We are here on the Umatilla homelands.
All right, let's go.
The Umatilla, the Cayuse, and the Walla Walla people.
We are the plateau people of the Pacific Northwest.
Native people are doing everything today modern.
We're not just doing traditional things.
We are doctors and lawyers; we are artists.
Woo!
I love to snowboard. I love to long board.
I love house music.
That was a fast ride.
Hooey!
We are living in all worlds.
And we can show up in our indigenousness
to anything as well.
My name is Acosia Red Elk.
I'm a jingle dancer and a yoga teacher.
[Metal cones jingling]
When I look back, I wanted to be a dancer so bad.
But the reality that I was in,
I never thought it would happen.
I went on to win a lot of competitions.
One year I won 42 powwows in a row.
That was interesting for me,
because I had to learn how to start accepting myself too.
Like, who am I to win this?
And that was something I learned along the way,
to start loving myself and believing in myself.
Because I never did before.
[Cones jingling]
This is pitishwe.
It is white fir.
Before I like to really start handling my regalia,
I always like to smudge.
I like to smudge my feet.
When I was young, we weren't really a powwow family.
My mom and dad owned an auto body business,
and they worked every day in the shop.
My mom is Scottish, Dutch, French, and Norwegian,
with a little bit of Seneca and Miꞌkmaq in her.
So, she was this white woman that married this native man.
When I was six years old,
I caught on fire and burnt the backside of my body.
I spent three months in the burn concern center in Portland,
and that was really traumatic for my family.
My father started drinking again.
And he wasn't able to quit.
And he died on my ninth birthday.
You know, it just sent me and my siblings
into a downward spiral.
That just gives me a little more support.
[Tape ripping]
And so, when I'd go to the powwow,
I would watch them dance, and I was so...
I was just in awe
of how brave they were and how proud they were.
Fast forward, like, two years,
my sister got a dress made for me.
And when I opened the Christmas present,
I was super excited.
I was like, oh my gosh!
But then I realized that I was gonna have to dance
that night at the Christmas powwow,
and I was [laugh] so scared.
I just remember, like, stepping my first few steps
out onto the dance floor, and I started crying.
I had been pitying my legs
for the scars and what happened to me.
I was just pitying my life.
And then this was the body
and the legs that were carrying me out onto the dance floor,
so it was just a really special moment.
And it changed me.
[Cones jingling]
I got the powwow fever,
and we just, like, hit the powwow trail.
PARIS: My name is Paris Layton.
This is my family.
This is my wife, Acosia.
Here's me putting on, getting half dressed.
ACOSIA: And I learned a lot from my kids' dad.
He taught me how to make regalia.
He taught me how to be a better dancer.
PARIS: There's my lady.
She's completely dressed now.
ACOSIA: Not all the way. PARIS: Naw,
she's still gotta put her feathers and bead work
in her hair. ACOSIA: My hair braids.
PARIS: We're ready to go into the powwow.
Grand entry starts at one.
[Drumming and singing]
ACOSIA: Every dance has their origin story.
The men's traditional dance,
you've got the feathers on their back.
They're the warriors. They tell the story of their battle.
[Drumming, singing, and dresses jingling]
The women's jingle dress dance comes from a dream.
About 1915, 1920, during the Spanish flu pandemic,
and a young girl was really ill,
and her father was a medicine man,
so he went to seek vision.
And in that vision,
he was brought into the sky by the northern lights people.
And they sent him home with a gift
that would heal the people and heal his daughter,
and that gift was actually a sound.
And the people got well when they heard the sound.
[Cones jingling]
And so they brought this dress to surrounding communities,
and it grew and grew in numbers.
And then our dances were taken away from us.
And it was outlawed
to even practice your culture in that way,
especially doing dances.
When we were allowed
to be able to start practicing our culture again,
they started having what they called a powwow.
People were coming from different tribes.
And it was a celebration of song and dance.
And if you wanted to compete for prize money, you could.
And so it kind of became like a sport.
PARIS: It's pretty crowded in here,
but as you can see, we make do.
This is the way we live every weekend.
ACOSIA: For a lot of people,
and for my husband and I for a long time,
we didn't have work outside of powwow.
We just lived on the powwow trail
and took part in our culture.
