World champion hoop dancer Dallas Arcand will be part of the Pellsqepts Springs Wings Festival at the Splatsin Community Centre March 23. (Photo credit: Brad Crowfoot)

By Vernon Matters Staff

March 23

Annual celebration of Indigenous culture finds new home in Enderby

Feb 16, 2024 | 8:30 AM

The spring winds — Pellsqepts, in the ancestral language of the Secwepemc Peoples — are returning to Enderby.

Back after a successful launch at Pierre’s Point Road on the outskirts of Salmon Arm last March, the second annual Pellsqepts Spring Winds festival will blow into the Splatsin Community Centre on Saturday, March 23.

Kenthen Thomas, a Secwepemc storyteller and youth and Indigenous coordinator for the Salmon Arm Folk Music Society (SAFMS), said the community centre is the perfect home for Spring Winds. With room for up to 1,000 people, the Splatsin Centre is designed in the shape of a kekuli — the traditional winter pit house.

“The kekuli was where we did our teachings, shared our stories and sang our songs during the long winter months,” Thomas explained. “This is how we spent our time until the spring winds, the pellsqepts, brought us back out onto the earth to begin a new cycle around the sun.”

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The annual festival brings music, traditional dancing, artisan vendors, food trucks, open stick games, face painting and more to visitors from all backgrounds and walks of life. Everyone is invited.

On stage this year are Dakelh singer/songwriter Sabina Dennis, contemporary Indigenous rock and hip-hop group The Melawmen Collective, world champion hoop dancer Dallas Arcand, comedian and champion chicken dancer Conway Kootenay, acoustic rockers Horse Funeral, the All My Relations pow-wow dance group and Rhonda Camille with Secwepemc song and dance.

The Indigenous rock and hip-hop group, The Melawmen Collective, will perform at the Pellsqepts Spring Winds Festival March 23. (submitted photo)

“We are thrilled to be featuring many artists from our local Secwepemc and Sylix nations in coordination with the SAFMS and ROOTSandBLUES staff,” Thomas said. “This is a showcase to bring the outside world into our communities, into our ‘rez’ and show them what we’re all about.”

Food trucks will be on-site throughout the festival, while vendors, artists and Secwepemc volunteers and educators share Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

The second annual Pellsqepts Spring Winds festival gets underway at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 23 at 5767 Old Vernon Road, Enderby.

Admission is free, but donations to the Splatsin Youth Group are encouraged. Visitors are free to come and go throughout the afternoon.

For more information, visit the SAFMS online at rootsandblues.ca.