{"id":17478,"date":"2017-06-07T15:59:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T19:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17478"},"modified":"2017-06-14T16:05:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:05:14","slug":"new-beginnings-powwow-celebrates-22000th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-beginnings-powwow-celebrates-22000th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"New Beginnings powwow celebrates \u201c22,000th birthday\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though Canada may be celebrating its official 150th birthday this year, there are others who are celebrating a much more longstanding anniversary.
\nAaron Bell, the owner and operator of White Pine Dancers, has worked with the Town of Aurora for the past five years in bringing First Nations culture to the community, through events like the Canada Day celebrations and Arctic Adventure on Family Day.
\nShelley Ware, Aurora\u2019s Special Events Coordinator, had been looking to implement a full day of activities dedicated to the celebration of our country\u2019s native peoples, and worked with Bell to organize the Town\u2019s first ever official powwow.
\n\u201cFirst Nations people have been here much, much longer than 150 years,\u201d said Bell. \u201cWe\u2019re celebrating our 22,000th birthday.\u201d
\nThe White Pine Dancers, based out of Brantford, ON, travel Southern Ontario to spread the word of First Nations culture through song, dance, and storytelling.
\nWith grants from the Canada 150 celebration, as well as from the Town of Aurora, they worked to gather vendors, drummers, and singers at Lambert Willson Park to celebrate what Bell called \u201can opportunity to open discussions about the First Nations people both internally and externally.\u201d
\n\u201cAboriginal tourism is one of the main contributors to the tourism economy in Canada,\u201d said Bell. \u201cEvents like these bring in a lot of outside tourism, and can really make a difference in sharing cultures and bringing cultures together.\u201d
\nDubbed \u201cNew Beginnings,\u201d the title derives from a desire to create a new understanding of Aboriginal history among the outlying community.
\n\u201cFirst Nations culture is so deep and so rich,\u201d said Bell. \u201cBut it\u2019s not only about teaching others about the culture, it\u2019s about mutual respect between cultures.\u201d
\nThe event arrived just one day after a $20,000 grant was announced by Newmarket-Aurora MP Kyle Peterson in the House of Commons, to be used to host a series of events in Aurora titled \u201cCanada 150 Celebration \u2013 Aurora Style\u201d, of which the powwow was the kick-off event.
\n\u201cI am proud to see our government invest in our community as we celebrate Canada\u2019s 150th Anniversary of Confederation,\u201d said Peterson. \u201cI am proud our community will join together this weekend for the first New Beginnings Pow-Wow in Aurora providing an opportunity to learn, understand and celebrate one another.\u201d
\nAurora Mayor Geoff Dawe said he was \u201ctruly grateful\u201d to the Government of Canada for the funding of the event.
\n\u201cThis event helps our community to celebrate Canada\u2019s Indigenous people, and the many diverse cultures, traditions, and languages that make Canada a wonderful place to call home.\u201d
\nBell said the White Pine Dancers hope to work with the Town to make the powwow an annual event.
\n\u201cRight now, we\u2019re just concentrating on this one since it\u2019s the first one, but we would love to bring it back year after year to the Town of Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte Though Canada may be celebrating its official 150th birthday this year, there are others who are celebrating a much more longstanding anniversary. Aaron Bell, the owner and operator of White Pine Dancers, has worked with the Town of Aurora for the past five years in bringing First Nations culture to the community, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2017-06-08-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4xU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 19:32:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}