L.A. TACO92%
The First Native Powwow Comes to Cal State LA After 79 Years. Here Is What I Learned From Attending 15%
By Shylah Featherstone40%
7/28/2026, 11:30:51 AM
Topics: Powwow, Indigenous Culture, Cultural Preservation, Native American Art, Fry Bread History, Community Gathering
Keywords: Indigenous, Native, Powwow, Cal State La, Culture, Tradition, Art, Fry Bread, Jewelry, Craftsmanship
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Composition/Division, and Confirmation Bias, with False Dilemma as the most egregious example at 10.7% saturation with 79 hits. Analysis detected 674 faulty-reasoning hits from 740 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 24.1% and a BS Rank of 15% (25,078 of 29,339 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.50% of the article peer group.
The first thing I noticed wasn't the dancing.
It was the drums.
The steady rhythm echoed across Cal State LA's campus long before I reached the center of the university's first Indigenous Powwow, presented by the United American Indian Involvement, Inc.
(UAII).
Families unfolded lawn chairs beneath the summer sun.
Children chased each other between vendor booths.
The smell of fry bread drifted through the crowd while dancers in colorful regalia prepared for the Grand Entry, the ceremonial procession that officially opens a powwow.
While many first-time visitors arrive expecting stunning cultural performances, the powwow quickly reveals itself as something even deeper.
It is a community gathering where Native families celebrate, remember, and continue traditions that have endured generations of displacement and hardship.
Every booth, every piece of jewelry, every item of clothing, and every plate of food carried a story.
For artist Soledad Gamez, those stories are stitched into every bead.
"My culture is represented in my artwork," she tells me while standing beside her colorful display of beadwork and paintings.
Some of her work incorporates symbols representing “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” and the “Every Child Matters” movement.
"I think people don't know what these things mean," Gamez says.
"This is how we are able to educate other people that don't know what our struggles are.
We just open them so they can have a better understanding of us and why we sometimes are a little extra in how we talk because it's coming from pain and trauma."
Her work wasn't simply decorative.
Every pair of earrings and every painted piece served as an invitation to learn about Indigenous resilience, grief, and survival.
That idea that art can educate as much as it can inspire became a theme throughout the afternoon.
A few booths away, Samuel Yellow Horse Jensen was serving long lines of customers from Yellow Horse Fryberry Indian Tacos.
While many people know fry bread as comfort food, Jensen explained that its history is deeply tied to survival.
Originally from the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Jensen described fry bread as a reminder of the Long Walk, when the U.S. government forcibly removed thousands of Diné people from their homeland.
"All we had was lard and flour and water," he says.
"We made our bread and survived on that.
It's all survival."
What has become a beloved staple at powwows today began under tragic circumstances.
Fry bread carries a history of survival that is often absent from conversations about the food itself.
Despite that painful history, Jensen's reason for returning to powwows each year is remarkably simple.
"I just love to feed the people," he says.
"Feed the people is my motto . . . it's mainly just to feed the people as I get my blessing."
Nearby, Sandra Hale was continuing a family tradition that began with her mother.
Hale, who is Navajo and has lived in Los Angeles County her entire life, explains that her parents relocated to Southern California and met while attending Sherman Indian High School.
After her mother passed away in 2016, Hale and her siblings decided to continue operating the family's fry bread booth together.
"My mom, she's been making fry bread forever since I can remember," Hale says.
Today, Lucy Hale’s Indian Tacos & Frybread has become a family affair involving siblings, relatives, and close friends.
As she describes their signature fry bread, golden on the outside, soft on the inside, it became clear that what they were preserving wasn't simply a recipe.
It is a memory.
"People always ask what's the difference," Hale says.
"The bread is what makes it."
That commitment to preserving Indigenous craftsmanship echoed throughout the powwow.
The dancing and music may be the first things visitors notice when entering the powwow, but the food, jewelry, and artwork are just as central, each preserving generations of history and cultural knowledge.
Throughout the day, elders greeted old friends, children danced alongside experienced performers, and visitors respectfully asked questions about traditions they were encountering for the first time.
Every conversation underscored the same message: Indigenous culture is not a relic of the past but something that continues to be lived, shared, and protected.
Rather than asking visitors to leave as experts on Indigenous history, the UAII Powwow at Cal State LA offered something more meaningful: an invitation to listen.
Speakers
3speakers37%attributed speech468writer words
Selected voice
57%flagged-word coverageSoledad Gamez
91 attributed words33% of attributed speech82% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.