Indigenous history through dance

This fall, the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Arts is launching a new Indigenous Dance class, giving students the opportunity to learn about Indigenous dance practices, histories, and living cultures in Treaty 7 and across North America. This unique offering, available to the School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) and the entire campus community, will also provide an appreciation for the role that dance can play in an academic setting. 

Indigenous Dance will be taught by Dr. Evangelina Macias, PhD (Amskapi Pikuni/Blackfeet, and A'aninin/Gros Ventre), assistant professor of dance and Transdisciplinary Chair in Indigenous Epistemologies. The class builds upon the Indigenous Dance Forms course offered in 2024, which was developed and taught by champion hoop dancer Sandra Lamouche with the support of dance professor Dr. Melanie Kloetzel, PhD.

An unexpected academic pursuit

Since joining UCalgary in September 2025, Macias has guest lectured across campus; presented creative work through the Movement Research Festival, hosted by the Dance Division and SCPA; and taught dance in local communities. As a Blackfeet scholar working in Treaty 7 territory, her role at UCalgary is especially meaningful as it allows her to pursue research grounded in relationships to place while collaborating across disciplines and communities. 

“In many ways, the Indigenous Dance course brings together everything that shaped my experience and relationship to dance,” she says. “I draw from lifelong experience participating in powwows and community gatherings; from years of teaching in communities; from academic training; and from continued relationships with cultural experts, Knowledge Keepers and community members.”

Macias didn't initially plan to become an academic, but enrolling in dance courses while studying child development revealed another way of thinking and learning and ultimately changed her trajectory.

That interest led Macias to a practice-based Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and eventually into one of North America's leading dance studies doctoral programs, transforming her understanding of dance as a form of research and a meaningful way of producing knowledge.

Throughout her academic studies, Macias held on to powwow dance as a way of staying connected to her community.

More than movement

While often viewed as a performance for entertainment, the study of dance is incredibly rigorous and values movement as a way of learning and sharing knowledge, stories and values.

"Dance and movement can teach us about relationships, histories, values and place,” says Macias. “When thinking about indigenous epistemologies, dance becomes one way of inviting people into conversations that are deeply relevant to Indigenous lived experiences.”

Macias' class emphasizes respectful participation and learning with, rather than simply about, Indigenous dances. The dances of focus for this class will be appropriate for the time, place and context where they will be shared.

“I've had to do the work of receiving certain permissions to share about these dance forms or make sure that they are dance forms that are appropriate to be shared with others,” Macias says.

Learning through dance

This course offers an opportunity to think differently about what it means to be in relation to place, and how Indigenous dance and movement embody relationships to land, community and one another.

“My hope is that students leave not only knowing more about Indigenous dance and peoples, but with a deeper appreciation for what shapes the places where we live, learn and gather,” explains Macias.

Another hopeful outcome is that students will gain an understanding of the value of dance beyond the artform. In learning about Treaty 7 through dance, participants will get to experience dance as a valid site of research and knowledge production.

“Opening this course to non-dance students or non-dance majors also provides a space for better understanding the value of dance,” says Macias.

For more information on the course, visit the website.