When Tom Bedonie attended reservation boarding
school, celebrating his Navajo heritage was something to be
avoided. If he used his native language, Bedonie says, “I had
to eat soap.” Instead of causing him to
forget his Navajo ways, the punishment made Bedonie cling tightly
to them. That is the reason this fiftysomething Navajo journeys
from his home in Black Mesa, in northeastern Arizona, to American
Indian gatherings all over the United States. Last month, his
travels brought him to the annual “Spirit of the
Thunderbird” powwow at Cahokia Mounds, near Collinsville,
where he proudly gave the invocation in his Navajo Athabascan
dialect. His
prayer, he explains later, welcomes all “the singers,
dancers, and those relatives that used to live” in the
Mississippi Valley region, and he thanks and blesses “our
ancestors, our forefathers.”
It’s a way, he
says, of showing respect and seeking permission to gather here, in
this place. Bedonie wears simple
black clothing and a hat to shield him from the blazing sun, but
he’s the exception amid a rainbow of colors. In the grand
march of Indian tribes into the arena, many young tribal
representatives wear contemporary clothing, but middle-aged
participants favor traditional Indian regalia. Feathers, pelts,
beading, and bells lend visual and aural texture to the
dancers’ garments. As the dancers circle the enclosure,
subtle drumming and chanting become more and more urgent. The march
concludes with a veterans’ dance, song and prayer for Indians
currently serving in the military. David Keyman, 62 and part
Lakota Sioux, learned of his Indian heritage only a few years ago, when he discovered one of his grandfathers
was Sioux. His native roots were kept a family secret for decades to
guard against discrimination; in Missouri, where his family resides,
full-blooded Indians were barred from owning property up until a
generation ago, he says. For the past five years, since Keyman became
aware of his Indian background, he and his wife have attended Sun
Dances of thanksgiving in South Dakota; this is their second visit to
the Cahokia powwow. Dan Isaac, a 37-year-old
Choctaw and substance-abuse counselor from Philadelphia, Miss., has
traveled to Cahokia with family and friends. Powwows, he says, are
important spiritual gatherings, and this year alone he’s
attended at least a dozen. At Cahokia, Isaac takes part in the
hunting dance. The other dancers depict
hunters silently tracking prey; Isaac, focused and intense, chants
the hunting song as he dances. “A powwow is how
people worship,” Isaac says. “The dance and singing is
spiritual. . . . We have to be close to nature, to our
mother” — Mother Earth. Though separated by great
distances and coming from different tribes, dancers and their
families share kinship and build bonds that transcend the
here-and-now. “We learn our
duties through our elders, and we learn through these
ceremonies,” Bedonie says. “I know where I came from,
and I know where I’m going.”
Heritage is something boarding
school and a bar of soap couldn’t erase.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2005.
