Column: Seminole Tribe moves on from Anna Nicole

Thursday, February 15, 2007  

"The day Anna Nicole Smith's corpse was wheeled from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, tribe members were setting up for their annual powwow. The 36th gathering, which began last Thursday, is a celebration of Seminole culture that includes traditional dancing and singing, fair-style food, live music, a rodeo, and merchant booths. Like the hotel complex, the weekend-long event attracts visitors and dollars from well beyond the reservation.

This past weekend, the international media were gone. The lenses had moved to Nassau, where Anna Nicole's paramour, Howard K. Stern, was busy selling his reunion with her baby, Dannielynn, to Entertainment Tonight and the New York Post.

On Sunday, inside the complex's Paradise arena, a sparse audience watched as more than a hundred Native Americans meandered in a circle on a beige, earth floor to the vigorous beats of clans in various drum circles. Some walked slowly and chatted, others carried babies, and the most exuberant twirled in place as they made their way around.

The scene was an affirmation of cultural perseverance. It was also a rebuke to the disposable culture exemplified by Anna Nicole Smith, and to the journo-jackals who arrived Thursday to feed on her carcass. They were gone by the weekend, trailing front page headlines from New York to Sidney, filing solemn stand-ups from outside Smith's Bahamas mansion.

There will be no mention of the shape-shifting, would-be starlet in the pages of the next bimonthly Seminole Tribune, 'Voice of the Unconquered,' which concerns itself generally with positive news about the tribe, like its recent acquisition of the Hard Rock franchise for a billion dollars."

Get the Story:
Frank Houston: The Seminole Sun Sets on Anna Nicole (The Miami New Times 2/15)