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“The bow whispers to the archer: trust the wind, trust the arrow, trust yourself.”
There’s a certain quiet to the past, a hush that lingers in old things—tools, stories, hands that remember what the world once was. Some things don’t fade, not really. They sit in the shadows, waiting for the right moment, the right hands, the right heart. I’ve never stood on Lakota land, never walked the red earth of the Navajo or traced my fingers along the grain of a hand-carved Cherokee bow, but I’ve read the stories. And stories, if you listen right, have a way of bringing you closer to something true.
Archery wasn’t just a skill for Indigenous peoples—it was breath and rhythm, a pulse that ran through daily life, as natural as the changing seasons. A bow wasn’t a weapon in the simple sense of the word; it was a promise, a tether to the land, to ancestors, to the spirits that whispered in the wind. And like so much else, it was taken, pushed aside, left to gather dust in museum displays and old photographs.
But it didn’t disappear. It waited.
Across the United States, Native communities are picking up the bow again—not as a curiosity, not as a hobby, but as an act of reclamation. A way of saying, We are still here. The American Indian Center in Chicago runs archery programs where young people gather, their hands learning the old ways, their feet standing firm in the present. In Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation Labor Day Festival hosts a competition where the bow intones its ancestral songs for one more time. And at the Black Hills Powwow, archers stand shoulder to shoulder, their arrows flaring fast and sure-each shot a silent defiance to a wave of oblivion.
I think about Noel Grayson, a Cherokee bowmaker whose hands carry stories the way trees carry rings beneath their bark. He shapes bows the way his ancestors did, careful and steady, letting the wood speak. “We’re not just making bows,” he says. “We’re keeping who we are alive.” At his exhibit in the Saline Courthouse Museum, his work stands quiet but sure—hunting bows, rivercane arrows, stone tools. Each one a reminder that tradition isn’t something frozen in time. It lives, it breathes, it adapts.
It’s not easy, though. The world moves fast, too fast for patience, too fast for the kind of work that demands time and reverence. The old materials—ash wood, sinew, flint—aren’t easy to find anymore. And the elders who carry these skills are fewer with every passing year. There’s a push and pull, a tug-of-war between the modern and the ancient, between convenience and craftsmanship. But still, they persist. Workshops spring up on reservations, in community centers, in backyards where grandfathers teach grandsons how to bend wood without breaking it, how to let an arrow fly without forcing it.
Technology too, has a role to play in this resurgence. At distances their ancestors wouldn’t have dreamed of, native archers have been bonded on social media. Tutorials, discussions, videos — it’s all online, a digital facsimile of yesteryear’s campfire gatherings, where knowledge and know-how traveled mouth to mouth. The bow, once held by flesh and bone, now travels in pixels and sound waves. Strange as it is, but it works.
Museums play their role, too. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma—they don’t just house artifacts; they tell stories, host workshops, invite people to step into a world that never really left. These places stand as both a reminder and a challenge: history isn’t something behind us, it’s something we carry.
When I stand with my own bow, a modern recurve of polished wood and precision, I can’t help but feel a pull toward something older. The act of drawing the string, of feeling the weight in my hands, of letting go—there’s something there, something elemental. The Lakota say the bow belongs to the wind, the earth, the spirit that guides your hand. And maybe that’s true for all of us, in different ways. Maybe it’s not about where the arrow lands, but about the release—the trust, the letting go.
For Indigenous archers, it’s more than just sport. It’s an act of survival, of defiance, of connection. Every arrow drawn is a conversation with the past, a nod to ancestors who lived through the worst and still found a way to endure. There’s something humbling in that, something that forces you to rethink your own position in the world. What do we hold on to? What do we let slip away?
Bringing back traditional archery is more than just about bows and arrows. It’s about who you are, about being able to figure out how to calibrate yourself so you fit into the land of gods where you often have to leave behind the things that complete you. It’s about listening—to the wind, to the earth, to the quiet voices that emerge when we’re willing to listen.
There’s an old story, handed down through the ages among the Lakota. It’s about a young hunter who tried to take down the buffalo, and failed, multiple times. Angry, he went to an elder, wanting teaching, perhaps even chastisement. However the elder said only, “You fight the bow, but the bow does not fight you. Listen.” And thus the young hunter learnt—not to force, not to take, but to trust. To set the bow to do what it was designed to do.”
I think about that story often. How many times do we fight what’s already within us? How often do we try to force our way through, when all we really need to do is trust? The Indigenous archers reclaiming their heritage aren’t just shooting arrows. They’re teaching patience, balance, the quiet art of letting things find their way.
And maybe that’s what draws me to this, why I find myself caught up in their stories, even from afar. There’s something deeply human in it, something that reminds me of the weight of history and the quiet, steady hands that carry it forward.
When I see video footage of the Indigenous archery competitions, there’s a stillness to it—a kind of reverence. The air is alive with it, the way it must have been ages past, when bows were something greater than implements of war or survival, but extensions of the self. And in those moments, time folds in on itself, when the past and present heave together.
Which is why the renaissance of Indigenous archery isn’t a show; it is a low-key revolution. An unwillingness to let the old ways fade away, a desire to carry them forward, bowstring by bowstring, arrow by arrow. And for those of us on the outside, witnessing, listening, there is a lesson in it—a lesson about patience and balance and trusting in things never really lost.
So when I stand with my own bow, feet planted, fingers curled tight, I remember Wíyaka Luta, remember Noel Grayson, remember the young archer at the powwow whose arrow cut the wind like it belonged there. And in that moment, I think—maybe the bow still whispers, even now. Maybe it’s always been whispering. And maybe, if we’re quiet enough, we’ll hear it too.