'Disrespectful' Woman Grabbed Native Regalia At Denver Pow Wow

DENVER, CO – A woman was escorted from the Denver March Pow Wow March 24 at the Denver Coliseum after grabbing a piece of sacred native regalia and dancing around in the bleachers, police confirmed.

The woman was dancing in the bleachers and several bystanders recorded her as she removed a feather "bustle" from a rack, placed it around her neck and started dancing. A bustle is a sacramental arrangement of feathers and ornaments meant to be worn around the waist for dances.

Chad Browneagle, a native participant and audience member, firmly took the sacred item away from the woman, which was also captured on video.

“I noticed she untied somebody’s bustle and had it around her neck, and I was like, ‘What? Whoa,’” Browneagle told 9NEWS. “So I made my way down there, and as soon as she [saw] me, she took off the bustle really quickly,” he said. “I said, ‘Hey, don’t be like touching people's stuff. It’s not yours.’”

“My initial reactions were anger and horror," David Heska Wanbli Weiden, a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation and associate professor of Native American Studies and Political Science at Metropolitan State University told 9NEWS "Common sense should dictate when you’re in a sacred place, you don’t just walk up and grab someone’s sacred regalia and start dancing around with it and making a mockery of it.”

Reactions on Twitter were angry.

"I want to be clear that being respectful of our spaces is necessary," tweeted @Ms_Yellowhorse, who also captured the incident on her camera. "Just a PSA: don’t do what this lady did."

"Great! I'll just go into random churches and start singing and dancing around, lay on the alter, put robes on that aren't mine, grab the pastor's bible and start waving it around and ranting... That should be just fine with her, right?" tweeted @Atumnshroud.

The Denver Pow Wow is held at the Coliseum every year and is a public event, but represents a religious and sacred ceremony for participants. This weekend was the 45th year of the pow wow being held in Denver.

"You never take a photograph unless you ask first," Weiden told 9NEWS. "You do not enter powwow grounds until you’re allowed to do so on dance floor. There is something called an 'inter-tribal,' where non-natives may be welcomed onto the dance floor to dance. But you do not do so until you’ve been invited. And you certainly never, never, never, never go and touch someone’s regalia and put it on. That is absolutely the worst thing ever."

READ MORE at 9NEWS