Our Videos

Our Videos... We have produced two documentary style videos about Native American heritage and practice. Both videos feature the music of the drum group Red Leaf Takoja and their successor drum group Heart Beat.

The first video, Red Leaf Takoja: Song of the Heart Beat is a motion-picture-length music video performance narrated by Wes Studi and Howard Bad Hand, that features the music of Leaf Takoja as they travel the powwow circuit from The Taos (NM) Powwow to the Rosebud (SD) Fair to the Denver March Powwow. Song of the Heart Beat premiered to an excellent reception at the 2010 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the world's 2nd largest documentary film festival. The lively Native American Filmmakers workshop which followed the viewing and which featured Howard and Wes, among several others, was described by the festival director as one of the best workshops ever staged at the festival.

The Denver March Powwow, held annually during the third week of March, is the largest community-based powwow in the US. In 1988, Howard Bad Hand, lead singer for the Red Leaf Takoja drum group was asked by the Denver March Powwow committee to compose to honor the Native people of the Denver area and the Denver March Powwow. In the second video, A Living Hoop: Celebrating Life at Denver March Powwow, Howard recounts, in the highest tradition of Lakota song making, the sequence of experiences that culminated in the his song A Living Hoop, known universally as the Denver March Powwow Song. In the 22 years since its it was first sung at the 1989 Denver March Powwow, The Denver March Powwow Song has arguably become the most widely recognized powwow song in Native North America.