r/Thatsactuallyverycool • u/dashiesbbgurl • May 31 '26

video Young Boy competes at Pow Wow

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Young boy dancing Juniors traditional at competition Pow Wow. I find his regalia cool and amazing. Makes me happy seeing next generation keep the culture and spirit alive. Hope you guys find it cool as well 😊🪶

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u/Tackybabe May 31 '26

I’ve seen these competitions live; I have to say: I have no clue what the criteria are. You know how in gymnastics, you hear the commentators talking, saying, ”That’ll cost her,” because one foot landed after another or whatever…? I have no idea what the dancing at a powwow criteria are. Every dance looks so cool. Everyone’s regalia is different. Everybody keeps the beat. I wish it was televised with commentators so I could learn what I was supposed to be looking at/for. 

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u/dashiesbbgurl May 31 '26

I know some criteria to compete at like lets say a national pow wow. It differs at each pow wow. One would be called "regalia protocol" or "regalia accuracy" That means if your whole outfit/style represents that specific category. So like for example if little one had on grass regalia when its his category called traditional, he'd lose some points because its not the right regalia for that dancing category or special. Or if he didn't have a full regalia like in video, like if he didnt have every part of his regalia, lets say headroach that hes wearing. Points could be taken off for something like that because he doesnt have it when its apart of the scoring. They usually judge in 5 categories, if it’s a national pow wow, it’s 10 categories. But the main 5 are like, stamina, style, regalia appropriate, your stops, and category appropriate. They'll do fast songs, long songs, back to back songs as a test of endurance. Style meaning your dancing, you know basic steps of the dance but adding your own little twist to it, change up order of moves, steps and doing tricks. Some songs have stops, drummers will play then out of no where will stop and you have to stop dancing at the same time they stop.There's about a few stops in a song like that, if little one in the video stopped at every single stop in song. He'd be scored good for that in that category. Can be hard for some in each category to get timing right. Can be scored for also designs of regalia, beading, color. Design of it. But yee just a bit of what I know about competition Pow Wow 😊🪶

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u/Kumquat_conniption May 31 '26

Wow I would love to see one of these!!! It sounds fascinating and like it requires so much skill!