For the third consecutive year, the Nokota Horse Conservancy will host a booth at the United Tribes International Powwow in Bismarck, North Dakota, September 9th through the 12th. The powwow is a festival of Native American culture centered on dancing and drumming competitions.

Representatives of the NHC have been warmly welcomed by powwow participants and spectators in past years, and the booth has been a busy place, with many tribal members expressing strong interest in the horses and the Conservancy’s efforts to preserve the native horses of the Northern Plains. Along with its participation in the Horses on the Prairie Camp and a new association forged between Leo Kuntz and the Diamond Willow Ministries on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, the Conservancy is always looking for ways to make connections with the Native people whose horse culture was lost after their surrender to Federal troops in the 19th century.

If you’re in the Bismarck area during the Powwow, please be sure to visit.

In early August, Texas trainers Jack Lieser and Aaron England held a Nokota Horse Observation and Application Clinic. This was the second Nokota colt-starting clinic for the trainers, the first was held in Texas in March of 2010. The second clinic, which took place in the heartland of the Nokota breed, provided participants with a unique and once in a lifetime experience to both observe and work with Nokota horses in their natural environment. The clinic lasted five days and there were nine participants, who traveled from as far as Ohio, North Carolina, Texas and Missouri to participate. In the five days, Jack and Aaron showed the participants a variety of horse social structures in their natural environments, how to observe different horse behaviors, and how to build the fundamental first steps of working with unhandled Nokota horses through natural horsemanship.

Crazy Horse Farm of Paris, Kentucky is proud to announce Nokotas will be participating at the highly-anticipated 2010 World Equestrian Games (WEG) at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY from September 25th thru October 10th.

The Nokota Horse Conservancy’s 12^th annual Board of Directors meeting on Saturday, June 19, drew visitors from across the country to Linton for a weekend of activities.

The Conservancy was founded to protect, promote and preserve the Nokota breed, descendants of Lakota Sioux ponies crossbred with Thoroughbreds, Percherons, and other ranch stock in Western North Dakota at the end of the 19^th century. For most of those who visit Linton in connection with the Nokotas, however, the main attraction is the opportunity to observe bands of horses in a near-natural state.

UC-Berkeley student, Lucie Schwartz, filmed this mini-documentary in March 2008. A wonderfully new perspective on the work the Kuntz' have been doing to protect the Nokota horses for the past 30 years.