27-04-2025
Gallery: UND's 53rd Time Out Wacipi
Apr. 27—GRAND FORKS — Bradley Davis started dancing at powwows last year, after a yearslong lull.
An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, he'd been a dancer growing up but had fallen out of the habit as he'd gotten older.
But when his 6-year-old daughter started dancing, he'd been drawn back in.
"For her to keep dancing, I've got to keep dancing," said Davis, who donned aviators over red-and-black face paint as part of his regalia at the 53rd annual Time Out Wacipi. (The frames left tear-shaped indents on his nose.)
"We go to powwows whenever we can," he added. "It's in your spirit. ... It's a family thing."
Friday and Saturday saw the return of Time Out Wacipi to Grand Forks, hosted for the first time at the Alerus Center after a long history at the now-defunct Hyslop Sports Center.
Organizers started the annual powwow — "wacipi" is a Dakota/Lakota word for powwow — in the early 1970s as a way to educate UND's predominantly white population about Native American culture at a time of heightened racial unrest.
More than half a century later, though, the powwow is just as much a point of connection between North Dakota and neighboring states' Native communities.
"You always learn something new," said Daniel Henry, who directs UND's INMED program. "You learn a new dance or the origin of the dance, or a new song or the origin of the song or its meaning."
Henry is, by his own contention, an "expert powwower." At the Time Out powwow, he's danced, sung, directed and emceed the event at various points in his career.
Powwows have long been points of cultural exchange, he said, between tribes as well as non-Natives.
This is where dances and songs have been exchanged between tribes, like the grass dance that originated with the Omaha people, who shared it with the Sioux, who shared it with the Hidsata people.
Henry cited powwows as an example of Pan-Indianism, a philosophical approach promoting unity among different Native tribes.
He also said powwows were places where people have formed lifelong friendships and relationships.
"It's about meeting old friends, reminiscing, sharing memories, and meeting new friends, making new memories, and just celebrating life itself," Henry said. "We share meals, jokes, stories, and just have a good time."
Wilf Abigosis, a member of the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation in Manitoba, said powwows like the Time Out Wacipi were critical for Native people to continue.
"That's how Native Americans survive, through ceremony," Abigosis said.
Danielle DeCoteau drove up from Sisseton, South Dakota, for the Time Out Wacipi.
Like Davis, she'd taken up dancing again after a 19-year lull, where she joined the Navy and did two tours, one active-duty and one in the reserves.
Dancing was a way for her to start to heal after her military service, where she lost friends to the fighting in the United States' wars in the Middle East.
The Time Out Wacipi was one of the first powwows she attended after leaving the military.
"When you get treated good, you want to go back," she said. "And we've always been treated good."
Growing up, DeCoteau practiced fancy dance, a style of dance characterized by high-adrenaline movement and fast footwork.
When she'd returned to it, after nearly two decades, she took up traditional dance — specifically, a victory dance for warriors.
