By Tracie Mitchell
Staff Writer 

Gift of Waters Pageant 2018 is on

Future pageants are still questionable

 

April 4, 2018



WORLAND – The 2018 Gift of the Waters Pageant will be held this year but its future depends on the generosity of the community, with their time and money.

Gift of the Waters pageant committee treasurer Barb Vietti stated that thanks to the generous financial contributions of community members the cost of the pageant this year is covered and they will go on with the show, but without volunteers to work the many different facets required to put on the show the future of the pageant is bleak.

According to Wyomingfolkfestival.com, “On April 21, 1896, Chief Washakie of the Shoshone and Chief Sharp Nose of the Arapaho signed a treaty with the U.S. government at Fort Washakie on the Wind River Reservation. They sold a ten-mile-square tract of land surrounding the Big Horn Hot Springs (‘Big Spring’). Washakie stipulated that some portion of the healing waters remain free to all people forever. In return the tribe was to receive $60,000 in cattle and food supplies.

“The Gift of the Waters is not a re-enactment of the event but an annual celebration of the camaraderie of two nations. The drama was originally written in 1925 by Marie Montabe and has been performed in the park annually since 1950. It includes members of the Eastern Shoshone tribe singing and dancing, with ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ in Native sign language.”

Vietti stated in an earlier interview, “What’s so frustrating is that we have been trying for years to get people to come to be on our pageant committee and volunteer to work and it’s the same few people who show up, no matter how much advertising we did. Right now it boils down to a handful of people doing everything,”

Without able bodied volunteers to help with publicity, the parade, after pageant refreshments, meals, fundraising, programs, the sound system, the women’s chorus and smoke signals there is no way the pageant can continue. A handful of volunteers having to shoulder so much, can only last so long. So they may have to say so long to the pageant that has been part of Thermopolis history and tourism since the 1950s, Vietti said.

 
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