Studying race; and Powwows: Ur doing it wrong

So I'm back in research mode for the revision of my last novel. My protagonist is half Mohawk and half... Nuu-cha-nulth or Snuneymuxw. Thing is I know Nanaimo better, which is where the Snuneymuxw people are... so why did I choose Nuu-cha-nulth last time, who are further North around Port Alberni where I've never been? I don't know, I'm sure I had a reason, like maybe there was an online verbal dictionary. But there's one now, for the Halkomelem language. (I started this book in 2003, a lot's changed on the netserland.)

Anyway. So it's back to researching again, because there are new resources available. Such as Tumblr.

I remember reading once that in the race of facebook vs myspace, something interesting came out--that more African-Americans were using myspace. Well, I recently came across a whole bunch of Native American and some Canadian aboriginal Tumblr blogs. So I created a Tumblr blog for my book, in order to easily bookmark things.

And it means I'm back into reading race politics again. I'm reading a book about a guy who went back to live on his Six Nations reserve... well that's not a very political book, except about internal politics. But soon I'll be reading Writing the Other, which is considered The Book on writing... well, the other. And I'm reading and following all these aboriginal Tumblrs, so I find myself dancing off into various corners of the internet, following the trail of interesting stories.

Like this one, about five girls who showed up at a Powwow dressed like this:

A friend took the picture and sent it to a person who runs a blog on cultural appropriation. What shocked her in particular is that these girls were from a high school across from Stanford U where according to one commentor everyone is Crème de la crème politically correct (Eg. you don't pull this shit at Stanford U, whereas at McGill I'm sure the engineering students still party in fake dreadlocks and chief headdresses); and according to the blogger:

[Stanford] hosts the largest student run powwow in the nation for 39 years running, that is home to nearly 300 Native students, that has one of the strongest college Native communities in California

I've been suckered in, as usual, by the comments. A lot of the debate has devolved into whether it was okay to post the pic of the girls, mostly because the guy who took the photo tricked the girls into posing for it. (Instead of just taking a candid photo, which I assume would have by-passed all this "Hey that's not nice!" business, and re-focused everyone back on the real issue: WTF!!!)

Have you guys ever been to a powwow? There's one in Kahnawake each year, but I'm such a lazy-pants I never go! I'd like to make myself go this year. I promise to leave the hand-prints at home.