'My heart was pounding': Chilean reps get surprise welcome to Winnipeg with honour song at airport

A delegation from Chile was greeted with an honour song at the Winnipeg airport Saturday morning.

Marie Jose Soto and Alvaro Pereira run the International Folklore Festival of Concon and are here for Folklorama.

"My heart was pounding just like the beat of the drum," said Jose Soto through a translator. "It really got a hold of me, it was an amazing feeling."

Clifford Spence sang the honour song for the pair to welcome them to Treaty 1 Territory.

In an exchange, Spence performed at the festival in Chile in February with the Summer Bear Dance Troop, which is run by Barbara and Clarence Nepinak.

RAW VIDEO: Chilean group gets surprise welcome to Winnipeg with honour song at airport

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A delegation from Chile was greeted with an honour song at the Winnipeg airport Saturday morning.

"It was a great show, they really made us feel at home," he said. "It's a good thing for us; we learn about them and they learn about us."

The Nepinaks presented the special guests with traditional medicine, tobacco for Pereira, and sage, which is a woman's medicine, for Jose Soto.

At the festival in Chile, Barbara Nepinak performed a water ceremony with other Indigenous people from around the world.

She said they didn't discuss how they do their ceremonies ahead of time and she was shocked to see they were almost the same.

"We all stepped forward at the same time and poured some [water] into the land," she said. "The commonalities we have, we didn't all speak the same language, but we sure understood what we were doing."

Christian Hidalgo-Mazzei, Folklorama'sagency producer, said they haverelationships with other festivals and dothese types of exchanges as a learning experience.

"They basically want to learn about a bigger festival," he said explaining that the one in Concon is just five years old.

The plan is to take the Chileans around to different pavilions so they can see how things are run. Hidalgo-Mazzei said he is looking forward to showing off the multiculturalism of Folklorama.

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"A lot of people forget why this festival exists," he said. "They look at it as entertainment, but really it's there for the preservation of intangible cultural heritage, like to share and practice and do what you do."

Pavilion doors officially open on Sunday, including the Chilean Pavilion, which is at the Notre Dame Recreational Centre.