Young Kanza warrior fond of old traditions

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Jason Schaap
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. --  At a pow wow, Army Pvt. Skyler Mathews isn't hard to pick out.

He's the Kanza dancer with .50 caliber bullet casings strapped across his bare chest. Right next to his dog tags and tattoos (last name and service in the exact places they appear on his fatigues).

He's the one, during his tribe's most recent pow wow in northern Oklahoma, not wearing any underwear.

It looked "pretty neat and original," a local middle-aged woman told him later that night at a Kaw City, Okla., public house--a place he and some friends went to relax after two straight days of dancing (the Kaw Nation, the adopted tribe of the 931st Air Refueling Group, is headquartered in Kaw City).

It would be easy to say Pvt. Mathews isn't the timid type. Dancing shirtless, he knows firsthand, is enough to raise questions among tribe members. Entering the pow wow circle commando style takes (besides a pair of the obvious) a certain unconventional willingness.

"In the 15 years I've been dancing," the 23-year old national guard infantryman said proudly, "I've never seen someone not wear britches."

The irony of Pvt. Mathews is that he doesn't really, as they say, dance to the beat of his own drum. He does what he does because, as he said, "That's what my Grandpa would have wanted us to do."

Ken Bellmard Sr., his grandfather, grew up on the Oklahoma land that his tribe was banished to in 1872. Officially recognized by the federal government as the Kaw Nation, they had been known as the Kanza people before they were removed from their ancestral homelands in Kansas, the state that bares the tribe's name.

Bellmard was sent to a government school where he was not allowed to speak his native language or follow his tribal customs. The school had the opposite of its intended effect.

As a man, Bellmard championed his Kanza heritage and didn't mince words about it. And that was how he essentially raised his grandson after Pvt. Mathews' parents split up.

"He was a straight forward guy," Pvt. Mathews said. "He was pretty much like my pops."

Bellmard wasn't concerned with modern, unwritten rules about shirts. His Kanza ancestors didn't dance with a shirt on--why should his grandson have to?

"'It looked good,'" Pvt. Mathews remembered his granddad saying, before cancer took his life several years ago. "He said I shouldn't wear a shirt."

A photographer was looking for Pvt. Mathews on the last day of the Kaw's 2009 pow wow. "I think he's over there," another participant said. "Make sure he has underwear on before you take his picture."

For those present two nights earlier, there was no denying Pvt. Mathews was without drawers. "Are you the guy who danced without any underwear?" was a popular question following his performance.

Yes, that was me he answered. And "yeah," he said a fews days later, "I probably will do it again,"

Dance the way his ancestors did. Because that it is what his grandfather would have wanted him to do.