{"id":507,"date":"2021-06-14T20:16:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T20:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/23\/?p=507"},"modified":"2026-06-19T11:58:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:58:25","slug":"challenging-settler-colonial-choreographies-during-covid-19-acosia-red-elks-powwow-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/23\/challenging-settler-colonial-choreographies-during-covid-19-acosia-red-elks-powwow-yoga\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenging Settler Colonial Choreographies During COVID-19: Acosia Red Elk\u2019s Powwow Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tria Blu Wakpa<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Scholars have often overlooked the vital knowledge in movement forms with Indigenous roots, such as powwow dance and yoga. This article offers the framework of settler colonial choreographies to describe how U.S. structures come to bear on the bodies and movements of Indigenous people and more-than-humans in ways that infringe on their freedom and futurities. Conversely, I analyze the Powwow Yoga workout videos that Acosia Red Elk (Umatilla Tribe) posted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her decolonial choreographies challenge settler colonialism by (1) centering contemporary Native peoples, women, and practices; (2) creating critical connections; and (3) orchestrating healing.
Keywords<\/strong>: Native American, indigenous, dance, yoga, settler colonialism, COVID-19, incarceration<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We dance to change ourselves. Only when we have done this can we try to change the earth. (Leonard Crow Dog, Sicangu Lakota medicine man and spiritual leader (Crow Dog and Erdoes 144))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame. (B.K.S. Iyengar, the internationally renowned yoga teacher and practitioner (Yoga<\/em> 35))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t powwow as much and it\u2019s because my message has changed. I have a message now to share and that is that we can heal ourselves through movement, breath, prayer, and mindful practices. (Acosia Red Elk, a ten-time world champion jingle dress dancer and the founder of Powwow Yoga (Goodman))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Summer 2011, I was regularly teaching yoga to Lakota youth who were incarcerated at Wanbli Wiconi Tipi (Eagle Life Center), a tribal juvenile detention center on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, located on Lakota lands in what is often referred to as South Dakota, U.S. I concluded one of the classes as I usually did by inviting the young people to bring their hands to their heart center and collectively say, \u201cNamaste,\u201d a Sanskrit word, which I explained to the youth translates to \u201cthe light in me recognizes and honors the light in you.\u201d Thoughtfully, one young man\u2014a theorist in the flesh (Moraga and Anzald\u00faa xvii)\u2014asked, \u201cBut what if your light is dim?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youth\u2019s question, which I have considered ever since, suggests to me how the interlocking and enduring structures of U.S. settler colonialism and capitalism continue to detrimentally impact Native Americans. As connected to tribal nations, Native peoples challenge the settler state\u2019s supposed authority and stability. U.S. systemic structures, which inform policies and practices, directly come to bear on the bodies and movements of Indigenous people and more-than-humans in ways that infringe on their freedom and futurities, what I term \u201csettler colonial choreographies.\u201d I define more-than-humans as air, land, water, the cosmos, and nonhuman animals (Todd 66; Tuck and Yang 5). From the late nineteenth century to the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the U.S. government largely prohibited Native dance and spiritualities (Shea Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing<\/em> 85, 199).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My framework of settler colonial choreographies draws on articulations of \u201ccolonial choreographies\u201d in and beyond Dance and Indigenous Studies, which often describe how colonizers have sought to control and subordinate Native and people of color bodies, movements and performances on and off stage with material consequences that have detrimentally impacted them (Belghiti; Madamperum Arachchilage; Marchinko; Le; Oh).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My theorization of settler colonial choreographies departs from these previous iterations by emphasizing how U.S. policies and practices have not only affected Native humans, but also Indigenous more-than-humans. Inspired by some of the scholarship on \u201ccolonial choreographies\u201d as well as Susan Foster\u2019s writing about social movements from a Dance Studies lens (397), this article conceives broadly of \u201cchoreographies,\u201d which allows me to illuminate how the settler state has aimed to manage Native bodies and mobilities while Native people have participated in, negotiated, and rejected these goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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