{"id":40222,"date":"2022-06-06T03:20:44","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T09:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ute-mountain-utes-celebrate-133rd-bear-dance\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:54:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:54:20","slug":"ute-mountain-utes-celebrate-133rd-bear-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ute-mountain-utes-celebrate-133rd-bear-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Ute Mountain Utes celebrate 133rd Bear Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cultural
Cultural events for the 2022 Ute Mountain Ute Bear Dance took place Friday through Monday in Towaoc. (Courtesy D'Angelo Padilla, Weenuche Smoke Signals)<\/span>sonya<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Ute Mountain Utes hosted their 133rd Bear Dance Friday as tribal and community members gathered to celebrate. After two years of COVID-19 limitations, the theme for this year\u2019s celebration was \u201cawakening.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Bear Dance was limited to tribal members only because of COVID restrictions, and in 2020 the celebration was conducted entirely on social media.<\/p>\n

The Bear Dance is one of the oldest known dances in North American history. It is traces to the 15th century and represents a blessing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow it originated was when a bear came to a Ute village and there were two brothers, one brother went with the bear and the bear taught the young man the songs and how to dance,\u201d said Mountain Ute Tribal Chairman Manuel Heart. The bear told the young man to go back to his tribe and teach them. This will heal them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ute
Ute Mountain Utes participate in a traditional hand game during the Bear Dance weekend. (Courtesy D'Angelo Padilla, Weenuche Smoke Signals)<\/span>sonya<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Veterans
Veterans were honored at the annual Ute Mountain Ute Beardance Parade Saturday in Towaoc. The parade was a mixture of emergency vehicles, Tribal Royalty, and Tribal Departments. (Courtesy D\u2019Angelo Padilla via Weenuche Smoke Signals)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The annual Ute Mountain Ute Beardance Parade was held Saturday morning on Mike Wash Road in Towaoc. The parade was a mixture of emergency vehicles, tribal toyalty, and tribal departments. (Courtesy D'Angelo Padilla, Weenuche Smoke Signals)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Historically, the dance was done by the Utes in the spring after the first sound of thunder. This resembled the end of winter and hibernation for the bears.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally, this bear dance comes out in the spring time when everyone has had a hard time through winter wherever they may have been or other challenges they may face. They would come in and receive a blessing from this ceremony,\u201d Heart said.<\/p>\n

Gender does play a role in preparing for the celebration. Men will construct the bear dance corral made out of cedar, and women will prepare the clothing for the event.<\/p>\n

Women sit on the north side, and men sit on the south side of the corral. Singers are on the west side of the corral. The opening of the corral always faces east because of the sunrise.<\/p>\n

The music during the celebration often does not use drums but rather an instrument called a morache<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA morache is kind of like a stick with notches on it has a bone that you make that growling noise with,\u201d Heart said.<\/p>\n

According to Heart, it is always women\u2019s choice when it comes to choosing their dance partners. Women must wear traditional dresses, and men must await the women to choose them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women go out there to pick which partner they want. Two women can dance with one man. There\u2019s a person called a cat man. If a woman picks a man and the man hesitates or doesn\u2019t want to dance. The cat man can go over there and push them out to dance with the woman that picked them,\u201d Heart said.<\/p>\n

The event starts on Friday with a beginning song and has an ending song on Monday. Throughout the weekend games such as softball and a traditional hand game are played.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditional hand game is a game played by many tribes up north, all the way up into Canada. You hide two bones, one has a piece of tape on it, and you try to guess pick which side it\u2019s on. There\u2019s two players on each side and they have 12 sticks. Whoever comes up with the most sticks is the winner,\u201d Heart said.<\/p>\n

In the traditional hand game the sticks are awarded to the team who guesses correctly as a way of scoring. With each wrong guess, the guessing team has to turn over a stick to the opposing team.<\/p>\n

Other Bear Dance week events include a parade, the Bear Dance memorial walk and an all day feast on the final day of the event June 6.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

returns to the public after two years of COVID-19 restrictions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2007,568,28,561,29,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-culture-general","tag-events","tag-headlines","tag-native-american","tag-newsletter","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84588,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40222\/revisions\/84588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40222"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}