And there was years that we did 50 powwows in a year.
But the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
it's the biggest powwow in the world.
And basically if you win at that powwow,
you're world champion for a year.
ANNOUNCER: Final two! [crowd cheering]
Acosia versus Tanksi.
[Drumming and singing]
ACOSIA: The first time I got first place at that one
was, like, the biggest win that I had ever had.
I was 24 years old,
and I don't think anybody had won a contest there
from my tribe.
It's interesting to think about growing up as a half-breed
and sometimes feeling like, where do I belong.
ANNOUNCER: Your champion, right out here, spotlight time.
ACOSIA: You know, I had to learn
how to start trusting my voice as a leader
and gaining that confidence,
knowing that I was carrying the name of my tribe with me
and representing them, too.
[Laughing]
Okay, so you guys are all just gonna be looking up this way,
and we're just gonna start out with some basic steps,
and we're gonna find the beat.
And we're just gonna start moving
through the different dance styles.
And with that came a lot of girls from our home
wanting to become dancers.
So we're not just loosely dancing, right.
That's how the guys dance.
They get really loose.
But the women dance like this.
They're proud. Look at my chin.
They keep their head up.
And if they look down,
they look down and then look back up.
And they stay proud.
[Drumming music starts]
A little bit faster.
[Drumming music]
Okay, ready?
Let's go, forward.
Try to be light as a feather.
This is where it starts.
They learn the steps.
Because those first steps are really hard to learn.
There's a lotta footwork and stuff involved,
and all of that is good for the brain.
It's good for your joy, for your happiness, for your heart.
So crossing your feet.
And it ripples outward into the whole family.
You know, it's like that sound of the jingle dress.
It's the sound of the bells.
The sound that the regalia makes,
it ripples outward and people feel it.
[Dress jingling] See how it has that sound?
Powwow dancing has just been a special gift for everybody.
[cheers] Get it, girl, get it.
All right, now let's kick forward.
Now you guys step backward.
So we're just gonna start out by just kind of arriving.
We already know where we are, and these are our homelands.
We're connected in every way to these lands.
And we've never got to practice
in this park together like this in this area.
This is part of the old July grounds.
And our people used to camp here
and have celebrations here in this area.
When I started yoga, my dancing became so much better.
What's your name?
I went to my first yoga class about eight years ago.
And then we're gonna bring our hands to our heart.
Keep holding this.
In class, she said take a deep breath and let it go.
And I just started crying.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
I didn't realize that yoga...
I just didn't know.
Inhale arms up.
In my mind, I was like, oh my gosh,
I have to get certified as soon as possible.
Because I wanna travel around and share this practice
with as many native people as I can,
so that we can start healing faster.
'Cause we have a lot of trauma to heal from.
And yoga can help us to do that.
Scoop up that earth energy and smudge yourself.
Let's just keep going a couple more times.
This is the alarm clock generation.
We've been hitting snooze for a long time.
And people are starting to get up and wipe their eyes
and look out of those foggy lenses.
People are using their voice and being brave.
[Keyboard and drum music]
Everybody is looking to be a part of something special,
something bigger.
And as indigenous people, art is a part of healing.
[rhythmic uplifting music]
I got to do a collaboration with Supaman.
He is a hip-hop influencer.
And that was about six years ago,
and that really opened the doors
for a lot more modern collaborations,
contemporary collaborations that I've been a part of.
♪ Who's gonna stop me when there's no on there to stop me ♪
ACOSIA: I got to do a really neat music video
with Portugal. The Man and Weird Al Yankovic.
Thank you so much for having us here,
we're so honored and so humbled.
[audience cheering and clapping]
I am a part of Indigenous Enterprise,
which is a Native American dance troupe.
We got to open a show in New York City
for Indigenous Peoples' Day.
They had built this circle in the middle,
and nobody even knew we were coming out.
[audience cheering]
It was a lot of younger generation,
and a lot of them had never seen
that type of dancing before.
And so it was really neat to be able to know
that they were exposed to modern day Natives,
sharing the beauty of our pizzazz in today's world.
So we're coming back to ourselves.
We're using our culture to be more strong today,
and sharing it with people so that we can build bridges.
[rhythmic uplifting music]