King of the Road - August 2011
Getting in Step
Exploring Native culture at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial
Story and Photography by
Lesley S. King
Before I explore the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, I lean my forehead on my parked car’s steering wheel and collect myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to be among some 8,000 people to attend this event that convenes dozens of tribes from all over North America to dance, drum, sing, show their art, and to rodeo—but I also know that I’ll be participating in a culture that isn’t my own.
How do I immerse myself in the ways of people with beliefs and lives so different from mine? The Inter-Tribal Ceremonial started in 1922 and includes Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, Zunis and Taos Puebloans, among many other U.S. tribes and first nations from other countries. What if I disturb them by taking photos, or ask a question that offends their values? As I hear a distant drumbeat signaling the beginning of the parade at the start of the four-day event, I strap on my camera, grab my notepad, and head into a foreign land.
I walk the streets of downtown Gallup, a town of about 20,200 residents located 137 miles west of Albuquerque on I-40 and on the edge of the Navajo Nation. Gallup has Native trading posts, Route 66 diners, and today, all manner of people lining the sidewalks. A Navajo man draped in turquoise eats bread baked in an horno (an adobe oven), a mother braids her daughter’s hair, and kids blow soap bubbles into the early morning sunshine. I gingerly train my camera on their remarkable faces and am surprised to find welcoming smiles fill my lens.
When You Go
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The Navajo Nation Band strikes up a tune as it marches along the street, drums pounding and brass blaring. Wearing a velvet gown and inlaid turquoise crown, Miss Navajo Nation, who has won her community’s beauty and poise pageant, hugs children. Dancers wearing bison horns and bright feathers step along the pavement and others with eagle wings twirl. A roar of drumbeats sounds and the crowd goes wild when the Danza Mexi’cayotl troupe appears. In the Azteca tradition from Mexico, they wear towering feather crowns as they spin through the street.
My head still full of all the images, I make my way nine miles east of town to Red Rock Park, where the rest of the Ceremonial’s activies takes place. I tour the exhibit hall, where a feast of pottery, weavings, and jewelry are on sale at the art fair. Butterflies and deer adorn a Zia vessel, and hand-dyed silk shimmers on a Navajo blanket. With this beauty around me, my heartbeat quiets from its morning trepidation.
But as I head back outside, I see the Big White Tent. The tent is set below vermillion cliffs and the deep sound of drumbeats and a faint scent of tobacco smoke escape its folds. Again that foreboding sense comes, a feeling that my presence will somehow disrupt the balance. Inside, at the Ceremonial Contest Powwow (a Native dance performance in which the participants can win prizes), spectators sit around the perimeter, while groups of men beat out a rhythm on coffee-table-size drums. Fancy Dancers—known as such for their feathered headdresses and tasseled shirts—spin, step, and twirl, faster and faster until they are but a blur of color.
I kneel in the soft dirt to photograph the next dance competitors. Teen girls in beaded leather dresses adorned with quills, feathers, and bells stand and bounce gently to the drum in a Stationary Dance, a regal ritual in honor of their families. On the downbeat, the girls raise eagle-feather fans to their faces to show respect. One of them, upon finishing, draws near. Shaundeen Bear, from Chinle, Arizona, explains that her mother made her beaded cape, dress, and moccasins. “I just love dancing!” she says. “I get to express who I am.”
Back in the open air, I head to the Main Arena to watch the rodeo, where Indian cowboys rope steers and ride broncos. Then I go to the intimate Marland Aitson Amphitheater to see the Zuni Olla Maidens, a group of Zuni Pueblo women who carry on their tribe’s traditions, balance pots on their heads while gracefully padding out complex dances.
“Our dance pays homage to the Zuni women who carried water from the water holes,” Loretta Beyuka explains. When she takes the pot off, I get a real surprise. Inside this modern Native woman’s pot, on top of lake salt from Zuni Pueblo, sit her wallet, lip-gloss, and cell phone—just like the items I have in my purse.
Next, I strike up a conversation with Fernando Cellicion, who is still winded from his Zuni White Buffalo Dance. He has been involved with the Ceremonial for as long he can remember. His grandparents, parents and children participate. “It’s like a big family reunion,” he says. He offers me a cinnamon roll, a specialty of his mother, and I savor it, now feeling more at home myself.
After dark, I make my way into the Red Rock Park Main Arena for the Evening Performance, where I move elbow to elbow with hundreds of people. Always a bit of an agoraphobe, I find my heart beating so hard I can feel it in my chest. I locate a seat with a view down into the broad arena with its circle of chairs. The center soon fills with dancing and music, as performances I saw samples of today come fully to fruition before a crowd of thousands. The dancing is brilliant under a great dark sky lit by a sickle moon.
Around me people eat roasted corn, Indian tacos, and cherry snow cones. As they speak, I hear Navajo, Spanish, German, and French. A young girl tells me about her current run for Miss Navajo Nation, and some French people describe their ride across the Southwest on Harley-Davidsons. I relax into the night, secure that even though our life steps may differ greatly, we all dance
very much alike.
Lesley S. King (www.lesleysking.com) day-trips to another little-known place each month. In September, join her in southeastern New Mexico in the town of Lovington.
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