37th Annual
2025 BLACK HILLS POW WOW
October 10, 11, & 12, 2025
Summit Arena at the Monument | Rapid City, SD
605-341-0925
2024-2025 MISS HE SAPA WIN
Eunice Straight Head
Eunice Straight Head is the 2024-2025 Miss He Sapa Win. She is a notable member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Representing the Mnicouju band of the Thithituwan Lakota and Oglala Lakota Nation, she is of the Fights the Thunder Tiospaye. She was raised on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in the Bear Creek community as the eldest of three sisters and five brothers. Family tradition is “to walk the example”, role model and mentor for the future generations. She spends the majority of her time learning, harvesting traditional foods, and actively sharing knowledge with peers. Eunice’s family was blessed with generations of individuals who she learned from through stories she was told and the direct connection of the relatives who raised her. She has had numerous opportunities to learn from other matriarchs and teachers she has encountered during her life. This has helped her draw upon and develop her inborn creativity that she was given.
Eunice is the third generation who walked the halls of and graduated from Cheyenne Eagle Butte High School. She received her BFA in Photography from Black Hills State University and was a member of the Lakota Omniciye at their Center for American Indian Studies. Straight Head is now pursuing her Masters Degree in Lakota Leadership and Management at Oglala Lakota College. She is currently the Director of Oyate Studio in Eagle Butte, SD. She is working with the community to create more employment, sustainable communities, and creative opportunities for the people. Her late great grandmother, Eunice Larrabee, is a matriarch that Straight Head holds as a role model within CRST history.
She began dancing in the Tiny Tot Fancy Shawl category at an early age, although there was a time when her interest lay elsewhere, she has now returned to the dance circle to heal, strengthen and grow. Eunice chose women’s traditional in honor of her Unci, Wilma Straighthead, as she could not walk back into the circle before her journey in 2019. She was a long time powwow attendee and the Black Hills Powwow is a must with her aunties every year. Eunice is for all inclusivity to any experience of dancing, healing, and continues to do so for family that is no longer with us.
Straight Head is a member of the Indigenous Photograph collective, featured work in the New Yorker, and Washington Post. Her work was also a part of the Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibition, ‘In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now.’ Eunice’s photography booth was in the Disney Marvel’s ‘ECHO’. She has also co-curated an exhibition with the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, SD focused on Oceti Sakowin photographers this 2024-2025. Not only in their fashion collective, Iguhan Mani, she is an active advocate of ‘walking sovereign’ and creating upcycled pieces of wearable art by using knowledge and techniques from Lakota history.
Eunice Straight Head used her experiences and knowledge to continue representing the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe through self expression. She was awarded the 2023 TikTok Visionary Voice Honorary, Fuse TV’s Future History Honoree, and collaborated with Hulu for the 2024 L.A Pride Month Parade. From her respectful upbringing and experiences off the reservation, Eunice continues to carry the traditional teaching of a Lakota woman in all spaces. She also took the previous reigning Miss He Sapa Win’s official photos for the past two years, Taylor Campbell and Wanbli Waunsila Wi Eagle. Since returning to the dancing circle, she wanted to try one application for royalty, to experience it once. This is now her first time holding a title in the powwow world and is honored to represent Oceti Sakowin as Miss He Sapa Win.
“Once a tiny tot, always a tiny tot at heart.” - Wicahpi Wiyakpakpa Win, ‘Bright Shining Star Woman’