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.

Biography 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. In addition to winning the championship in 2005 at Gathering, she won the Head Woman Dancer title. In 2014, having entered 8 competitions, she won all of them.

In 2014 Red Elk took her first Buti yoga class. She was so moved by the experience that she obtained a yoga teaching certificate so that she could guide others through the experience. Combining the movements and meditations of Buti yoga and the footwork of jingle dress dancing, Red Elk created pow wow yoga.

In 2020, she appeared in the music video for the Portugal. The Man feat. "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Who's Gonna Stop Me." In 2024, she played a Choctaw ancestor in the Marvel Studios television series Echo.