What is the Red Mountain Eagle Powwow?
Cross Pima Road from south Scottsdale and you are in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, a sovereign nation of O’odham and Piipaash people that most visitors know only as the land under Talking Stick. On the first weekend of November, on the community’s ballfields at McDowell and Longmore, it hosts the Red Mountain Eagle Powwow, in 2026 in its 38th year.
A powwow is an intertribal gathering, not a performance. Dancers from across the West compete in six age divisions, from tiny tots to golden age, in men’s traditional, grass and fancy and women’s traditional, jingle and fancy shawl. Northern Cree, the Grammy-winning drum group from Alberta, has served as host drum, leading eight or more drums into each grand entry. Gourd dancing, a veterans’ tradition, opens each day at 11 and again at 5. Prize money in 2025 ran to roughly $35,000 to $40,000.
Around the arena: a hundred-plus craft vendors from Arizona, New Mexico, Montana and beyond, two dozen food stands, and information tables from the community’s own programs. It is free, it draws a crowd that lines Longmore Road with parked cars, and it opens Native American Heritage Month in the Valley. Start November here.
How to do it, and how to behave
Timing. Arrive an hour before the 1 p.m. Saturday grand entry. Park on Longmore while there is room, walk the vendor rows during gourd dancing, and be seated for grand entry, which can run 45 minutes when the dancer count is high. Sunday is calmer and ends with finals and payouts.
Bring. A folding chair, cash, sunscreen, a layer for the evening, and patience for the frybread line. The south-side stands sell frybread and ach’ii’, a Navajo dish of mutton wrapped in intestine that sold out in 2025. Eat early.
Etiquette, in order of importance. Stand, hats off, for grand entry, the flag song, veterans songs and any honor song the emcee announces. Do not photograph individual dancers without asking, and lower the camera when the emcee says to. Regalia is sacred and often heirloom; do not touch it, and do not call it a costume. The benches ringing the arena are for dancers and their families. When the emcee invites everyone in for an intertribal, you may dance; otherwise stay out of the arena. He is running the day and will tell you what is expected.
Shopping. This is one of the best places in the Valley to buy Native-made jewelry, beadwork and textiles directly from the maker. Read how to buy Native American art first.
Why it matters where it is
Scottsdale has had Native performance on its calendar for a long time. Native Trails ran free noontime shows at the Civic Center from 2003 into the late 2010s, presented by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation for a winter-visitor audience. The Arizona Indian Festival, tribal-run since 2019, is a showcase of the state’s 22 nations on the city’s front lawn each February. Both are, structurally, Native Arizona presenting itself to Scottsdale.
The powwow is the other way around. It happens on the community’s land, for the community and the dancers and families who travel the powwow circuit, and Scottsdale is welcome to come. The emcee talks to the dancers, not the crowd; the information tables are for residents; the prize money and the drum are the point. It is the difference between a museum and a family gathering, and the Huhugam Ki Museum up Longmore at Osborn is where to learn the rest of the story before or after.
The powwow as a Valley institution
Red Mountain Eagle started small, in the community’s own telling, and grew for three decades before the pandemic cancelled it in 2020 and 2021. It came back in 2022 to the biggest crowd anyone could remember, and every year since has set another record. That it is happening ten minutes from Old Town, on a free weekend in the best month of the year, is one of the quieter reasons to live here. Go, stand when asked, and eat the frybread.