Powwow regalia

Jingle dress and beaded moccasins detail of Venaya's
powwow regalia.
Photo credit Venaya Yazzie 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A major part of my college experience had nothing to do with academia, in fact much of it had to do with dance and Indigenous Adornment practices. As a college student my week days were spent in the halls of college classrooms, but the weekend were all about roadtrips to powwows in the region.

I was fortunate to have good friends, powwow sisters who adored the powwow life, or powwow trail as much as I. Much of what these ways involved was prayer, dancing and singing, and too the Indigenous human ritual of 'adornment.'

As women of the powwow, we had more than one dress, or as it is called 'powwow regalia.' Such outfits are not 'costumes,' they are the material culture pieces of distinct groups of Indigenous people of the Americas. Please never refer to powwow regalia or other Indigenous cultural clothing as anything else.