Providing disability accommodations for powwow participants isn’t very common on the powwow circuit, but one man has made it his mission to bring the practice to dances across North America.
“ I saw the need to fulfill something that is genuine to my heart,” said Puyallup Tribe member Shawn Reynolds. “And that is offering time on the floor for individuals with special needs, autism, Down syndrome, and any other special needs, as well as disabilities.”
In many respects, the Fourth Annual South Sound Powwow in Graham, Wash. was nothing out of the ordinary.
On a late-September afternoon, a procession began a slow march across the Bethel High School gym, with a steady drumbeat and a commanding voice that rang out across the floor. It was led by a beadwork-laden man carrying a staff adorned with eagle feathers. A contingent of veterans wearing cedar woven hats held national, state, and tribal flags. They were followed by the powwow’s head dancers — a young man in a beaded chest plate and feathered roach, and two young women in jingle dresses strung with conical bells.
But two less conventional figures rounded out this procession, Shawn’s sons Nakotah and Dakotah Reynolds of the Puyallup and Otoe-Missouria Tribes. It’s often required to wear all the appropriate regalia to go out on the powwow floor. But these 11-year-old twin boys wore t-shirts, shorts, beaded headbands, and matching stoles. One boy had a pair of noise-dampening headphones clamped around his ears.
Nakotah and Dakotah have autism. Wearing all the customary regalia — and much of the powwow environment itself — can be overstimulating for them.
“ All the noise, all the drumming, the colors, the bells, the stomping, all of that can be triggering,” Shawn said.
Both boys also hold royalty titles from a powwow in April, entitling them and their family to sponsor a “special”, a dance of their choosing, at a powwow within the next year. And that gave their dad an idea.
“I’ve been doing powwows for a really long time, most of my life,” Shawn said. “One of the things that I don’t see is categories, or specials, for our individuals with disabilities or special needs.”
Shawn set out to change that four months ago. He reached out to South Sound Powwow directors Rachel Barger and Grace Leatham with a pitch — hold a special where dancers of all ages and all abilities could join the dancing, using whatever accommodations they needed.