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Over two stifling summer days in 1876, Lt. Col. George A. Custer learned what can happen when Natives unite and resist.
A massive coalition of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho that had assembled along the Little Bighorn River in southeast Montana handed Custer and the 7th Cavalry one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history.
Today, Portland punk band 1876 honors that spirit of unity and resistance with breakneck anthems like “We Don’t Run” and “Tribes and Tribulations”—raw, rhythmic and aggressive. The septet blends melodic hardcore and skate punk with traditional Indigenous elements, powered by a battery of powwow drummers as loud as a shotgun and insistent as a heartbeat. Band members proclaim heritage with the Blackfeet, Northern Cheyenne, Comanche and Yakama peoples. They’ve built a sizable following of Natives and non-Natives alike and plan to expand their annual summer festival, Victory Day Fest, celebrating that fateful encounter with Custer.
“NDNs are punk,” frontman Gabe Colhoff, 36, tells WW. (He said this in a spoken interview, but prefers “NDN” to the spelling “Indian.”) “We’re DIY, and we’ve been fighting the government since the beginning. We live what punk bands say they are. I was always like, why aren’t these two things already together?”
For years, “powwow punk rock” was just an idea bouncing around in Colhoff’s head. The heavy, propulsive four-on-the-floor drumbeat common to punk rock had always reminded him of tribal gatherings of his youth. Same with the singing and the camaraderie.
Colhoff describes himself as half Blackfeet and half Northern Cheyenne; he says he and his brothers were raised traditionally in Portland, with a sweat lodge in the backyard and regular visits to the reservation. Being “city Indians,” they’re used to feeling like misfits—urban dwellers among other Natives; Natives among other punks.
As older siblings often do, Gabe’s brothers, Joe and James, imparted to him their musical sensibilities: hip-hop, grunge, punk rock. From his parents, he absorbed traditional powwow music, the Beatles, and Prince. In the late aughts, he joined his brothers’ ska-punk band the Closet Monsters and at various points tried to incorporate the powwow drum, though it hardly fit the ensemble’s offbeat, checkerboard vibe.
As Colhoff entered his late 20s, music took a backseat. He ultimately became an emergency medical technician, and when 2020 rolled around, the pandemic afforded the isolation—and frustration—that fueled an explosion of creative angst. Like his hero, Prince, Colhoff recorded 1876’s first three EPs—Pow Wow Punk Rock Parts 1, 2 and 3—by himself, playing every instrument. The project is deeply personal; that’s his mother’s face on the cover of the first EP.
“I had this idea for a long time, and it was really hard to get people to believe in it, which is why everything was recorded on my own,” Colhoff says. “It was just out of necessity because I couldn’t get people to like, hear what I was hearing. And trying to convince musicians to do this was next to impossible.”
With the right sound mix, powwow drums can sound fine on a record, but they’re best appreciated live, where they can hit you right in the chest, Colhoff says. As the world opened back up in late 2022, the Pow Wow Punk Rock EPs began to find an audience online and a friend asked if “1876” would play a music festival planned in South Dakota. The festival never happened, but Colhoff was already busy assembling the band he’d always wanted to play in.
First he recruited his brother Joe, four years his senior.
“I instantly really liked it,” Joe Colhoff says. “I was just like, ‘Whatever you need, man. If you need me to run merch, help with website stuff, whatever. Just let me know.’ And he asked me to sit on that [points to the powwow drum]. I was like, ‘I can do that.’ And thank God, because I don’t know anything about websites.”
Since then, the lineup has grown and changed. The current makeup is Gabe Colhoff on guitar and vocals, Chris Del Rio on guitar, Jake McLoud on bass, Luke Lunsmann on drum kit, and three powwow drummers: Joe Colhoff, Danny Smith and Goliah Elwell.
Once a lineup solidified, 1876 hit the road—hard, traveling on and off for two years. One gig: an outdoor show in Colorado not far from the Sand Creek Massacre site. Gabe Colhoff says the significance of singing in his Native language near where the government tried to forever silence his people wasn’t lost on him. In Albuquerque, the band played for a hyped-up Native-heavy crowd that offered inspiration for “Braids in the Pit,” a hip-hop–inflected earworm that calls to mind early Suicidal Tendencies. Closer to home, in a possible first, they brought powwow drumming to the Crystal Ballroom, and joined NoFX onstage in their final tour to sing “Kill All the White Men.” They later caught flak from a few aggrieved souls who seemingly have no problem with NoFX playing that song, but take issue with Native Americans singing it.
Band members say there’s a type of punk-rocker in Portland who enjoys ancestral pride when it comes from the likes of Flogging Molly and the Real McKenzies (Irish- and Scottish-inspired, respectively), but not so much when they hear 1876 celebrating their ancestry.
“We’ve had a few Nazis here,” Colhoff says. “We always deal with it.”
At the moment, 1876 is enjoying a brief lull ahead of a summer wave of show dates, including the band’s own Victory Day Fest, now in its second year, slated for June 27 at the newly opened nonprofit, all-ages venue The Off Beat. They’ll play a handful of local shows in March and April, including as support for Operation Ivy and Rancid bassist Matt Freeman’s new band, Crimewave 66, in April at the Twilight Cafe & Bar.
Sharing an amphitheater stage with the Subhumans in November in Garden Grove, Calif., bassist Jake McLoud remembers taking a moment to stand on his amp and take it all in as Gabe addressed the crowd. The mood, the weather, the moon in the sky—everything was perfect.
As one of the band’s two white members, McLoud says he’s humbled by fans who connect with their heritage through 1876.
“There’s been a lot of people I’ve talked to who’ve been separated from their culture and they’re just trying to find it again. And having this band has been really helpful for them,” McLoud says. “So for me to see that firsthand is pretty cool—just to be part of helping people process their emotions. That’s what music’s done for people forever, right?”
SEE IT: 1876 at Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 866-777-8932, startheaterportland.com, tickets at ticketweb.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday, March 18. $20. 21+.
