The NEW Pow Wow Calendar is here - Native movie trivia and Upcoming Pow Wows
Published 6 days agoΒ β’Β 10 min read
Reader - I'm writing this from a hotel room 25 hours awake, long flight behind me, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
My wife Kelli is a travel agent, and when she finds a trip worth taking, you don't say no. We're celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary a little early, our actual anniversary isn't until October, but the right trip doesn't always wait for the right date.
1996 was a big year. I finished my master's degree, I started PowWows.com, and I married Kelli. Thirty years later, things are still moving fast, just now with better luggage.
And PowWows.com isn't slowing down to wait for me to get home.
Did you see we did a major redesign of the Pow Wow Calendar? Take a look and let me know what you think. We tried to make it easier to browse and quicker to find the info you need.
This weekend, the team is live streaming from Sisika Pow Wow in Alberta, Canada. And if you know Mike and Delores, you know they don't do anything halfway, they've got 9 consecutive weekends of live streams lined up, and they somehow found a midweek pow wow to sneak in on top of that.
Your replies to these newsletters are a big part of what keeps me going, even at 25 hours without sleep, sitting at a hotel desk.
So thank you, genuinely.
Now go bookmark the live stream page so you don't miss a single drum.
PS - I started a brand new free weekly newsletter called This Week Around Indian Country. Every Thursday, I hand-pick 10 news stories from across Indian Country and drop them straight in your inbox. Politics, culture, gaming, events, the stories that matter. It's free, it's weekly, and if you're not already on it, I'll drop a link below. First issue already went out and the response was great.
You've seen them on the big screen and binge-watched their shows. But how well do you really know Native American actors, movies, and TV?
From the groundbreaking indie films that started it all to the Emmy-winning series lighting up streaming right now, Native talent has been shaping Hollywood for decades β and the stories just keep getting better.
On June 18, 1934, Congress did something it had almost never done before: it admitted that federal Indian policy had been a failure, and it changed direction.
For nearly 50 years, the Dawes Act of 1887 had been breaking up tribal lands, parceling them out as individual "allotments," and selling off whatever was left as "surplus." By the 1930s, tribes had lost roughly two-thirds of the land base they'd held before that policy began β a staggering 90 million acres stripped away in less than five decades. Tribal governments had been pushed aside. Traditional ways of organizing communities were actively discouraged.
The Indian Reorganization Act changed that.
For the first time, tribes were given a real path to write their own constitutions, form their own governments, and manage their own affairs. Land sales to outside buyers stopped. Some lands that had been declared "surplus" began making their way back into tribal hands.
It wasn't perfect. The constitutions were modeled on a federal template, and not every tribe chose to adopt the new system. But it marked a turning point β the first time in decades that Washington's policy moved toward strengthening tribal governments instead of dismantling them.
And that shift didn't stop in 1934. It's still happening.
This spring, more than 1,600 tribal leaders and federal partners gathered for the 2026 Tribal Self-Governance Conference, where tribes shared how they're now designing, funding, and managing their own infrastructure, schools, and health programs β work that decades ago would have been entirely out of their hands. Tribal nations today are running their own school systems, building their own clinics, and managing their own forests and water β not as an exception, but as the standard.
What started as a single act of Congress reversing course in 1934 has grown into something much bigger: tribes leading their own future, on their own terms.
Want more of these types of stories?
π Subscribe to This Week in Native History and make sure the full story is always in your inbox.
If you've ever missed a pow wow because you just didn't know about it in time, this is for you.
The Powwows.com Pow Wow Calendar eBook gives you every pow wow for the next 12 months, organized by state and month, in a searchable PDF you can pull up on your phone anywhere.
New edition every month. Always current. June's book is now available.
$5.00 / month
$3.75 / month
Pow Wow Calendar eBook
View Pow Wow listings by month and state for the next 12 months.
Each month we will send a new edition! The ebook... Read more
Some things are better talked about than just read.
The Circle is where the conversation continues β a place to ask questions, share what you know, post photos from the trail, and connect with people who get it. No ads, no algorithm deciding what you see. Just real people who care about the same things you do.
This week's conversation starter:
Whatβs one destination youβd go back to tomorrow without hesitation?
Come jump into the conversation, see what everybody else is saying, and add your pick too. I always love seeing where these discussions go.
