Kevin Abourezk
ICT
LINCOLN, Neb. – With summer fast approaching, Maurice Phillips, a 50-year-old Omaha Tribe citizen and mechanic living in Lincoln, has begun to feel the call of the powwow trail.
“We travel a lot because we just love to sing,” he said. “That’s all it is, is we just love to sing.”
“Moe,” as he’s known by friends and relatives, spent many summers on the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska. There he learned to call his aunt and uncle, mom and dad, and learned a love of drumming and dancing.
Today he’s a traditional men’s dancer and whistle carrier for the prestigious Hethushka Society of the Omaha Nation.
As an urban Indian and father to four children, Phillips said he is forced to balance the expectations of his non-Native work supervisors with his own needs and those of his family. Being a powwow family, the Phillips enjoy traveling to as many celebrations as they can afford each year, but he said he struggles to get enough vacation time to do much more than a few each season.
“I do my best to make that time,” he said. “I live in two worlds, the White man world and then our Native world.”
He said he’s usually able to get to a half dozen or so powwows a year. In rapid fashion, Phillips listed some of the powwows he hopes to attend this year, including those in Tama, Iowa, Santee, Nebraska, Sioux City, Iowa, Flandreau, South Dakota, Macy, Nebraska, Niobrara, Nebraska, and White Cloud, Kansas.
He said the powwow grounds are sacred to him, a place where he seeks to be fully present. He said he usually leaves his phone in his vehicle and tries to forget about his work and other stressors.
“I come in that entrance and come into that arena and I leave my problems there,” he said.
Every powwow, he said, is a reunion as he reconnects to other singers, drummers and friends and relatives, many of whom he hasn’t seen in months.
Coming home is the most difficult part of attending a powwow, especially when he and his family have traveled to powwows held over consecutive weekends, Phillips said.
“When you get home, you feel lonely,” he said.
He said he began singing at the drum around the age of 10. His grandfather, Mitchell Sheridan, and his other grandfathers and uncles taught him. By the age of 13, he was traveling with a drum group called the Rough Riders. Eventually, many of those drummers began leaving for other drum groups. For the past 15 years, Phillips has sung with the White Tail Singers along with other Omaha singers. His “pops,” Tim Grant, started that drum group but died two years ago.
Phillips also uses his own drum to travel places to sing, often with his son and nephew. He said his 18-year-old son Mataeo, who turns 19 on June 5, has known the drum beat for a long time, perhaps even before he knew what a drum was, when he might have mistaken the sound for that of a heartbeat while inside the womb, his father said.
“Since he could walk, he’s been around that,” Maurice Phillips said.
Often, it’s his son who suggests going to certain powwows, and when his father can’t join him Mataeo will sometimes go anyway with his cousin or others. That’s what he did April 5 when he and his cousin traveled to Lawrence, Kansas, to attend a powwow at Haskell Indian Nation University.
Phillips said, despite being 50, he still learns from other drummers, including his son, who has an innate ability to hear a song once and remember it.
“I don’t have that ability like some of my relatives do,” Phillips said.
He said it’s an honor to carry on such a traditional practice.
“Those songs are 200 years old, some of the songs we still sing today because they’re passed down,” he said.
He said it’s been gratifying to see his son continue to carry on the tradition. He owns his own drum, which a woman from Canada gifted to him when he was around 10 years old.
“My son is now making his own way,” he said.
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Mataeo has even joined his father by singing with White Tail Singers, which required him to pay for the right to do so. Mataeo also is a grass dancer.
Phillips said he’s taught his son to respect his drum, to treat it like a relative and give it its own space in his home. For his own drum, Phillips said he talks to his drum, letting it know he plans to take it somewhere. His elders taught him each drum has its own spirit.
“You take care of that drum, it’s going to take care of you,” they told him.
He even named his drum Bad Meat, a name given to it by Phillips’ grandfather Mitchell Sheridan, a name that came from a nickname given to another male relative. The name also came from the drum’s smell when Phillips first got it nearly 10 years ago as the hide covering it was still drying out.
Looking toward the future, Phillips said he hopes his son and his other children will continue to hit the powwow trail, long after he’s gone.
“We were told you dance because you dance for those that can’t,” he said. “You sing for those that don’t, can’t sing, that can’t drum, that don’t have that ability.
“That’s what I teach my son.”
He’s also taught him that if he ever loses his love for singing and dancing to quit doing those things, but he said he’s confident his son will continue to enjoy those traditions.
“When it’s finally my time, I can’t hold that beat or can’t sing them songs, I’m sitting back, he’ll be sitting there still singing.”