Woolaroc Catalog Draft 2-8-24

Ohitika, Prairie Chicken Dance (front)

Ohitika, Prairie Chicken Dance, Bronze, 18” x 91 x 9”$ 4,200

For thousands of years before Euro-American settlement, people and lesser prairie-chickens lived together in the Southern Great Plains prairie community. One of the ceremonial dances of the Blackfoot and Plains Cree tribes, the Chicken Dance , celebrates the interconnection between native people and this grassland grouse. Dancers mimic the male prairie chicken’s display rituals, fluffing f eathers, strutting, using a pecking motion of the head, and tap ping the ground, all the while moving forward and spinning.

The old style Chicken Dance is one of the oldest forms of dancing. The dancing outfit is very different than that of the modern Traditional, Grass and Fancy Feather dances. The Men’s Chicken Dance Style originates amongst the Blackfoot people. I created this piece after having observed and photographed a young man performing this dance at a pow-wow in Austin, Texas.

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