Peggy Bulger: For those of you who don't know me I'm Peggy Bulger,
and I'm Director of the American Folk Life Center.
And it's my pleasure to welcome you to our Homegrown Concert
for November 2007 and of course we're celebrating this month,
Native-American Heritage Month.
And to do that our Homegrown Concert has a really wonderful performance
for you.
We are having this particular concert is also co-sponsored
by the Law Library of Congress
and also the Office of Workforce Diversity.
And we have two of the most incredibly versatile artists
from the great state of South Dakota for you.
And at some point we may have a representative from the great state
of South Dakota come say a few words on stage.
What I wanted to let you know is that you might have gotten,
and I hope you did get, an audience survey form when you came
through the door, and it's really important that you fill
that out before you go because in order for us to continue
with public concerts we need
to survey the audience and make a report.
Those of you who work for the Library of Congress know about that.
We have another report to write.
But it would help us immensely if you do fill that out.
Also there is one other event that I wanted to bring your attention
to which is also in celebration of Native-American Heritage Month.
And that is that -- coming up Louis Fisher will be moderating a panel
discussion titled "Indian Religious Freedom: To Litigate or Legislate."
And that will be held on November 28th at noontime in West Dining Room
over in the Madison Building.
So if you can please join us for that particular event also.
But today we are presenting two
of the first place world hoop dance champions.
A father and a daughter, who've joined together to model
and dance a vision of male and female balance, harmony and respect
as traditionally practiced by their ancestors.
And of course, I want to remind you that all
of these concerts are being recorded for the permanent collections
of the Library of Congress
and so we're making what we're considering a new collection
of the very best of 21st century traditional music and dance.
In order to welcome and give you a little background
about what we're seeing, we've been working with state folklorists
around the country and it's my great pleasure to introduce
to you Andrea Graham, who's serving as the state folklorist
of South Dakota as well as other jobs that she does around the West.
Andrea's an independent folklorist.
I've actually known her for over 25 years.
We were just figuring out, we use to work together in Florida.
[applause] Andrea Graham: Thanks, Peggy.
It's a real treat to be here, and especially
with these wonderful artists that we've brought from South Dakota.
I want to tell you just a little bit about them, but they are going
to talk quite a bit about their culture, their dance
and they are much more articulate than I am about it so,
I'm just going to give you a quick introduction of Dallas Chief Eagle,
is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe,
and he has been hoop dancing since the age of 13.
He saw a dancer and was just inspired to start
and is wearing the same Argalia as when he started dancing at age 13
and his Argalia is full of symbolism,
which I'm sure he'll talk about.
Jasmine Pickner is a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe.
She is Dallas' stepdaughter.   She's also his hunka daughter,
which is a Lakota traditional form of adoption.
It allows children to have multiple parents so that if something happens
to their biological parents they always have that support.
As Dallas says, it makes them spiritual relatives
and so there are hunka relatives also.
And she's been dancing since she was a toddler.
They've worked together, of course, for many years
but they've had two apprenticeships
through the South Dakota Arts Council, where Dallas has worked
with Jasmine to teach her both the dance --
they worked up some dances --
their joint presentation which they'll be doing today,
and also teaching her how to sort of manage herself as a dancer,
as a professional performer.   And she's really progressed rapidly.
And after the first apprenticeship she went on to win the teen division
of the National Hoop Dance championships,
and she was the first female to do so.
She's one of the first female hoop dancers
and I hope they'll talk a lot about that.
[applause] It's really traditionally been a male dance,
but there are women now starting to come into this
and she's one of the first.
So they talk a lot about male and female roles
in traditional Lakota culture and the dance illustrates that
and the whole symbolism of the hoop and the circle
in Native life is very, very important
and I'm sure they'll share that with us.
Representative Herseth, would you like to come up and say a few words?
Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
from South Dakota just joined us.
[applause] [low audio] Stephanie Herseth Sandlin:
Well this is a real honor for me to be able
to welcome two very special constituents of mine to Washington,
D.C. to share with you the beauty of the Lakota culture.
It has been wonderful for me over the last number of years
to learn more from our elders and from our young people
who are inspiring to so many back home in South Dakota
and certainly inspiring to me as their representative here
in Washington to work on issues important to the future
of Native people in South Dakota and across the country.
I hope you'll enjoy -- I know you'll enjoy what you're going to be seeing
and hearing from both Dallas and Jasmine here today.
It is extraordinary.
The talent and again, the beauty of the culture that is important
to the state of South Dakota and I think certainly,
historically important to the entire United States of America.
So thank you both for being here and sharing your talents
and sharing your wisdom, and again just sharing beauty of the culture.
