Volunteering at my first powwow and do you have any tips for dealing with the panindianism? I’ve never been in a space that’s so set on homogenizing into a single “Native American” culture. Are all powwows like this or am I at a bad egg 😫 (also the weird gender binary (the whole sacred womyn with wombs thing) is so strong and I am so twospiritly uncomfortable).

Omg thats so exciting! :) good for you!

And that's kind of the thing with pow wows. They're not really like traditional ceremonies, so there usually isn't like one tribe's specific practices and beliefs being followed by everyone (although the conduction of the pow wow or some of the practices involved will likely be influenced by where you are & which tribe(s) is hosting it for the more spiritual bits). Pow wows kind of arose out of a desperation to try preserve parts of our cultures, and that's why they're so "public" & "pan-indian" I suppose you could say. But there's also stuff that isn't like "pan-Indian" in the purposeful sense, but rather that it's just a coincidence and overlap of cultures that happen to practice the same thing.

like, the Northern war dance in traditional bustle. Multiple tribes practiced that & danced like that in that style, it IS a traditional dance & one of the oldest, it didn't come about specifically to make it "pan-indian" or to strip a tribe of its individual traditions for the sake of panindianism, it just happened to be a dance practiced by multiple tribes, so it's included in pow wows. Take that but also compare it to something like fancy shawl dancing, which is very new (came in the 60s), isn't traditional, and anyone can dance it specifically because it doesn't have roots in any one tribe (iirc), & in a way you might say it was made to be panIndian. Pow wows in different ways, are still a celebration of traditions & dances not lost, & have a history of rebellion against oppression, so I think we continue to do them out of a sense of pride in that. So if it helps you to bear through it, you could think of it that way.

But i can see why you might not like a pow wow, and you don't have to honestly. Pow wows in the modern sense aren't really traditional (some aspects are, though), and again pow wows had to be used under the guise of "entertainment" because it used to be illegal to practice our dances, & pow wows evolved into what they are now. In some ways they're just for show. One thing I personally don't like about pow wows is how competitive & monetized they've become, and lots of people only participate in it for the (potential) money, like for competitions.

So, I'd say different ways to potentially deal with this:

Go to traditional pow wows. There's more traditional things involved, dancers get fed for free, usually less people, and no competitions. This could also potentially mean that the tribe who's land your on for the pow wow will be the main focus for spiritual/traditional affairs & practices throughout. (Aka, more likely less pan-indianism)

Go to more local, less popular pow wows, like school pow wows in your area. Sometimes schools (like universities or high schools) will host their own mini pow wow (usually a day) & will invite people within the community & ones nearby to visit. This also means most of the people dancing & in attendance will be people of the same tribe or neighboring ones, and a similar deal with above.

Go to LESS local pow wows, if you can. What I mean by this, is try to go to one far away. Some tribes do pow wows very differently & include different dances, especially if the cultures are very different, so if you can find one like that, maybe this'll be refreshing from the culture shock alone. Different areas will feature more local & tribe specific dances depending on where you go, like Haudenosaunee smoke dancing or Ojibwe woodland dance

Try the food more from different stores & ask where they're from. Food trucks like to travel FAR and wide, and there's literally so many different food types from different tribes, so trying their different foods would get you more perspective on people showing off their culture's different foods

When observing pow wow dancers, look at how different their regalia are. All regalia is hand made, and many make their own, or get it from someone of the same tribe. People often like to show off their specific tribe pride in their regalia designs, which shows they're NOT trying to be pan-Indian. A specific style of floral beadwork on a jingle dress might indicate someone is Ojibwe. A specific braided hairstyle could show someone is Lakota. A woman who's a traditional dancer & wearing a blue, elk tooth dress with a triangular red collar could mean she's a Crow woman. A fancy shawl dancer with lines painted on her chin could mean she's Cree or Dene & paying homage to traditional tattoos. Lots of people subtly show off their culture this way, & it's fun to see where someone might come from this way, & comfort you

In a way there's always going to be a pan-indian aspect of pow wows, but for the most part people don't really go to pow wows specifically to say "we are all one tribe, pan-indianism forever", or specifically for the sake of pan-indianism, they see it more as a celebration of multiple tribes together and pow wows are just the medium for doing it. & the history or pow wows just kind of amalgamated on what they are today, there wasn't one meeting where Native people said "we're going to be pan-Indian now" & continued to do it, it just kind of happened due to a number of factors (forced illegalization of our traditional dances & ceremonies being a big one). So Idk if I necessarily agree with you there that pow wows are VERY SPECIFICALLY intently set on pan-Indigenizing, but even so you also don't have to like pow wows! Maybe it's also the pow wows you've been going to.

I can't singlehandedly do much about the borderline fetishization & obsession of Native women & "womb sacredness" or give you a foolproof method for how to "avoid" it, even though I also don't like it, even as a cis woman. I'm curious as to what pow wows you're visiting just because I don't hear it THAT often at specifically pow wows (like maybe its the emcees?), but I have heard it before (I see it more in facebook tbh). The only thing I can say is that there's times I don't think people always do this on purpose, because I've seen even trans friendly/generally progressive (if not a little ignorant but well meaning) people say things like this, but that they're forgetting to not be so cis-centric and that they don't realize it's weird, even for cis women. Which is still annoying, though. Like its kind of misogynist to define women's importance on their potential ability to have kids, or their relationship to someone else ("our mothers/sisters/daughters" etc) regardless of how you dress it up in "traditional" language, or whether you're talking about cis or trans women or people with uteruses. You see that in spaces that aren't pow wows as well, & you see it a LOT in discussions of mmiw.

Pow wow dance categories aren't even separated by genders, they're separated by.... categories. You just pick which category you want to dance in & you dance it. My cis cousin danced Chicken (a war dance more popular with men) for several years, and she's a straight woman. I'm not saying you can't or won't run into transphobia at pow wows, but like even the dances themselves aren't strictly seperated by gender (even if the announcers forget this & use cis-centric language like "men's traditional" when they could just say "traditional bustle" or "northern war dance"), and there WILL and HAVE been twospirit & lgbt ndns dancing various dances not typically associated with their gender at p much every pow wow. Again, I can't do anything about that, but maybe try find a two-spirit pow wow to go to. That will likely improve your experience.

I'm sorry this came out so LONG but I sincerely hope you get a better experience with pow wows if you decide to go to more, and that you get to have fun at your next one!