Powwow! Ohcîwin the Origins

Powwow! Ohcîwin* The Origins features 7 powwow dance styles, with full Regalia and craft work. Curators and creators, Patrick Mitsuing and Marrisa Mitsuing, have gathered the stories, worked with the Artisans, and carefully built the Regalia for this exhibition organized by the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery. Working with a diverse team of Indigenous Artists from Western Canada and the US they assembled each of the individual dance regalia on display. During the 2019 and 2020 Powwow season, they met with knowledge keepers across North America to record the origin stories of the dances they perform.

The dances on display are : Men’s Traditional, Men’s Fancy, Men’s Chicken, Men’s Grass, Women’s Traditional, Women’s Fancy and Women’s Jingle.

Guest curator of the exhibition, Fran- Rogers Chowace, focus is to create visual space for the local powwow dancers and Woodland Cree history and people of this region to shine; featuring the Traditional Paths’ Society dancers and local elders/knowledge keepers.

Exhibition organized and toured by the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery (MAG, Red Deer, AB). The MAG acknowledges the generous funding support provided by the City of Red Deer, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Alberta Museums Association, Waskasoo Museum Foundation and Marguerite Lerouge Watson.

* Ohcîwin is a Cree word meaning “The Origin” or telling of a story where something originated.

Media: TravelMag.com has listed Powwow! Ohcîwin the Origins one of 10 Exhibitions to Visit in Alberta this Summer.