You May Have Missed It This Year, But Next Year: Get Your Pow Wow On -- July 29, 2018

What do New Mexico and North Dakota have in common?

• lots of sun in the summer;
• oil (Permian -- New Mexico; Bakken - North Dakota);
• beautiful scenery; and, 
• pow wows.

A reader keeps me updated on "pow wows" in New Mexico and North Dakota. If I posted everything I've been sent on "pow wows" over the past two years I would have to start another blog.

But to bring you up to speed, three links:

• wiki
• Albuquerque
• Twin Buttes

Regular readers of the blog should recognize that third link, Twin Buttes. It's an incredibly good oil field in the Bakken and it's a featured oil field. At the link, scroll down to Twin Buttes and click.

The "pow wow" reader wanted to point out that the oil boom in North Dakota has really meant a lot to Native Americans fortunate enough to share in the largess. One wonders if Standing Rock would have been better off had they worked with DAPL rather than taking the alternate path. But I digress.

The Albuquerque PowWow is the biggest pow wow in the United States (at least that's my understanding).

Added: photos from the 2018 Twin Buttes pow wow at this link to the Dunn County Extra. 

I was unaware that dancers, singers, drummers, actually competed for prize money. Wow.

But look at this.

The prize money at the nation's largest pow wow pales in comparison to that now being paid for the Twin Buttes, North Dakota, pow wow.

Albuquerque, $5,000 for first place, singer:

Twin Buttes, at $15,000 for first place, 3x that of Albuquerque, and even fifth place pays more than 1st place in New Mexico:

Note: there appear to be as many spelling / capitalization variations of "pow wow" as there are of "fracking." If I've offended anyone, let me know.

Also, I do these posts quickly and there are bound to be factual and typographical errors. If any errors affect the story, let me know.

Albuquerque, population: 560,000 (2016)

Twin Buttes, population:  18 (2016)

Twin Buttes is 12 miles north-northeast of Halliday, if that's of any help for out-of-towners. Set your GPS to 7°30′59″N 102°14′47″W. 

From the Crazy Horse Museum in the Black Hills, South Dakota:

Beads were very likely from Venice, Italy.