In North America, 'having a powwow' is an informal expression for a meeting or a serious conversation. The Native American term referred to a gathering of spiritual leaders. Powwows today are celebratory events.

Explosions of music and dance go on throughout the year all over the United States and Canada. Local powwows and large intertribal gatherings can be positively hallucinatory, with hundreds of feathered and painted dancers mingling and jingling near the traditional arena.

Porcupine, South Dakota is a small town on Pine Ridge Reservation where the Oglala Lakota people, part of the Great Sioux Nation, display their heritage with vigour. The drums they play are the heartbeat of their people.

 
Soothing effect

Hundreds of spectators, vendors, singers and dancers join in: men, women, boys, girls and toddlers. Babies are carried into the dance to get that powwow feeling early. The drum, one participant says, has a soothing effect: it can ease family tensions and take all your troubles away.

Hundreds of powwows are held throughout North America all year round. Unless it's winter and there's a good reason to be indoors, the dancers flow in and out of a circle, bowl or arena in a grassy field, like the one at Porcupine.

Some people compare it to a group meditation, even if you're just watching. It used to be that only the warrior elite danced, but over the past century, the dance competition has grown, with spectacular colour in the feathers, fur, buckskin and beads, and with graceful, fast footwork.

 
Mix of old and new

The music gets louder as the day goes on. Drum groups line the arena - with up to a dozen singers sitting around a large drum which they all pound as they sing.

A powwow can last for a day, the whole night, a weekend or an entire week. In the old days, tribes travelled great distances to dance together, do business and talk politics. And there are others who have come from afar to this powwow. They include the elite drum groups who travel from one powwow to the next battling for respect with songs that tell a story and blend contemporary dance with a ritual of the past.

Powwow at Porcupine was produced by Martha Hawley. The documentary was originally broadcast in February 2005.