Cameron Chaske, Spirit Lake Dakota Sioux.

For millennia the Native people of this country have danced. They dance for spiritual reasons… “I dance to pray. I pray to heal.” They dance to bring a favorable outcome to a harvest or a hunt or a battle.

In the mid-to-late-1800s their dancing began shifting toward cultural preservation. These dancing events became known as pow wows. Pow wows are not tourist attractions; they are a deep spiritual tradition.

In 2019, I was at a pow wow in the small Indian town of Poplar on the Fort Peck Reservation. I was the only white person there. The Grand Entry Parade had just begun…all the dancers stepping in time to the intense, powerful drumming.

Suddenly, abruptly, I was lost in time. What I was witnessing could have been a hundred years ago, could have been a thousand.

As I watched from the sidelines, a proud young man in dance regalia and war paint passed in front of me. I was seeing him in profile, dramatically backlit by the late afternoon sun.

Later, when I photographed Cameron Chaske, all I had to do was duplicate what I saw (and felt) at the pow wow.

Robert Osborn