POWWOW PEOPLE is a vérité-style documentary grounded in the rhythms, relationships, and lived experience of a contemporary Native gathering. Rather than entering as outside observers, the filmmakers organized the powwow itself, inviting dancers, singers, vendors, and community members to participate in the making of this film.
Structured around the arc of a single day, the film follows four central figures: Gina Bluebird, who frames the powwow’s shape and guides its setup; Ruben Littlehead, the MC whose presence anchors the present moment; Jamie John, a non-binary dancer imagining the future of these traditions; and Freddie Cozad, a singer and drummer who considers the past.
The film culminates in a 30-minute unbroken shot of a Northern Traditional dance special, drawing the viewer into the textures, movement, and collective presence of the powwow. It is both a reflection of a beloved and complicated community and a gesture toward the continuities of Native life.
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and Palm Springs, California. In Portland, Oregon he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non fiction forms of media.
His work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial, the 2021 edition of Prospect.5, and the 14th Gwangju Biennial in South Korea and the Göteborg International Biennial in Switzerland in 2023.
He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and has had solo exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies–Bard College in 2020, at LUMA in Arles, France in 2022, and in 2024 at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA and Kunsthalle Friart in Switzerland.
His films, videos, and photographs are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, The Whitney Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center amongst others.
He was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018- 2019, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019, an Art Matters Fellow in 2019, a recipient of a 2020 Herb Alpert Award for Film/Video, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and was a 2021 Forge Project Fellow. He received the 2022 Infinity Award in Art from the International Center of Photography, is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and was a winner of the 2023 Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is an assistant professor in the department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.
Bellwether is presented with support from Hotel UMass.
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