Pow wow

A pow wow (also powwow or pow-wow) is a social gathering held by many different Native American communities. The word derives from the Narragansett word powwaw, meaning "spiritual leader". A similar gathering by California Native Peoples usually in the fall is called a Big Time. A modern pow wow is a specific type of event for Native American/First Nations people to meet and dance, sing, socialize, and honor their cultures. Pow wows may be private or public. There is generally a dancing competition, often with significant prize money awarded. Pow wows vary in length from a one-day event, to major pow wows called for a special occasion which can be up to one week long.

In popular culture, such as older Western movies, the term has also been used by non-Natives to describe any gathering of Native Americans, or to refer to any type of meeting among non-Natives (such as military personnel). However, such use may be viewed as cultural appropriation, and disrespectful to Native peoples.

Pow-wow (folk magic)

Pow-wow, called Braucherei in Deitsch, is a system of American folk religion and magic associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Origin of the name and practices

Its name comes from the book Pow-wows, or, The Long Lost Friend, written by John George Hohman and first published in German as Der Lange Verborgene Freund in 1820. Despite the appropriation of "pow-wow", taken from an Algonquian word for a gathering of medicine men, the collection is actually a collection of European magic spells, recipes, and folk remedies of a type familiar to students of folklore. The formulas mix Christian prayers, magic words, and simple rituals to cure simple domestic ailments and rural troubles.

Early Pennsylvania was a melting pot of various religious persuasions, as William Penn's promise of religious freedom opened the doors for many Christian sects: the Anabaptists, Quakers, Lutherans, German Reformed, Catholics, and all manner of religious mystics and free-thinkers. It is from this blending that the Pennsylvania German Pow-wow tradition was born.

PowWow (chat program)

PowWow was one of the first Internet instant message and chat programs for Windows. It was made by a company called Tribal Voice, Inc.

Features

Many of the features found in contemporary instant messaging programs were first introduced in PowWow. The program also had several innovative features such as allowing users to talk with each other using VoIP, a shared whiteboard, a built-in speech synthesizer, WAV sound file playing, offline transmittal of instant messages via POP/SMTP, and the ability for users to share their web surfing experience concurrently by redirecting either party to a new URL when another navigates elsewhere. It also had built-in file transfer with a simple drag-and-drop interface to make file sharing very easy.

History

The company was founded in Woodland Park, Colorado, United States, North America, at the end of 1994, by the software millionaire John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates (later called McAfee or Intel Security Group). At first, the company described itself, especially on its web site, as a 'Native American' company run by Native Americans. As the company grew, the Native American references gradually disappeared.