American Festivals: Oglala Lakota Nation Pow Wow

Today marks the start of the annual Oglala Lakota Nation Pow Wow, one of the nation’s largest powwows, and it will be held on the Pine Ridge Reservation outside Badlands National Park in South Dakota through August 8. Last year, photographers Andrew Owen and Ross McDermott visited the Pow Wow as part of their year-long American Festivals Project, which was partially funded by a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant. They documented the festivities and also took a beautiful series of portraits of attendees who had entered competitions there, noting that:

On the Pine Ridge reservation, fewer and fewer of the younger

generation are speaking Lakota. Basketball is far more popular year

round than native dancing. And traditional garb is worn far more

infrequently than contemporary urban labels. In an era of surging wealth for Indian communities who are distancing

from their past and profiting from casinos and natural resource

extraction, it’s unclear how Pine Ridge will evolve and transform, if

ever. For the time being, it is a community close to its history, and

struggling, just as the rest of the U.S. does, with how to hold onto the

past as it moves into a new and unpredictable future.

You can a gallery of festival images on National Geographic’s American Festival Project site, and read more about their experience on their blog. Click through to watch at video of the festival.

[American Festivals Project: Pow Wow Parade]
[Oglala Lakota Nation Pow Wow]
[American Festivals Project]

Photo: Andrew Owens; Video: Andrew Owens and Ross McDermott