as well as assist in the competition aspect of the pow wow. The Host Drum will be Rez Dogs from Penobscot, ME and the Honor Drum will be Mystic River from Mash-antucket, Pequot Nation, CT.

Back by popular demand will be exhibition dancers the Aztec Dancers, the Wolf Cry Singers, an all women’s traditional hand drum singing group and the Berkshires favorite, Jerry "Thunder-cloud" and Jeannie McDonald perform-ing their world renowned Eagle Dance. A popular inter-tribal dance opportunity occurs throughout the pow wow, as members of the audience are invited and encouraged to join dancers in the pow wow arena.

Nashville Recording Artist Red Hawk and the Renegade Country Band, the hottest country rocking band this side of the Hudson River will open the music festival on Friday evening. Foll-owing on Friday evening will be the Depth Quartet featuring Scot Murawski of Max Creek and The Billy Kruetzman Trio. Local music favorite just voted one of the top guitarists in the Berkshires Rev Tor will headline Friday’s concert. One of the Berkshires favorites, Tony Lee Thomas will also perform on Satur-day evening, as well as Geraldine Barn-ey, a Navajo singer/songwriter extra-ordinaire. Our latest performance sched-ule and line up can be found on our web site at healingwinds.net.

In honor of our theme, we will honor and bring awareness to people and organizations making a difference in the lives of veterans.

There will also be a Wiping the Tears Ceremony for veterans and their families on Sunday morning at 11a.m.

Homes for Our Troops, Walk with the Warriors and The Vet Center Pro-gram are three of the organizations we are highlighting.

The Vet Center Program of Spring-field, MA is bringing a 39 foot Mobile Vet Center offering FREE medical care and psychological counseling to all vet-erans. The Vet Center Program wel-comes home war veterans with honor by providing quality readjustment coun-seling in a caring manner. Vet Centers understand and appreciate Veterans’ war experiences while assisting them and their family members toward a success-ful post-war adjustment in or near their community.

We are also excited that Strangers Helping Strangers, Inc. will be at our pow wow. Please bring non-perishable food and/or personal or feminine hygiene or baby product donations for the Stephentown local food bank. We will have special gifts and prizes for the largest donations.

Homes for Our Troops is a non-profit, non-partisan, 501C3 organization founded in 2004. This organization is strongly committed to helping those who have selflessly given to their coun-try and have returned home with serious disabilities and injuries. Homes for Our Troops assist severely injured Service-men and Women and their immediate families by raising donations of money, building materials and professional labor and then coordinating the process of building a new home or adapting an existing home for handicapped access-ibility. The finished home is then given to the veteran.

Pow wows are gatherings that Native American people use as a place to meet, dance, sing, renew and strengthen their culture. Please join us to honor and celebrate the richness of the American Indian culture and strengthen and expand the ties to our indigenous roots and local community in Stephen-town, Rensselaer County, the Berkshires and beyond.

For more info please visit Healing Winds at healingwinds.net, call 518-733-9227 or humanityinconcert@earthlink.net. All proceeds after expenses go directly into the Native American Inter-pretative Center, the White Eagle Sanc-tuary and the Longhouse for Peace construction fund. Healing Winds is a not for profit organization.