Acosia Red Elk

Acosia Red Elk (born 1980) is a jingle dress dancer from the Umatilla people of Oregon. A descendant of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, 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 Acosia Red Elk's parents owned an auto body business. 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.More