Native American Student Union hosted largest annual student-led event held on campus

By Cameron Aalto, Ashland.news

More than 2,000 community members gathered over the weekend for Southern Oregon University’s (SOU) 31st annual powwow. The event, hosted by the school’s Native American Student Union (NASU) at the Lithia Motors Pavilion, is known as the largest student-led event on campus. The event spanned both Saturday and Sunday, with grand entries Saturday afternoon and evening and again mid-day Sunday.

A powwow is a cultural event that gathers Native community members and their allies together to participate in cultural music, dancing, shopping and food. 

This year, NASU welcomed more than 10 tribal royalty participants, the largest number of royalty ever in attendance. To become tribal royalty, an individual is judged at a powwow on aspects like performance, participation and public speaking skills. The skills that judges are looking for are dependent on the powwow and often differ. Once a royalty participant is crowned, they are expected to represent their tribe or tribes by attending public events and stepping into the role of a cultural ambassador. 

This year, the powwow welcomed Tori McConnell, the holder of the most prestigious cultural title of Miss Indian World for young Indigenous women between the ages of 18 and 25. McConnell was a featured speaker at the powwow and spoke about the removal of the Klamath River dams, the largest dam removal to occur in the world. The topic of the dam removal was a theme at the powwow as a water blessing to honor past, present, and future water warriors also occurred at the event.

SOU’s powwow is well regarded for its intertribal and international nature as it is an event where all are welcome regardless of background. In addition to the dances typical to the powwow, SOU welcomed three separate cultural presentations. The first and second were performances by Aztec Dancers and SOU’s Samoan Club. The third was a Karuk Brush Dance demonstration. Saturday’s demonstrations were followed by a community dinner offered by NASU.

New to the powwow this year was the Indian taco sale. Over the past few years, NASU has fed the masses by cooking frybread (fried dough, often topped with honey or butter and sugar), but this year they branched out to Indian tacos (frybread with taco toppings like meat, beans, cheese and vegetables). The stand garnered so much attention from attendees that on Saturday it sold out before the dinner rush. 

SOU’s powwow is completely student led, so in order to bring it all together, NASU has its own Powwow Planning Committee that has met weekly since early November, including committee member Aiyanna Brown. Brown is Komemma Kalapuya, Hanis Coos, and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians. Brown is a new transfer student to SOU having joined the university and NASU this fall. 

Asked about her involvement in NASU and the planning committee, she said, “NASU and the powwow committee has really welcomed me in … We’ve done everything from inviting vendors and drummers, dancers, royalty program, doing a frybread stand, reserving the space, and so many other moving parts.”

While Brown has experience dancing at powwows, this is her first time in 13 years to dance while wearing her cultural regalia.

“When I was a teenager … I didn’t really powwow a whole lot, and I didn’t really do a lot with my culture anymore like I did when I was young and my parents, you know, were dragging me to powwows,” she said. “As I’ve gotten a little bit older, it’s made me really realize how important my heritage and culture is … so, being able to kind of step back into this cultural role a little bit to be able to … wear my regalia for my ancestors and work on my language and, you know, make some frybread … I feel like I can feel all the other powerful Native women before me comin’ through my body.” 

Asked about the significance of powwows in her life, Brown said that powwow is a gathering place of “all people, all the people from all the aspects of life, from Native people to non-Natives to people who are Native and don’t know that they’re Native, you know, and I think that just the different people that come together for powwow just makes a really cool, diverse, really welcoming group.” 

Ashland.news intern Cameron Aalto is a senior at Southern Oregon University. Email him at aaltoc@sou.edu.