Educational Experience

Part II--Chapter Seven

This is a tribute to my eight years on the Hopi rez, where I lived as the wife of a Hopi artist, immersed in their beautiful culture. While pow wows are not a Hopi "thing," we went to lots of them. And the feeling of Oneness with all of the people not just there but in the entire world, as we danced, is something I will never forget. It's an experience that changed my life, so I wanted Colt and Wyatt to experience it together. And to share it with you, too.

2-7

It got around fast, what had happened out there—I’ll give you the whole story the little Indian women told us in a minute. But Wyatt was the one everyone kept running up to and wanting to hear about back at the village. So I’m going to do a Pulp Fiction on you, and tell you things all out of chronological order.

I’ll start with all the incredible stuff that happened at the pow wow later that day. We were so amped up that we still wanted to go, her and I. So damned near everyone in the village went along so they could sit by us looking all smug like she was kin to them or something.

I mean, you should’ve seen those ladies trying to sit by us and Tia under the arbor like that fry bread fight never even happened. But of course, all the young girls smirked and rolled their eyes the whole time. They couldn’t let her get away with me that easily.

The pow wow itself had been going strong for a couple of days already. But that day, there was a huge Christmas crowd partly because of the good weather and also because of the “big rescue” they’d heard about on Facebook, a lot of them.

I think I’ve told you how Native people are all into Facebooking damned near everything to their relations all over the place. I once heard a pow wow MC warn the audience that “what you do in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what you do at the pow wow goes on Facebook.”

He’s right. It’s like the new moccasin grapevine, Facebook. So Wyatt’s story was all over Indian Country in a flash—the fact that some of those Indians knew her as a teacher gave it a boost, of course. So I have to think that brought out quite a few folks who wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

And that was actually a really good thing, since the admission “fee” was old clothes, canned food, anything you wanted to offer to the elders and the poorer folks in the area. If you didn’t bring anything, there was a donation jar for cash. But it didn’t matter how much you gave. A couple of little kids gave a quarter each, and the women at the little table made a big fuss over them like they’d put a Benjamin each in there.

The elders who started the Christmas pow wow, Alma and Kenneth White Horse, had set aside a whole section for us under the arbor. There were even chairs there already, so we didn’t need the folding ones we’d brought. And as we were setting up, Alma came over to give Wyatt a big hug.

She was a stately sistah with a sugar white braid down her back and not one wrinkle on her face. I couldn’t tell what tribe she was from, but they make some really nice looking women, whichever one it is. I mean, she was more than just pretty. She moved like maybe she’d been a professional dancer once. Very regal, dignified. And the way she smiled at Wyatt made me feel really proud and even more humbled.

It was like they were welcoming her home, you know? Like she was back where she belonged. And that surprised me because I’m usually skeptical about white folks on the rez. But I knew Wyatt hadn’t gone there to be “one with the Indians” like a lot of the New Agey, Rainbow Children types do.

I mean, there’s all these people who want to believe they were Native in a past life or have Indian blood, when only, like, 1% of the people in this country really do have any Native in them. That’s a fact. The people who do DNA testing will tell you that.