Celebrating South Dakota History with Native American Hoop Dancing

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – Native American history is the backbone of South Dakota, as April 26 is National South Dakota Day, Native American Hoop Dancing brings culture and history together.

Native American Hoop Dancing is a dance style, and dancer Delacina Chief Eagle tells us how important it is to Native American History. Through the dance, you can tell a life story, the first hoop representing the beginning of life, and as the dance goes on, performers collect more hoops- symbolizing oneself getting older and wiser, as well as respecting those who came before them.

Native American Hoop Dance is an individual dance, and it is performed as a show dance in many Native American tribes. It features a solo dancer dancing with a dozen or more hoops and using them to form a variety of static and dynamic shapes, poses, and moves. Most of the hoop dances in tribes across North America belong to modern hoop dance, which was invented in 1930.

Delacina Chief Eagle is a hoop dancer, she did Indian relay racing for 15 years and participated in spiritual horse rides from just 3 years old. She has also done a little bit of modeling and was featured in the documentary Women of the White Buffalo which focused on Lakota women. Horses play a very important role in her life so in the last 3 years she has been working on professional thoroughbred horse racing tracks across America. She also teaches Hoop Dancing to kids across the state.

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