Powwow

2011 Powwow Princess

Drumming.  Nothing like a powwow for drumming, all sizes of drums, varied rhythms.  Spring is the beginning of powwow season, a time to celebrate surviving the winter one more time, and the Denver Inter-Tribal Powwow is one of the first.   As with the ancestors, stories are told with music and drumming to pass on their traditions to the young ones, who are much in evidence.

The Grand Entry

 The Heartbeat Drum Group carrying drums and singing "A Living Hoop," is followed by by a chief with an Eagle staff, and a veterans color guard. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines,Vietnam Vets and MIAst.

Women Warriors

Native American servicewomen in uniforms from the various branches, others dressed in red Indian dresses, march together as Women Warriors.  They are followed by flags of the Indian Nations, the male dancers, starting with the elders, middle-aged men, young men, followed by the women and children, dancing, dancing in traditional clothes whose symbols I cannot decipher.

The announcer says that powwows originated with the warriors gathering to trade war stories and showing off their dancing skills.

The dancers are the very definition of light of foot, the children and teenagers barely touching the ground.


Tribal groups enter, and competitive dancers dressed for their events join the parde.  To the drumming and intermittent singing the crowd spirals around the arena floor of the Denver Coliseum until it is packed, a mass of color and movement, hundreds dancing individually.

After tobacco is offered with prayer to the Creator, together all dance the Victory Dance.  This is a warrior culture.

Other than these opening ceremonies, men and women rarely dance at the same time.

Traditional women dancers wear buckskin or cloth outfits.  The buckskin is decorated with beads; the cloth outfits with ribbons or porcupine quillwork.  Matching headband or crown, hair tie, purses, moccasins, chokers, and are topped off with shawls.  The beadwork or ribbon work identifies the woman's tribe or family.   Women who have an Indian name will wear an eagle plume in their hair.

The Jingle Dress Dancer costumes are attention grabbers, bells jangling.  They dance sidestep.  Originally the cone Jingles were carved of wood, but now they are now made of chewing tobacco lids.  The Jingle Dress dance is a competitive intertribal dance style, but the ceremonial healing dances associated with Jingle dances are not performed in public.

The young women Fancy Shawl Dancers swoop and circle.  The drumming gets into your feet, and you want to run down to join the dance.  But you have no feathers and you can't kick up your heels like that any more.

The Fancy Shawl Dance outfit includes matching bead-worked cape, belt, moccasins and leggings, and the dancer ties otter or beaver fur to her braids and wears a color-coordinated scarf.  While the costumes are elaborate and colorful, fancy actually refers to the footwork.  The young women started dancing the faster Fancy Dances of the young men in the 1950's, to the disapproval of their elders.  As more and more young women started dancing this style, it was grudgingly accepted. Fancy Shawl Dance is now extremely popular.





Oh yes, if you go to the powwow, you want to dance.