Powwow's coming, hear the beat? Powwow's coming, dancing feet. Powwow's coming, hear the drum? Powwow's coming, everyone! Frustrated as a schoolteacher not being able to find good instructional materials on American Indians, Linda Boyden has bypassed the tired stereotype of Indians on horseback or hunting game and placed them in today's setting of a powwow. Powwow's Coming provides children with a foundation for understanding and celebrating the enduring culture and heritage of American Indians. Boyden's exquisite cut-paper collage and engaging poem visually place readers within the scenes of a contemporary Native American community while offering a thoughtful look at powwows and their meanings to the Native participants.

Profiles powwow traditions. and their meanings.

In this uplifting, contemporary Native American story, River is recovering from illness and can't dance at the powwow this year. Will she ever dance again? River wants so badly to dance at powwow day as she does every year. In this uplifting and contemporary picture book perfect for beginning readers, follow River's journey from feeling isolated after an illness to learning the healing power of community. Additional information explains the history and functions of powwows, which are commonplace across the United States and Canada and are open to both Native Americans and non-Native visitors. Author Traci Sorell is a member of the Cherokee Nation, and illustrator Madelyn Goodnight is a member of the Chickasaw Nation.

Ho-Chunk powwows are the oldest powwows in the Midwest and among the oldest in the nation, beginning in 1902 outside Black River Falls in west-central Wisconsin. Grant Arndt examines Wisconsin Ho-Chunk powwow traditions and the meanings of cultural performances and rituals in the wake of North American settler colonialism. As early as 1908 the Ho-Chunk people began to experiment with the commercial potential of the powwows by charging white spectators an admission fee. During the 1940s the Ho-Chunk people decided to de-commercialize their powwows and rededicate dancing culture to honor their soldiers and veterans. Powwows today exist within, on the one hand, a wider commercialization of and conflict between intertribal “dance contests” and, on the other, efforts to emphasize traditional powwow culture through a focus on community values such as veteran recognition, warrior songs, and gift exchange. In Ho-Chunk Powwows and the Politics of Tradition Arndt shows that over the past two centuries the dynamism of powwows within Ho-Chunk life has changed greatly, as has the balance of tradition and modernity within community life. His book is a groundbreaking study of powwow culture that investigates how the Ho-Chunk people create cultural value through their public ceremonial performances, the significance that dance culture provides for the acquisition of power and recognition inside and outside their communities, and how the Ho-Chunk people generate concepts of the self and their society through dancing.

This anthology examines the origins, meanings, and enduring power of the powwow. Held on and off reservations, in rural and urban settings, powwows are an important vehicle for Native peoples to gather regularly. Although sometimes a paradoxical combination of both tribal and intertribal identities, they are a medium by which many groups maintain important practices.

Using the yardstick that a short story is any fiction under 15,000 words, Ishmael Reed--with the assistance of Carla Blank--has assembled an anthology that reexamines the history of the form across a broader, more inclusive spectrum. The result is a collection that stretches the boundaries of the American literary landscape, including work ranging from animal stories of the Northwest Coast Eyaks to African-American folklore to reflections on the American Muslim experience. Pow-Wow is the sequel to Reed's From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, a volume that included both Tupac Shakur and T. S. Eliot, and was named one of the best poetry anthologies of 2003 by Library Journal. Its fiction-focused follow-up once again demonstrates the broad range of American writing, from such stellar names as Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Russell Banks, and Alejandro Murguíto newly discovered writers of all races, genders, and backgrounds. By presenting many different sides to the American story, the fiction of these writers challenges official history, shatters accepted myths, and provides alternatives to mainstream notions of personal and national identity. Gathering these voices together, Pow Wow offers a fascinating and vital opportunity to traverse the fault lines that separate, distinguish, and define a nation made of many Americas.