[applause] Andrea Graham: Just going
to present Dallas Chief Eagle and Jasmine Pickner.
[applause] Jasmin Pickner: [Foreign language] I said,
I love to welcome you with a warm handshake
and my Indian name is Good Road Woman,
and I come from the Crow Creek Lakota tribe, and I'm very honored
to be here and I'm very glad that you are able
to give us the opportunity to share
with you the Lakota traditions and the way of life.
And today, we are going
to be performing three different performing three different
performances, three different hoop dances
to show you many different stages of the hoop dance.
The first hoop dance we are going to explain --
we're going to start with the traditional five hoop dance
so that way our participant audience --
my audience, the participants are able to understand when they come
up for the second hoop dance for the volunteers.
[laughter] And we'll invite you up and get some volunteers up here
so you can put it on your resume that you first started hoop dancing
at the Library of Congress.
[laughter] And then the third hoop dance you'll actually see us perform
with all of our hoops, combining them together
and showing a male and a female hoop dance.
And you'll see that balance work together to become one dance.
And I also want to explain -- I want to introduce something here.
This is our sague [spelled phonetically], which is our flag
and it's a representation of a person, of a spirit.
A spirit that was once here
and he was actually one of my older brothers.
And he was practicing to become the teen world champion hoop dancer.
He practiced everyday.
He went to school at Douglas High School where I graduated from.
And he actually went on to college
and Augola Lakota College [spelled phonetically].
Well, he was 20-years-old and he never took alcohol or drugs,
and he practiced a lot of the virtues.
He was very humble.
He loved to work with children, and he also even joined a sewing class
to make our star quilts, our traditional star quilts.
And, so when he passed away, I decided that I needed to take
on that responsibility and finish his goal for him,
to become the teen world champion hoop dancer.
And it was quite of a big step for me
because originally, it was a male dance.
Originally, the males would dominate the performance throughout
many years.
And so, I went down to the Phoenix, Arizona Heard Museum,
where the hoop dance is held every year --
the hoop dance competition -- and I competed.
In that year, there was only two females
in the whole competition out of 100 hoop dancers.
And so I kind of felt pretty dominated and I worked very hard
and I wanted to show them we could hoop dance just as well
as they did, and even in a dress.   And so, that year was the first time
that both females took first place in the competition.
So it was awesome.   [laughter] [applause] Thank you.
[applause] I said it was the greatest feeling ever
because we humbled all the men down there.
[laughter] And we also showed them
that we're bringing back that balance.
And so, to see Stephanie Herseth here is awesome
because she's a female representing the state of South Dakota
and we do need that female wisdom in the House of Representatives.
We need it everywhere.
We need that balance of the female side.
And to explain a little bit more about the male and the female,
I want to introduce to you to Dallas Chief Eagle.
Like Andrea said, he is a world champion hoop dancer as well,
and he's taught me many different aspects of the performance,
of the culture and I'm really appreciated that he's given me a lot
of the opportunities, opened a lot of doors for me
to be a good role model for the younger generation.
So thank you once again, Dallas Chief Eagle.
[applause] Dallas Chief Eagle: [Foreign language] When we use
to line ourselves up with you and your loved ones --
[unintelligible] There is a chogleska [spelled phonetically].
We had a vision quest, we'd call it a [unintelligible],
we go on a vision quest.
Years ago, we're sitting there four days without food or water,
and I had a hunka father.
My hunka father [skip in audio] he said [skip in audio] --
[laughter] Certain words come out of his mouth.
He's says it's not him.
He's a spiritual leader and he said -- the little spirit said,
"What's that line at the bottom of the tree?"
Years later, I found out what that line was.
It's the horizon.
It's the line between the father sky, which we call [unintelligible],
and mother earth, [unintelligible].
It's the horizon line in between, the intimate line
in between the earth and the sky, and I'll follow that line
from that tree around 360 degrees in South Dakota,
and it turned into a hoop, a circle of life, or chongleska.
And we noticed that that hoop,
it followed each one of us wherever we went.
Whether it be in the mountains, or in the bad lands
or in the flat lands and that each one of us is at the center
of that hoop, and whatever sacred direction
that we face we're reminded of that balance between the --
basically two kinds of people in the world, female and male.
So our people long time ago, we formed those societies,
societies of females and societies of males.
And any important decisions that were going to be made,
we had to go to both groups.
We was going to go to buffalo hunting, you might think
that that was a male activity back then.
No, the males went after the buffalos,
but if they took too many buffalos it was the female societies
that would say, "You men took too many buffalos.
