Bucky Harjo, Grass Dancer, 2022, digital photograph
The exhibition, 'Dancing for the Earth, Dancing for the People: Pow Wow Regalia and Art of the Great Basin' at the Great Basin Native Artists Gallery inside the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum will display contemporary pow wow dance regalia, photography, mixed media sculpture, Great Basin beadwork, digital graphic design and more. This exhibition was curated by Melissa Melero-Moose (Fallon Paiute/Modoc), founder of Great Basin Native Artists Collective. It opens on Wednesday.
Curator Melero-Moose describes the aim of the exhibition which “seeks to display a small view into the pow wow culture and how contemporary and historical regalia were never 'costumes’ to the Indigenous peoples of this continent.”
“The contemporary pow wow is a social gathering, a competitive dance contest, an art exhibition, a cultural exchange, and so much more. Evolving over the years from traditional tribal ceremony, which continues, and grows stronger, the pow wow brings the people together many times each year in healing, dance, drumming and song,” she adds.
Some of the participating artists will include Phil Buckheart, Bucky Harjo, Linda Eben Jones, Jack Malotte, Lyndah Steele, Theo Steele, Janice Eben Stump, Chad Yellow John, and Bhie-Cie Zahn-Nahtzu.
The exhibition will run from through May 26, 2023, inside the GBNA Gallery, inside the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center & Museum, 1 Jacobsen Way, Carson City, Nevada. The Great Basin Native Artists Gallery’s mission is to gain a better knowledge and awareness of the art and peoples of the Great Basin and to create opportunities for this underrepresented region in all forms of the arts.
