Season of significance
<p>Jonathon Nomee, 15, with the Shooting Star Dancers, spins while performing a dance for attendees of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's winter blessing event held Thursday at the Ernie Stensgar Pavilion near Worley.</p>
<p>Tsones Nomee, 4, waits to perform with the rest of the Shooting Star Dancers during the winter blessing event.</p>
WORLEY - They gathered to honor winter, to recognize the season's significance in song, dance and storytelling.
The Coeur d'Alene Tribe hosted a Winter Blessing Thursday at the Stensgar Pavilion at Circling Raven Golf Club.
"We come together to find the warmth and the happiness in our song and dances, and to give thanks for the easy winter we've had this year," said Cliff SiJohn, cultural awareness director for the casino.
Open to the public, about 100 people attended the event.
The Shooting Star dancers, ages 3-16, swirled, tapped and stepped their way through the pavilion in time to tribal singing and drumming.
SiJohn then honored the tribe's tradition of oral history, and shared a story about the cultural importance of the bitterroot plant.
"It saved the people, this bitterroot," SiJohn said.
He spoke of a time, long, long ago when the winter was very harsh and long.
There were no animals to hunt, and the people's stores of dried foods had run out.
"There was much sorrow in the camps. Many cried at night," SiJohn said.
He said there was a woman who "went to the sweat house and prayed hard."
The Creator told her to take her family and move to the mountains, he said, and although she was frightened to do that, the woman packed her children up and set off through the ridges into the hills.
There was no food to be found, and the woman fell into a deep sleep. When she awakened, she began to cry uncontrollably.
She walked as she cried, and as her tears hit the ground, roots began to grow and sprout.
The people eventually dug the roots up and ate them.
It was nourishing and calmed the pains in their stomachs, SiJohn said.
That root was the bitterroot.
There is always a reason or a moral to an Indian story, he said, and the message of the woman and the bitterroot is to never give up.
"She found the strength," SiJohn said. "All of us have in your heart, room for better judgment, better decisions."