This is disrespectful to the buffalo nation, to the grandmas, the women
and the girls and most of all this is very disrespectful
because we turn those boys over to you,
and you set a very bad example to them."
The men would put their heads down
and they would say, "Yes, this is true."
They would go back into their societies and councils and talk
about that with the boys, and different leaders would stand up.
So, there was a balance, a checks and balances,
there whether it would be war,
whether it be harvesting, moving the camp, peace.
The female -- we had a system where the females participated.
It's like an engine of a car like eight cylinders,
four on the female side and four
on the male side, working for the people.
Or it would be like an eagle.
The male side of the eagle, the wing, or the female side
of the eagle so that nations could fly high would maximize the
And all we had to do was to be reminded to go outside and look
at the balance between the earth and the sky
There was the head woman.
She's like the president, and the headman.
She represented all the females
and the headman represented all the males.
They would elect them.   This is a little different system.
And I think it kind of follows equal rights amendment that was passed,
which I think is very beautiful to see a female
and a minority running for presidency.
[applause] But, our globe and our nation is maturing.
Jasmine and I, we've been to different countries
around the world, and we see this imbalance.
Over here, we see this competition between males and females.
Jasmine won the world championship.
She had to compete with those males, but a long time ago in our system
of government we said the females are half the wisdom
and knowledge in the world.
And we created a system to access that wisdom and that knowledge.
We had a checks and balances there.
It's like the earth and the sky working together,
that's what we call chongleska, that first hoop.
That horizon, and when you leave here today you're going
to be driving and you're going to see it out there and you're going
to be in the middle of that hoop.   I have two other daughters.
It's about third grade that they find
out that males have more privilege than females.
We want to say that there's true equality there
And in doing that we all have to do our part at those meetings we go to.
I went to an important meeting in Chicago.
Three quarters of those people
that were making those important decisions in Chicago were males.
They had to be reminded that we need more females help us make decisions,
I believe we don't live in a male world anymore.
And, I believe that if we each do our part things are going
to change around the globe.
And our sons and our daughters are going to be apart of this change.
This goes along with our Lakota way of life.
Been all over the world, and we haven't seen this
and we're very proud to know that we have ancestors that had this way
of life we offer to one another.
We'll start out with one Hoop, chongleska then we're going
to add more hoops as we go.
Jasmine mentioned that we had a flag here.
We also had our own No Child Left Behind program.
Long time ago when we went on a buffalo hunt,
there were some fathers that were lost on that buffalo hunt.
They were stampeded.
And while they were out there, there were some mothers.
It was not uncommon for those moms giving birth to babies to die.
And they came back, and there were some moms that died
and there were some fathers that died.
And so, they went into those two groups and they had to talk
about what could we do about this?   The children are sacred.
And they came up with the hunka ceremony
where they tied the feather to the boys' hair.
And a plume for the girls, and those boys would have about four fathers.
Maybe one father that was good at fishing and hunting, another father
that was good at working with horses, another father who was good
at making drums and singing and then if they were adopted,
and then if they lost one father those other fathers would fill in.
They wanted to make sure there would be no orphan.
These are the things we have going on today.
We're trying to keep alive and restore in our culture.
These are the four feathers of four boys that replaced the one
that I lost, and then his feathers are here as well.
And he never took alcohol or drugs.
This boy when he died, she took over his dream
and they gave him a warrior's funeral too.
They put him in a giant teepee.
They opened the coffin and painted his face like a warrior.
We have medicine men and medicine women.
They braided his hair and on his soft spot
up there they braided a long braid off of there and cut it off,
and then they put it on his chanupa, his pipe and wrapped it with sage.
They said you take this out now and then
and you ask his spirit to help you.   It's keeping of the spirit.
Later on you'll release it.   This is like an angel.
And since then he's been bringing other spirits.
They say they miss us, they want to help us but we forgot about them.
So that was one of the discussions that the men and the women had too,
and that's what they came up with.
They tied the plume on the girls' hair and she will have
like four mothers -- up to four mothers.
So there would be no orphan.
They also wrapped some hair of my boy around a finger and made a hoop
of hair and put it in a little leather pouch.
I wear it around my neck as a responsibility those little spirits
that I have to take his pipe out now and then for a ceremony.
We are going to start off with one hoop, the chongleska.
And we wanted to bring this out here -- you might knock that down --
to show you that, give you a visual of that hoop, that horizon.
We're going to start off with one hoop and end
up with five in our first routine.
[music and singing in foreign language] [applause] Jasmin Pickner:
Okay, so how many of you all watched and payed attention very closely
because we're asking for volunteers to come up now.
