The highlight for many during Outlook's Canada Day celebrations on July 1 may have been the skillful and eye-grabbing dancing on display courtesy of Indigenous artist Terrance Littletent, who held the audience at the Jim Kook Rec Plex in the palm of his hand with his hoop dancing routines.
For Littletent, who calls Regina home, everything is held within the hoop. From the First Nations perspective, the hoop contains the past, the present, and the future. To Littletent, it's his ancestors and children; all the ways of understanding his home and his place in the province of Saskatchewan may come from the hoop that he swirls, twirls, and loops around his body in seemingly a thousand different ways.
For the audience in Outlook, Littletent's dancing to the beat of the drum by his family members was an attentive and inspiring performance. Prior to his demonstration, Littletent referenced what Canadians have been seeing in the media lately surrounding the horrific discoveries of mass graves at the sites of residential schools, which have shed a disturbing light on a part of Canada's history.
Littletent asked for a moment of silence prior to his performance, of which the Outlook audience - several wearing orange shirts in solidarity - was right there along with him.
