Exhibit celebrates the life of respected Elder and dancer

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People visiting the Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) this summer will have a chance to learn a little about the life and contributions of respected Elder George Ceepeekous, The Man Who Couldn't Stop Dancing.

Ceepeekous passed away last year, but his family and the RSM are working to ensure his legacy lives on.

In 1991, Ceepeekous first approached the museum about purchasing his dance outfit. Ever since he was a small boy, he had danced the Prairie Chicken Dance at powwows, but now, at the age of 71, he had decided the time had come for him to stop dancing.

A year after the museum had purchased his outfit, Ceepeekous contacted the RSM to see if he could borrow parts of it back. It seemed his decision to stop dancing had been premature.

After he'd parted with the outfit, he attended a powwow, and found that he wanted nothing more than to get up and dance once again. His wife, Stella, was making him a new outfit, but could he borrow parts of the old outfit until the new one was complete? The museum staff obliged, and he danced once again at that year's Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (SIFC) powwow, earning a first place finish.

He returned the borrowed parts of the original outfit to the museum, and continued to dance in the new outfit created for him by his wife until 2003.

After his death, Ceepeekous' family decided they wanted to have his new outfit and some of his trophies at the museum as well, and the seed was planted for the new exhibit.

The story of George Ceepeekous is one Dr. Margaret Hanna, curator of the Aboriginal history unit at the museum, has wanted to tell ever since Ceepeekous sold his first dance outfit to the museum in 1991.

"Just because it was an interesting story, I mean, the fact that he wanted to retire and then decided that there was no way he could stop dancing and had to keep on dancing. It was a story that eventually I wanted to tell," she said.

"We wanted to celebrate his life and his achievement. He was a very respected member of the Kawacatoose First Nation. He was respected also as a dancer. He was one of the few who kept the Prairie Chicken Dance going," Hanna said.

"And also, we just wanted to let people know a little bit about the Prairie Chicken Dance itself, because you don't see it that much at powwows. There are more young men starting to dance it, but mostly what you see for men's dances are the men's traditional and the fancy feather and grass dances, which are far more flamboyant kinds of dances, at least in the way Mr. Ceepeekous danced.

"And we just wanted to provide another little bit of information about First Nations culture here in Saskatchewan, trying to let people know that powwow wasn't all competition. That there's more to it than that."

The exhibit takes up three display cases in the museum lobby, Hanna said.

"One of them has most of the outfit-the shirt, the pants, the beaded belt, and some of the other things, the cuffs and so on. And that part also talks something about the nature of the Prairie Chicken Dance, its origin, the fact that it started off as a sacred dance, a healing dance. There's another one that shows the moccasins and everything they'd wear from the knees down. And then the third one has the roach and a description of what the roach is made of and a couple of the trophies that he won."

The exhibit also features a life-size photograph of Ceepeekous dancing, taken at the SIFC powwow in 1991.

The exhibit opened on June 16, and the museum lobby was packed with people wanting to see this celebration of George Ceepeekous.

"Most of his family was there. The chief and councillors from Kawacatoose were there. One of the classes had come down from the Kawacatoose school and there were lots of other people there too, so it was quite full," Hanna said.

The exhibit is scheduled to remain at the museum all summer.

The Royal Saskatchewan Museum is located at 2445 Albert Street in Wascana Park. The musum is open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily throughout the summer months.