Brian and I drove the kids (sans oldest as she had tests that day she refused to miss) to the venue for the Powwow. I felt it would have been better with a larger stage, it was quite crowded, and possibly out doors. However, there were outside components nearby and it was one of those lovely windy days I've so come to enjoy about life here in ABQ. The days where the grit sticks to every part of you and the visibility is about a hundred yards. So indoor venue it was.

We waited for our party in the line only to discover that pre-bought school tickets didn't need to wait. Then, we waited still because a little boy scheduled to join the field trip was amongst the missing and they did not have a way to be reached. Eventually, as the grand entrance was approaching we had to give up and go in. I felt sad for the little boy and I hope still that they were not too disappointed. We looked and looked and looked. I don't know how we missed them and they us.


The boys' teacher split up from us, she told us where they usually sat and said maybe we could find a seat in that general area and so we did. The boys had been so well versed in everything in their class that they were telling us everything as we went by. My oldest boy was most involved with the idea of the body guards around the drums and the eagle staff itself.

the famed staff

guards on the drums

We found an empty bench, very near the front. I saw that what the boys' teacher had said - though unlikely - was utterly true and I found it was one of the most appealing and charming parts of the whole day for me. We were in a venue with thousands and thousands of people but there was a rule about blankets. It wasn't posted anywhere, it just was. You put your blanket down, and left your stuff on the blanket and no one would disturb it. That was your place, reserved for you by the blanket. We used this many times, our entire picnic basket and blankets, pillows and all while we went to the bathroom and around the market stalls. We would come back, and our things were untouched. Charming doesn't begin to describe the appreciation I felt for just that one aspect.

rows of blankets

Shortly after we arrived the grand entrance started. A Tribe would be introduced and the dancers from that tribe would come out, dancing around the big circle. As more and more of them came down from the stairs on all sides of us I was struck by how amazing that alone was. Being surrounded by them all, in their full dress, as they poured down the stairs and onto the arena. Soon the arena was full and it seemed impossible that they were still filling it with more and more Tribes and dancers. Eventually, they had all been introduced and they all began filing back out. The boys stood, and we were all asked to stand while the eagle staff was on the arena. The boys talked and talked about what would happen if the staff or a feather fell. We sat and watched several rounds of dancers come and go and then we decided to walk around outside in the market stalls.

already almost over-whelming

they were having a hard time dancing in the crowd, if the event grows anymore they really will need to find a different venue

We enjoyed that, though it was crowded. We tried to walk the entire tent so we would know what to get the boys as I had promised one souvenir each. Leif immediately wanted his picture taken with the bald eagle. I was a bit disappointed because they flashed the picture while the eagle was contemplating eating Queak and not when the eagle was looking at the camera. The eagle looks super imposed, but I assure you it was a real live bald eagle. This made Leif's entire day and he's asked us to frame the picture for his room.

Leif was most enchanted with the women's jingle dresses. He wanted us to get or make one for Buttercup and Celia. Asher was most enchanted with the bead work. Leif wanted a feather, desperately. Buttercup was just along for the ride.

We went and watched more dancing and ate our picnic and the day wore on like that. More than anything I wish I had had more exposure to this in my life. I think I'd have handled being a "half-breed", dark and different a lot better if I had this around me at all. I felt like I'd really really missed something in my life but I felt thrilled that the kids were getting this exposure now. Even if the Anglo gene is strong in them and you can't really tell they might have any ethnic at all. They have suspiciously dark eyes, and they tan rather than burn and one of them is swarthy - that's about it. They have always fit in where they are and always been happy. They, blissfully, don't have the struggle I had and so I hope they are more welcoming of their confluence of genes.


Eventually, we all grew tired and overwhelmed. I decided it was time to get our souvenirs. Queak

Leif got his coveted feather.

I got Buttercup a tiny little feathered hair piece. I figured it was easy to make and I promised her more when I get a free weekend - I'll just copy the pattern. I was sad Celia wasn't there because I just didn't know what to get her. I walked around about 3 times, the entire place, looking. Eventually, we settled for a worry doll bookmark and bracelets.


The booth Leif chose his feather from belonged to some of the dancers. They were speaking in Spanish to each other and passers by. I heard one of them describe where they were based and I recognized it from my Mother's stories of Mexico. I told them she described it as a beautiful place and they offered to pose for pictures with the kids. We were discouraged from taking pictures of the dancers (away from the arena) without express permission and so this was very nice for the kids. One of them asked me to come back in half an hour when he was finished with building his headdress but I was exhausted and it was time to get Celia from school. So I asked if it would offend him if I took the picture unfinished. He said of course not, it was just sad I didn't get the headdress in all its glory. I agreed. Still I was happy with what I did get and Leif got his feather from them. While we were packing the camera back up and getting Leif's feather secured some very Americanized tourists came to the table to ask to take pictures as well. Then, dramatically, one said to the other "they're Aztecs you know" and I thought, I suppose so - geographically. However, she made it sound so somber and dramatic that I almost laughed. However, I did pause for a moment to look at the displays and costumes and wonder just how influenced it all was by their ancestry. Either way, they were probably my favorite, and the most exotic of the entire affair.

Leif, the Aztec and the feather

less than half finished head-piece

The kids had a wonderful time, we left utterly exhausted. If we're here perhaps we'll go to next year's. If you're in New Mexico in late April, I do recommend it as an unusual and sensory pleasing event. As we left the kids realized in joy that they had basically completed their license plate collection, it was pretty amazing to see all the cars from far reaches. Obviously people are coming to the event from all over and thankfully we didn't have as far to go home as many.

