Pow Wow dancers; their stories

What is a Pow Wow? A Pow-Wow is a social gathering held by many different Native American communities. A modern pow-wow is a specific type of event for Native American people to meet and dance, sing, socialize and honour their cultures. Pow wows may be private or public. There is generally a dancing competition, with many different types of traditional dances, music and regalia, often with significant prize money awarded. The word “pow wow” is derived from the Narragansett word powwaw, meaning "spiritual leader". Initially, public dances that most resemble what we now know as pow wows were most common in the Great Plains region of the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when the United States government fragmented many Native communities in the hopes of acquiring land for economic exploitation. In 1923, Charles Burke, Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the United States, passed legislation modeled on Circular 1665, which he published in 1921, that limited the times of the year in which Native Americans could practice traditional dance, which he deemed as directly threatening the Christian religion. However, many Native communities continued to gather together in secret to practice their cultures’ dance and music, in defiance of this, and other, legislation. By the mid-nineteenth century, pow wows were also being held in the Great Lakes region. My project was to take portraits of Pow Wow dancers at one of their celebrations, surrounded by the music and their dances but at the same time isolating them as photographic subjects. I asked them to tell me a brief story of them including a description of their regalia. The stories give the subject and outfit a context. That context can explain, especially to non-native people, how a regalia is not a costume but a way to represent each people's personality.