Pow Wow #4
Bozeman, Montana
2015
I took this photo primarily because of the cute young jingle dancer, but it also shows some women wearing elk tooth dresses (in the right rear of the photo), another of my favorites. Elk teeth are very highly prized and hard to come by as each elk only has two ivory teeth. Because of the supply-demand mismatch, even in the old days there were imitation elk teeth carved from bone. Today bone teeth are still produced and of course there are plastic ones as well. Real or imitation I think the dresses look very elegant. (Look at me talking like the Fashion Queen here!)
The dress the woman closest to the camera is wearing reminds me strongly of a woven basket. I wonder if that is intentional. And I would never have known that the other dresses were decorated with elk teeth, real or imitation! Cool!