BorderWest

A Pow Wow and Some Sidewalk Chalk

By Rebecca Powell, 10-21-08

	Rio Grande Pow Wow Dancer

The scene of the Rio Grande Pow Wow is familiar: the grass dancers, little boys in wranglers and grown men in Dallas Cowboys jerseys. I spent twelve years living next door to the second largest reservation in California. I spent the intervening years missing it. A remote Northern California town it had the usual problems, too few jobs and too much alcohol. Early deaths and violence were common place, yet I was born to the ways of that small town, to its ranching, logging, and the reservation. Living beside another culture, knowing there was more than my way of living was the norm.

Upon our move to Oklahoma, I remember waiting for the pow-wow assembly, the storyteller or the basket-weaving demonstration, those yearly events in my past hometown. They never happened. I did not know I had been privileged in that out of the way town. I had thought everyone had such access.

Thus, we came to the Rio Grande Pow Wow for the second year. The boy likes the word pow wow, adding syllables and repeating it as I push the stroller to the university practice fields. Children roll down the stadium hill. The Mescalero Gourd dancers shake out a rhythm on the field. New Mexico State University students shape fry bread for Indian tacos on the sidelines.

The Tiwas, a federally unrecognized tribe, take the field with a friendship dance. The women two-step with perfect posture. They graciously invite the crowd to counter circle. We do. My feet are clumsy and the boy jerks my hand, wanting to enter the middle circle and touch a shaker. I shake his arms, a pitiful substitute for the real experience he craves.

Later, we climb the stadium hill, watching the dancing from above. The steps weave patterns, maps of movements, and the colors fly. The boy learns the intricacies of rolling down a hill: fold your arms, close your eyes, trust the momentum.

We moved to Las Cruces upon the promise of sun and a university. Those being delivered, we have gained much more. In the glow of a fading evening, the children of the neighborhood chalked the sidewalks. The drew bears, dinosaurs and princesses. As the boy led me to a picture of a dinosaur, I noticed words scratched under it, words and symbols. Batul, from India, had written a word for dinosaur, so had Amneh, and Isabella and Katerina all using their native script. The boy did not much care about my linguistic discovery, being more fascinated with the drawing, but I felt the rareness of that moment, the rareness of this place we find ourselves.

I no longer wake to the sun rising above the Mission Mountains. I cannot look out my window and gauge the time of year by the color of Flathead Lake. Instead, I am surrounded by cacaphony of cultures and it feels like home.

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