In this piece a member of a small Texas tribe, John Black Feather, takes us behind the scenes of what goes on in a public Pow Wow. The piece has a number of nice scenes and uses a lot of natural sound. The production itself was well done and well mixed. There wasn’t really anything new or insightful in the piece. It was a loose narrative strung together with excerpts of Native American drumming. After having extensive exposure to the Navajo and Hopi of northern Arizona in my previous job, I think there can be a tendency sometimes to treat many topics involving Native American customs and traditions almost too gently and reverently. The tradition certainly deserves the attention. But what is the intention of this radio piece? Who is the intended audience? There have been so many radio pieces on Pow Wows and this one didn’t cover enough territory for me and much of the information was almost too much at a surface level for such a lengthy feature report.

Native American culture is often consumed by mainstream America for its art, clothing, jewelry and spirituality, but in the last few years non-Natives have been heading to the Pow Wows and many nations have been opening up these events as cultural festivals for the general public. This piece gives us the insider perspective of the Pow Wow replete with sounds to help us experience it ourselves. This piece would fit in any news magazine program especially for station that do not presently do much Native American programming. An audio note: There is a two minute tale of music that would be great to end a magazine show with under final credits.