"She is a 10-time World Champion Jingle Dancer and world-renowned performing artist. She is also an international yoga instructor, snowboarder, glass artist, cultural teacher and wellness advocate.

"She is known for public speaking and storytelling, tribal dance performance, indigenizing fitness, teaching yoga through a tribal lens and instructing powwow dance to tribal youth across Turtle Island.

"Acosia travels the world performing and sharing cultural knowledge, movement and meditation. She is passionate about using yoga and universal movement as a way to heal from historical and intergenerational trauma. She created Powwow/Yoga, a fusion practice that braids together tribal dancing and yoga for a well-rounded workout with an Indigenous approach to wellness.

"Acosia leads classes with a seventh generation approach, teaching that all actions should be taken with a sustainable mindset to protect what is sacred. She is an advocate for health and wellness and encourages all people on earth to recognize the Indigenous knowledge within them so that they can continue to build bridges and protect earth’s resources for future generations." source

“Acosia Red Elk is a jingle dress dancer from the Umatilla people of Oregon. A descendant of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger), she did not become interested in dancing until she was 16, when she taught herself to dance from videos of other jingle dancers. Red Elk began dancing professionally in 1998 with her then-husband, Paris Leighton, visiting up to 50 pow wows a year for ten years.

“When she was six years old, she caught on fire and burnt the backside of her body and subsequently spent three months in the Legacy Oregon Burn Center in Portland. Her father died on her ninth birthday of complications related to alcoholism. Her first jingle dress was a Christmas gift from her sister, after the death of her father.

“From 2004 to 2008, she won five world championships at the Gathering of Nations; she won again in 2011, 2014, and 2015. For the 2015 competition Red Elk decided to enter at the last minute and had to sew a dress the day before leaving home for the pow wow. In addition to winning the championship in 2005 at Gathering, she won the Head Woman Dancer title. In 2014, having entered 8 competitions, she won all of them. She performed in Supaman's video for the song Why? having met him on the pow wow circuit.

“In 2014 Red Elk took her first Buti yoga class. She was so moved by the experience that she obtained a yoga teaching certificate so that she could guide others through the experience. Combining the movements and meditations of Buti yoga and the footwork of jingle dress dancing, Red Elk created pow wow yoga.”

"In 2020, she appeared in the music video for the Portugal The Man song Who's Gonna Stop Me, featuring "Weird Al" Yankovic. In 2024, she played a Choctaw ancestor in the Marvel Studios television series Echo." (Source Wikipedia).

1998 to present

Traditional, hip hop

Traditional Jingle Dancer, Yoga Instructor. Wellness advocate, Mother, Adventurer, Actress

Percussion