Powwow (review)

As the first collection of essays devoted solely to powwow culture, the goal of this offering is to explore the dynamism of the expressive culture of powwow. According to the introduction,

Once widely considered an icon of a post–World War II Pan-Indian movement in which Native people seemed to be part of a homogenized, melting pot Indian culture, in fact powwow culture began as—and remains—a complicated amalgam of sources and practices reflecting both particular and generalized notions of identity.

(viii)

Contributors explore intertribal—“You know, when they sing at powwows, the emcee calls it a set of intertribal songs, not a set of Pan-Indian songs”—elements of powwow, as well as its numerous local and regional differences and meanings (xiii). To accomplish this, the collection is helpfully organized into three parts: “History and Significance,” “Performance and Expression,” and “Appropriations, Negotiations, and Contestations.” The editors want “to draw attention to some of the differences and similarities from community to community and group to group and to help point the way towards a more systematic and nuanced cross-cultural understanding of powwows” (xiii). Furthermore, the collection’s goal is “not to cover all of the powwow’s cultural practices, geographical regions, dances, or song styles but simply to spark interest in the powwow as something more than a set of generalized cultural practices” (xiii). As a reader situated in the Columbia Plateau of the Northwest, my appreciation for local, regional, and other differences in this enormously important “life way” has been deepened considerably by this useful and at times deeply engaging collection.

Four essays in “Part I: History and Significance” provide a background on the emergence, growth, and ritual elements of what we think of today as powwow. Patricia Albers and the late Beatrice Medicine present “Some Reflections on Nearly Forty Years on the Northern Plains Powwow Circuit,” stating, “The greatest changes we have witnessed over the past thirty-seven years have to do, on the one hand, with shifts in the relative support that certain kinds of celebrations receive and, on the other hand, with the sheer growth and diversification of certain powwow activities” (28). The authors refer to a continuum of celebratory events from “longstanding tribal traditions controlled entirely by native peoples” to “a world of commercial festivals under the direction of white-run civic organizations” (28–29). Albers and Medicine compare and contrast “traditional” and “contest” powwows and the rise of powwow dance as a “professional occupational class” with prize money exceeding $100,000. They conclude that white-run exhibitions have declined in numbers, support, and importance, and that family-run celebrations still survive and flourish and are “standing at the heart of today’s celebratory activity” (41). Traditional powwows are “turning away from commercialism and competitive dance while intertribal context powwows have become much more commercialized, regimented and ‘professionalized’” (42). Above all, powwow persists, Albers and Medicine claim, “for the sheer enjoyments they offer, for the good feelings they bring, and for the aesthetic pleasures they create” (42).

Essays in “Part 2: Performance and Expression” explore the discourse of tradition in Lakota identity through the dance and song of the powwow complex, the largely dialogic role of emcee discourses in powwow, the significance of the powwow princess. In “East Meets West: On Stomp Dance and Powwow Worlds in Oklahoma,” we are reminded that very local and specific dance traditions existed long before the emergence of what we now call powwow, and that both traditions persist simultaneously today in groups whose “common heritage is rooted in homelands in the southeastern or northeastern Woodland region” and who now live in Oklahoma (173). Jason Baird Jackson provides detailed and vivid descriptions of the specifics of Stomp Dance traditions.

“Part 3: Appropriations, Negotiations, and Contestations” is for me the most exciting and thought-provoking section of the collection. Five essays explore important yet lesser researched locations and manifestations of powwow traditions, including “The Monacan Nation Powwow: Symbol of Indigenous Survival and Resistance in the Tobacco Row Mountains,” “Two...