Southern Style

I know I have my NC friends thinking of BBQ with the title, 'Southern Style' but I'm not talking about food.

I'm talking about my Native American culture and Pow-Wow's.

As defined by Pow-Wow.com:
Pow Wow time is the Native American people's way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships and make new ones.

This past Spring my Mom attended the NC State pow-wow. She did a fabulous job of emailing and inviting her friends out to the pow-wow. I also invited a woman I met during a 20K race. I normally don't race to meet new people but as I was running this one I notice Jen ahead of me. I began to wonder 'Is she Native?'. Sure enough she was...Sioux from up North! It was awesome to meet her and since then I've seen her at many races, out in Umstead for training and it was good to see her again at the NC State pow-wow.

My mother is a Southern Traditional dancer (hence the title of the post!) and at pow-wows there are contests in the different styles of dance. Irv Gaines took this video while my Mom was contesting:

Here's another video showing my Mom and Jen dancing (she's in the pink shawl that my Mom made) during what they call 'Inter-Tribal' meaning everyone dance, regardless of what style you are dancing, what tribe you are from or whether you are dressed to pow-wow dance or not:

So there's a small taste of what a pow-wow is and I promise to invite everyone to the next one!