A Dancing People: Powwow Culture on the Southern Plains

by Clyde Ellis

Book Overview

Everywhere they are dancing. From Oklahoma City's huge Red Earth celebration to fund-raising events at local high schools, powwows are a vital element of contemporary Indian life on the Southern Plains. Some see it as tradition, handed down through the generations. Others say it's been sullied by white participation and robbed of its spiritual

significance. But, during the past half century, the powwow has become one of the most popular and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 070061494X
• ISBN13: 9780700614943
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive, personal as well as academic.

[...] As a professional writer always looking for trustworthy research material, I found this book while looking for material on the modern custom of Native American "powwowing". During the summers, Native American peoples travel around the American West and Southwest, visiting dance festivals large and small they call powwows, where they hold dance contests. Dr. Clyde Ellis spent many years studying the several Indian tribes of Oklahoma, eventually becoming adopted into the culture and learning to dance himself. In this book, which is an anthropological text masquerading as an accessible book, a reader will learn about several important Native American dances, their histories and historians, and the great services they have afforded the People. The dancing has been one of the most important things that served to sustain all Native Americans through the last two genocidal centuries. Excellent.