Thousands Celebrate Native Culture at Gathering of Nations

Thousands Celebrate Native Culture at Gathering of Nations \ Newslooks \ Washington DC \ Mary Sidiqi \ Evening Edition \ The annual Gathering of Nations powwow brought thousands to New Mexico to celebrate Native and Indigenous cultures through dance, music, and art. The event highlights community, healing, and reconnection, blending centuries-old traditions with contemporary expressions. This year’s festivities also unveiled a new USPS stamp series honoring powwow dancers.

Quick Looks

• Largest powwow in North America held in New Mexico
• Thousands of Indigenous dancers, musicians, and artisans participate
• Traditional regalia, horse parades, and Miss Indian World crowned
• Powwow roots traced to 19th-century tribal alliances
• Modern powwows balance tradition with competition and commerce
• Focus remains on healing, community, and cultural identity
• New USPS stamps inspired by powwow dances unveiled
• Cochiti Pueblo artist Mateo Romero honors powwow culture
• Contemporary regalia showcases craftsmanship, identity, and pride
• Smaller tribal powwows play a vital role in tradition

Deep Look

Amid a symphony of pounding drums, jingling bells, swirling colors, and the scent of burning sage, thousands of Indigenous dancers, musicians, and artisans from across the globe descended upon Albuquerque, New Mexico this weekend for the Gathering of Nations — North America’s largest powwow.

What began decades ago as a regional celebration has grown into a massive cultural convergence. It is both a sacred gathering and an international showcase, a place where ancestral traditions meet modern resilience, and where the heartbeat of Indigenous identity beats loudly for all to hear.

A Gathering of Spirit and Story

The Grand Entry at Gathering of Nations is more than a colorful procession — it is a living ceremony, a spiritual renewal, and a powerful assertion of existence.

Dancers from hundreds of tribal nations spiral into the arena, their regalia — stitched, beaded, and feathered by hand — telling stories older than memory. Each piece of cloth, each bead, and each step is a tribute to generations who survived colonization, forced assimilation, and cultural erasure.

“It’s for healing, it’s for strength, it’s for reconnecting,” said Deshava Apachee of the Mescalero Apache and Navajo peoples.
“It’s where we find pieces of ourselves again.”

For many, Gathering of Nations is a pilgrimage: a chance to reaffirm cultural pride, reunite families, and pass sacred knowledge down to the next generation.

Echoes of History: The Origins of Powwows

The modern powwow emerged during one of the darkest periods of Indigenous history — the 19th century, a time of forced relocations, cultural destruction, and genocidal U.S. policies.

Facing unimaginable loss, Indigenous peoples of the Northern and Southern Plains forged intertribal alliances, finding solidarity through shared ceremonies of dance and song.

• Powwows served as a refuge, a place to retain language, traditions, and communal strength.
• Despite government efforts to ban traditional dances and spiritual practices, powwows became acts of quiet resistance.
• Over time, as Indigenous communities were pushed to the margins, these gatherings became a profound assertion: We are still here.

The word “powwow” itself, adapted from the Algonquian term “pau wau” (medicine man), was co-opted by English settlers. It later came to broadly represent Indigenous gatherings — a bittersweet linguistic evolution mirroring the broader history of cultural survival amid misunderstanding.

Tradition, Transformation, and Commercialization

Today, powwows like Gathering of Nations walk a careful line between sacred tradition and modern spectacle.

• Competitive dancing and drumming contests — offering significant prize money — have added a commercial dimension.
• Contemporary regalia, sparkling with sequins and neon accents, blend old-world craftsmanship with new-world flair.
• Categories like fancy shawl, jingle dress, and grass dance reveal stunning athleticism and innovation.

“You dress to impress,” said Warren Queton, a Kiowa Tribe legislator and lifelong dancer.

Yet beneath the pageantry, the purpose remains profound.
For many dancers, it’s about pride, survival, and honor — not prize money.

Smaller community powwows, often far from major cities, remain critical to passing down core cultural values, oral traditions, and language — the heart of Indigenous identity.

Art That Moves: Powwows Immortalized in Paint

This year’s Gathering carried even deeper cultural resonance with the unveiling of a new U.S. Postal Service stamp series, featuring paintings by Cochiti Pueblo artist Mateo Romero.

Romero, known for his dynamic, kinetic portrayals of Native life, captured the electric energy of powwow dance:

• His art mixes soft and hard brushstrokes, photographic realism, and explosions of color.
• In one piece, a fancy shawl dancer leaps across the canvas, shawl tassels slicing the air, embodying movement, spirit, and defiance.

“I look at it as a vehicle to express the energy, the celebration, the vibration, the beauty,” Romero said.
“It’s the power of it.”

For Indigenous communities, seeing powwow culture literally stamped into American consciousness represents a profound victory in the ongoing fight for visibility and respect.

More Than a Festival: A Movement of Renewal

At its core, the Gathering of Nations is about healing and hope.

It’s about a young dancer slipping into beaded moccasins made by their grandmother, stepping into the arena and finding strength in tradition.

It’s about elders whose songs and prayers weave continuity across centuries, and artists whose work ensures cultural survival in a fast-changing world.

It’s about resisting historical erasure with every drumbeat, every feathered bustle, every warrior song sung beneath a high desert sky.

In a world still too quick to sideline Indigenous voices, the Gathering of Nations stands as a living testament:

We are not relics of the past. We are sovereign, vibrant, and enduring.

Final Reflection

The Gathering of Nations is more than a powwow — it is a reclamation of identity, a celebration of resilience, and a symphony of living cultures.
Through drumming, dancing, artistry, and storytelling, Indigenous peoples declare to the world:
We have always been here. We are still here. And we will always be here.

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