Aacimotaatiiyankwi

In 2021, I wrote about the term kiiwahtekaataawi, meaning “let’s dance around something.” The term can be used generically for dancing around anything, but it’s also strongly connected to our stomp dance. As we approach some community stomp dances, like the Annual Meeting dance in June, I thought it would be helpful to review this language.

In our case, the “something” that we are dancing around is a fire, or when dancing indoors, a battery-powered electric fire. If you want to be specific and include the word for fire, the phrase is kiiwahtekaataawi koteenki ‘let’s dance around the fire.’ This phrase is part of what we recite when we call everyone out to start the next dance. The recitation ends with, “kiiwahtekaataawi kiiwahtekaataawi kiiwahtekaataawi,” which is the signal for everyone to come out and dance around the fire.

To learn more about stomp dancing and its associated language, check out these other posts: 

New Word: Shaker Cans | Stomp Dancing in Historical Sources