[laughter] Actually, we would actually like to invite a few
It's not quite as hard and it's very easy.
It's kind of like Simon Says -- mainly Simon Sees.
[Laughs] So if you'd like to come up and join with us,
healing that sacred hoop, that chongleska.
We're going to go through and just do a short audience participation
to actually connect our sacred hoop -- connect that hoop here --
right here in Washington, D.C. Stephanie if you'd
like to you're sure welcome to.
[Laughs] And so feel free to come on up and join with us.
[applause] All right.
Dallas Chief Eagle: Last call for happy hoopers.
We'll do an eye check and a hearing test.
[laughter] Jasmine Pickner: We're going to start
out with a basic workshop.   Dallas Chief Eagle: Eye exam.
[laughter] [inaudible] [applause] Dallas Chief Eagle:
Join in together.   One hand free.
Both of your shoulders back.
[low audio] [laughter] [applause] Give me your right hand.
We're going to make that circle.
[music and singing in a foreign language] [applause] Dallas Chief
Eagle: It is official now.   They can put it on their resume.
[laughter] Jasmine Pickner: Thanks for coming out.
[applause] All right, let's give our Washington,
D.C. hoop dancers another round of applause.
[applause] It takes a lot of courage to come
up on stage and participate with us.
So we appreciate that and we love to see how we had that male
and female balance going on and, we're going go ahead and get started
with our third hoop dance.
This hoop dance will be containing anywhere from 50
to 60 maybe even 70 hoops between the both of us.
And so, we're going to go ahead and start off
with that one sacred hoop again and combine each and every hoop together
to come out as one hoop dance.
So we hope you enjoy it and we'll go head and get ready.
[music and singing in foreign language] [applause] Jasmine
Pickner: This right here -- hello, testing.
Okay, this right here is actually what we call the Neithi [spelled
phonetically], which is a sweat lodge
and we go inside there to purify ourselves.
We go inside there to pray for the health of all the children
and all the old ones and the elders.
And we also pray that each and every one of you goes home
with an understanding of the Lakota way of life
and hopefully you're able to impact your children
and their children's way of life.
And together we can come together in hopes to bring that male
and that female together, combining them making us more powerful
than what we are.
Having that wisdom from the female and having
that wisdom from the male.
So, that's what that ending that [unintelligible] is called.
And that's why we end with that to show you the balance
and how we all work together, we can make a beautiful world.
We liked to thank you for all coming today.
We appreciate it.
Andrea we really appreciate you for giving us this opportunity.
There's many different people working with her today
and taking us here and there and we have a tight schedule to follow,
but we appreciate your ability to come here and take
in our different way of life.
Thank you [unintelligible], which means thank you.
[unintelligible].   Here's Dallas.
Dallas Chief Eagle: We had a little hoop dance in Sioux Falls,
South Dakota in a multicultural center and that's where kids
from various countries, they come and relocate
in South Dakota, in Sioux Falls.
They come from many different countries.
But, all the girls were on one side and all the boys were
on the other side and we asked them could you come
up with the number one problem in the world.
So, they debated -- you know these kids came from all kinds
of countries that are trouble spots, too.
And the girls they came up and they said the number one problem they
said -- and they said was malnutrition.
That's what the number one problem they saw in the world.
Then we asked the boys and they debated -- that they said --
number one problem of the world they said would be --
they also had a solution to -- they said that there would be no orphan
in the world, that every boy and every girl would be adopted
in some way, that they would belong some where.
I thought that was really inspiring and you know, when it really comes
down to it -- some of us teachers, we think we are the teachers
but when it comes right down to it,
it's the children that are the teachers.
We get all stuffy sometimes when we get older.
[applause] And Jasmine was saying that we have
about five minutes for some questions.
Yes? [inaudible] The hoops are made out of willow, bamboo.
The willow tree, the red willow tree we'll get in the spring.
The inner bark of the willow, we'll use that to put in our chanupas,
our pipes to be smoking tobacco, sacred tobacco.
The inner bark of the red willow -- and then we'll take the red willow
and put it inside of a barrel and let it dry.
And then we have these rubber ones.
Jasmine Pickner: [Inaudible] Dallas Chief Eagle:
Those are manards [spelled phonetically].
And the kids in Canada what they like to do is they put
like a prayer inside their hoop and then put a wood doll or a dream
or a wish, they'd put it inside the hoop to make dream hoops
or prayer hoops -- electrical tape on those.
[laughter] Another question?
Yes. Male Speaker: Who makes your head dress and what's it made of?
