Hart of the West 2000:
WHAT: Hart of the West Powwow 2000 WHEN: Saturday, Sept. 23, 2000, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. WHERE: William S. Hart Park, Newhall INFO: (661) 259-0855
A Native American gathering at a Cowboy ranch?
By LEON WORDEN, September 2000.
©2000, LEON WORDEN.
How is it that a county park, once home to a famous cowboy actor, would come to host a Native American powwow? Aren’t Cowboys and Indians supposed to be rivals?
None who know the life and work of William S. Hart would ask such a question, for Hart was not the run-of-the-mill celluloid cowboy. Indeed, it was Hart’s displeasure with the earliest unenlightened representations of Cowboys and Indians on the silver screen that Hart striven to overcome — and overcome them he did, catapulting to stardom in no small measure through his real-life depictions of the West as never before rendered by a movie studio.
Hart’s Sioux friends taught him their language when he was a boy in the Midwest and imparted in him a respect for their culture he would never forget. Ultimately Hart would be made a blood brother to the Sioux and an officer in the National League for Justice to American Indians.
Upon his death in 1946, Hart deeded his Newhall ranch and Spanish-style mansion to the county of Los Angeles, with specific instructions that it be turned into a park "dedicated to people of every race and creed."
So it is fitting that Norman Phillips, superintendent of Los Angeles County William S. Hart Regional Park since 1986, would deem the park a fitting venue for Native Americans from all over California and beyond to come together for an annual reunion where they could share their ways with the public.
"It astonishes me to think how much it has grown," said Marylina Schultz, recruited by Phillips to chair the powwow after its first year.
There were eight vendor booths in 1994, and no dancers. "That first year, we were lucky if it drew a couple of hundred people," Schultz remembered.
Powwow 2000 this weekend will see 60 booths and nearly 200 dancers — the most ever — and the crowd will likely top 25,000 over the two days.
"Norm wanted to have something different. The powwows have really drawn the people," said Schultz, a Navajo whose Indian name, Princess Whitefeather, was given her in a naming ceremony by Jay Silverheels, alias Tonto of Lone Ranger fame.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Bill Hart and the Sioux. Norm Phillips and Marylina Schultz — a Cowboy and Indian combination whose committee has been working all year to make the 7th Annual Hart of the West Powwow the biggest and best yet.
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