RIVER FALLS – The Smokeytown Singers Menominee Drum Circle is known across the country and throughout Canada for their songs and style. They are pretty hard to book due to a jam-packed schedule, but lucky attendees of Earth Fest at UW-River Falls can see them at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 26.
The group will kick off Earth Fest as the pre-event feature at the University Center (501 Wild Rose Ave.) prior to the other festivities held noon to 4 p.m. The renowned drum group is celebrated for preserving and promoting traditional Menominee music and culture, performing at powwows and cultural events nationwide.
Myron Pyawasit, a member of the Menominee tribe, founded the group in 1972. It’s now led by Myron Pyawasit III. The Menominee Indian Reservation is located about a half hour north of Shawano in eastern Wisconsin. The 235,000 acres are the ancestral homelands of 8,551 tribal members.
“I learned from my uncles when I was young,” Pyawasit said.
He and two cousins sang with another drum group but left to form their own after a disagreement. Pyawasit was the lead singer, just 18 years old when he founded Smokeytown Singers.
When trying to figure out a name for the new group, Pyawasit’s old uncle gave him wisdom.
“He told me, ‘Put your tobacco down in the woods and when you come out of the woods, you’ll have your name.’” Pyawasit said. “In my village, Zoar, which is north of Neopit by about 5 miles, in the old days, they used to make these little smudge pails … to keep away the mosquitoes. When I came out of the woods, the little village was filled with smoke from these. Smokeytown.”
The drum circle currently has 14 members, including Pyawasit’s daughters and son. Not all the members can come to River Falls due to prior commitments, but a good number will be there. They will sing an entry song to honor veterans and military members, along with their flag song, an honor song for everyone involved and a traveling song for everybody to have a safe journey, Pyawasit said.
“We believe in what they are doing. They are fighting for better air quality and watching over Mother Earth,” Pyawasit said of Earth Fest organizers.
Pyawasit met Hope for Earth member Mike Noreen at a festival in Wausau. Noreen immediately recruited the Smokeytown Singers to come to River Falls.
“We go all over the U.S. and Canada, we just go. We don’t count how many (appearances) or keep track of them,” Pyawasit said. “We’ve been to just about every state in the U.S. and every province in Canada. I’m not bragging, but we’re pretty well known.”
Smokeytown Singers’ performance ties into Earth Fest and sustainability because of the Menominees’ beliefs.
“Our belief is that Mother Earth, the environment, the trees, all the plant life, even the rocks, that they have spirits in them. That’s the way we were raised,” Pyawasit said.
He added that all people are kind of at fault for pollution and climate change.
“We all travel in cars that spews into the air. But what can you do? Everybody has a lot of work to do,” he said. “I appreciate what the farmer does for us, what the factory does for us, but we just have to be careful.”
The Menominee tribe manages their forests because they believe the trees take care of them, Pyawasit said. At one time, the Menominee people owned the whole state of Wisconsin, the northern peninsula of Michigan, Illinois and northwest Indiana, he added.
“But we can’t go back in time. There’s no reason for anybody to be mad and fighting each other for this land. My uncles used to say we’re in a melting pot now and we now need to learn to live together,” Pyawasit said. “It’s what we have left and we take care of it. We help a lot of our own people on our reservation and connecting nations too. It’s what we do.
“My mother, my aunts and my uncles, I never saw my father, they always told us that your gift is your singing to help people. I am sorry to say that they didn’t teach me our language, but they taught me the songs.”
Pyawasit’s son, daughters and little grandson speak Menominee, a fact that make him immensely proud. The language is now taught in every school on their reservation. Pyawasit used to teach drumming and singing at their tribal school. He also traveled to schools off the reservation to teach children about the Menominee.
“Everyone has different traditions. We are a woodland people. We didn’t have teepees, we had wigwams. It’s about educating each other,” Pyawasit said.
To follow Smokeytown Singers, visit them on Facebook.
