(Rocky Boy) – On Thursday September 29th Rocky Boy will be holding a parade for Indigenous Peoples Day starting on 10am at Mission Drive. Jalene Smalls IT assistant and parade volunteer and Russell Gopher the Chippewa Cree Tribe Information Specialist talk about the event.
Smalls: “Alright so the parade is always going to be on the Friday of Native American Week and we generally have this day off because it’s the Native American… Indigenous Peoples Day we call it so. now the native American Day Parade usually we always have a theme to go with it. now the last two years I’ve always had the parade theme be ‘Missing and Murdered Indigenous People” and “Every Child Matters” because I feel that not only, but I know the community would appreciate these themes because they are two of the topmost issues in indigenous people today.”
Gopher then talked about the history of the event.
Gopher: “Back in the Early 80’s I was an employee at the Rocky Boy school and back then the idea was brought about by Louise Stump, and she had this idea of getting all the community together to share in a Friday end of the week event and the community has always been big part of the weeks event and we have a huge crowd every year. And I would like to thank Louise and her ideas at the beginning, and we try to our best to continue on her wishes.”
Smalls continued by talking about when the parade will start and how to join the parade.
Smalls: “The parade will start at 10 o’clock am on Friday and is always going to be the same route starting at mission drive. It’s open to anybody, you can defiantly come watch, come stand by. Once you get there it’s pretty self-explanatory where you can park and generally its lead by our veterans with the flag. And then we do have the route which is form mission drive by the old Lutheran church al the way around to the tribal office and then that’s where it will end. if anybody is wanting to get in too, fill out a registration form for the Native American Day Parade and we will have hard copies and a copy of one online they can print off fill out and bring in.”
She then finished by talking about the different categories that were being judged.
Smalls: ‘There is going to be seven categories the first one is going to be best community. The second one, we have two of them, one of them is going to be the Rocky Boys schools’ best class and Box Elder school best class. This is because we’ve always had multiple school floats in there and it fair, its more fair than the past few years, so. Then the next one is most humorous and then best theme, best traditional and then the horse category. Which is where we have a few ones that ride on horses and paint their horses or whichever they would like to do, so. And we just ask that you be respectful and considerate and plan ahead because the parade normally shuts down the whole main road form the mission drive from the Lutheran Church all the way to Central services for a good at least 2 hours, 3 hours. We ask that everybody plan ahead.”