Dallas Chief Eagle: This here is made
from a colaw [spelled phonetically] of mine, a friend of mine that's
in the penitentiary -- the Sioux Falls penitentiary.
And, it's made out of porcupine hair.
The long hair and the short hairs comes from the deer tale,
and they weave them together to make this and you could -- instead of --
those hairs are inside the porcupine.
They are longer than the spears on there but if you step on that tale,
you'll dig down into the mother earth and you can take all you want.
[laughter] And then let him go.
Yeah. [laughter] I was coming on the airplane and I saw one.
He had a big orange one.
He walked into the airport and we thought that was really something.
[laughter] He had an outfit on too.   [laughter] We had our hoops.
We should have asked him to hoop dance with us.
[laughter] Another question?
Male Speaker: When did the hoop dance competition begin?
Dallas Chief Eagle: I'd say it started 17 years ago.
They have it yearly down in Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
but we've had competitions in South Dakota.
Before that we have hoop dances from different reservations.
We have nine reservations in South Dakota and we have our fathers
and grand fathers that hoop dance before.
There are pictographs in the black hills
with hoop dancers from a long time ago.
There are hoop dancers from all the way up in northern territories
down into Mexico and we know of about maybe 120-
30 hoop dancers that are pretty active.
Jasmine Pickner: From ages zero on up.
Dallas Chief Eagle: Another question.
Male Speaker: Are all hoops the same size?
Jasmine Pickner: Actually -- sorry.   [Laughs] Actually no there are not.
They range anywhere from my son, he's seven months old
and he has a teething ring hoop about that big that I made for him.
[laughter] And then my daughter, they're a little bit bigger.
She's three.   She hoop dances with five of them.
And as we grow we make them a little bit bigger.
But the standard, I want to say around the --
probably the biggest is any where from here and a little bit bigger.
They don't make them too big like hula hoops
because you can't do much with hula hoops.
[laughter] But they do make them about the size
to fit the person the hoop dancer's needs.
And they also make them with different widths.
They can be very skinny.   They can be a little bit thicker,
depends on how well they stick together.
They use them with different taping material too.
That actually makes a difference with their hoops too.
Female Speaker: Do you find it hard to dance with that skirt?
Jasmine Pickner: [Laughs] Actually,
this is the easy dress that I dance with.
I also have a traditional jingle dress and that has anywhere --
it's about 300 and, I want to say 60 jingles on there.
And I hoop dance with that too.
So you can actually make it more difficult wearing the dresses
with jingles on it.
Female Speaker: How much do they weigh?
Jasmine Pickner: The dresses?
They weigh -- I want to say around 20 pounds.
They're pretty heavy because of all the jingles and the weight.
Once you get the hoops on it's a whole new workout.
[laughter] Any other questions?
Female Speakers: A lot of dancers when they turn they fix their eyes
at a point so they won't get dizzy but I don't see you doing that.
Actually, my secret to hoop dancing and not being dizzy is I focus
on my hoops and I focus on what I'm doing.
A lot of times I think of my grandmothers and my grandfathers
and if I have an uncle that's sick or something, I usually dance
for their health because traditionally that's what we did is
when we danced, we danced for the health of our people.
And so, I focus on -- mentally I focus on the things
that make it possible to hear my grandmother, my mother, my father
and if I don't focus on that I start looking at the audience then that's
when I can get unfocused and get dizzy.
And I just get -- and I could fall.   And, I have fallen.
I fell before [Laughs] So -- but yeah you focus on what you're doing
and spiritually you have to be into your performances.
Also -- oh.
Dallas Chief Eagle: We went to the school for the blind up in Aberdeen,
South Dakota and we put bells on the students
to hoop dance and go by sound.   But they can really spin.
I think it's when you get dizzy it's in the eyes, but when they go
by sound they can really spin fast.
So, I notice well if I close my eyes, so I'm almost blind and go
by sound, you can spin really fast.   The blind people taught me that.
[laughter] Jasmine Pickner: Any other questions?
I know our time is just about up.
And like I said we appreciate you all coming
and joining us here today.
And thank you Stephanie for joining us.
That's really awesome.
We appreciate having a representative really take an
understanding in our culture because South Dakota is a big part
of Native-American and a lot of it comes back to that tradition
in that culture, that's within South Dakota.
It's very rich.
And if you don't know the people you're
around then it's hard to represent them.
So, thank you once again.
[applause] Jasmine Pickner: When you guys leave here today remember
that sacred hoop, that chongleska wherever you go, you'll see that --
you'll always be part of that sacred hoop.
[Unintelligible] That means thank you and we're all related.
Have a good day.   [applause] [end of transcript]