As I may or may not have mentioned here or there from time to time, I'm brown. I don't know that I ever really specified how or why. It doesn't come up a lot, actually, and even less when I live in a state that is something like 90% brown.
However, I was more in touch with this when I was a kid, both growing up in Texas, especially in Nebraska where no one is brown (though I hear that's changed since IBP moved in - the other day I saw Nebraska listed as 23rd in the nation for Spanish speaking states. The fact that it wasn't in the bottom 5 and was in the top half kind of stunned me, because that doesn't reflect the Nebraska I knew at all.) and my mother supported my brownness. She even made a big deal out of me, insisting that it was what made me, in her words, so stunningly beautiful as a kid. I was self-conscious and not at all pleased with being called beautiful. I have spent my life wishing I'd seen myself that way because it would have saved a lot of time and learning process when I hit my teens. In the meantime, since we were separated from the part of my family that dominated my looks genetically, my mother spent a lot of time educating me on how I came to be so and of the history of my brown fore-bearers.  Eventually, the buzz-word "native" took place. I found that word highly offensive when I was in my teens - when it hit - because I felt that people who had been here 16 generations had a right to call themselves native. Period. I mean, frankly, that and the combined ideas I held in my head of the word native (hand in hand with savage) bothered me. I'd read too much about the subjugation of the natives to find the word appealing. Savage, native, barbarian. Etc..
In the end it all put me off.
So, being the typical American, I had "an interesting confluence of genes" as my Grandma Cele pointed out. She marveled that she could have come from Prussia to some how kismetly run smack into a family line that led us here.
When I was a kid I took a lot of flack for being a Jewish-Indian. I think that just mentally fizzled the circuits in other kids' brains. When I had one person shout it at me, insisting it was both impossible and sick, and wrong, and just not okay with nature I asked them how Christian-Indians made any more sense. At all. I mean one way or the other the religion was adopted at some point, so why did it matter which religion or when?
In reality, I've been told by many a historian that the Cherokee would do anything to keep warm in the winter, even adopting an entire Dutch colony. Which explains that weird blonde recessive gene and the fact that when I was growing up my maiden name started with Von.
This weird link, is an example of weird links you will pull up if you google Jewish and Cherokee.

I have a friend who likes to tell the story about me that when we were little and other friends would ask why I was dark I'd say because I'm a half-breed. Which half - they'd inevitably ask. To which I'd answer "my top half" and show them my tan lines. 

Then, life takes another turn, and I was in a time and place in my life when I just didn't have time to focus on heritage. It came time to pick and choose and religion won really. I moved to England, married British and being native American means literally nothing over there. You're just another offense to the xenophobic senses. I mean at the end of the day, there is equality in bigotry. I didn't have a community to blend with and neither did my children. To the end that when I moved back here, it had literally slipped my mind.
I unpacked boxes from my storage unit to discover all my books on my heritage - and the heritage now of my children. I wasn't sure what to do next, other than leave the books lying around the house. Plus, the area we're in isn't big on my type of native, they're all Pueblos here, very very out of touch with my folks.

So, when the kids went to public school and they (the school) approached me directly about being dark, explaining that if I fessed up and gave them a CIB that they - the school - would get all kinds of lovely funding. I contemplated what to do next. The fact was, by that juncture I felt like a fraud. I was so out of touch with the "native" realities. Still, I had a hard time saying no to the pleas for funding. Then, when I did fill out the forms, all these lovely benefits started flooding towards my children. Again, I felt like a fraud and now a thief, taking these lovely things. We get first choice of tutoring options (which I never took because Leif had already been offered a reading tutor and he didn't need anything else). We got offered free dental (which I didn't take because we had insurance) and so on. It trickled down to the end that my youngest son gets pulled out of his class every so often, for mild tutoring, to make sure he's on track. All the youngest ones from the tribes do, it isn't just us. He loves his class and he's actually learned to read in that class.
Then, we got offered another class, on Mondays, for the kids. This class teaches the basics of being native. The class is in a stark juxtaposition from the reality of our current education system. The kids welcome the spirits, and their ancestors. They feed the spirits to appease them, they burn sage and smudge themselves (which sometimes I honestly feel like I need to get by). They introduce themselves by their given Tribal names and their clans if they have them. I have Raindrop and Firewalker. You could guess which is which by their personalities. I didn't name them, they got them at the beginning of the class.

All that is a build-up to say that the kids - as one of the components to their extra class - were taken to The Gathering of Nations. The Gathering of Nations boasts itself as America's biggest powwow. I wanted to take the kids last year but I was both intimidated by the size and we realized we just couldn't afford the tickets for all 6 of us. I couldn't deal with leaving anyone behind, so we just didn't go. When I was asked if I wanted to chaperon this field trip it became very happy and exciting for all of us. Then, Brian said he'd take the day off, because he figured the more adults on the ground in a massive crowd setting the better.
 Part 2. 

The kids were finally in bed. Daddy was reading the second chapter of their nightly story. Usually, they get one chapter. On nights they are good they get 2. On nights they are in bed early and really milking it they get several chapters.

After the usual gamut of voices and lilting story intonations from the other room I hear what sounds like screaming. That isn't uncommon, all kinds of noises come from the stories. Then, I hear shouting "where is it coming from - what did you hit - what happened?"
The answer to this is more crying, now semi-hysterical.
I paused for a second, I thought, this is a weird twist in the story. Maybe one of them got in trouble - sometimes they take advantage of Daddy being wrapped up in the story to pull stunts.

"I can't tell what's bleeding - the bathroom we're going to the bathroom - HON!"

I'm hon. I think - 'oh - just what Mommee needs, another head wound.' My heart sinks.

Mommee gets all the trauma wounds, for one thing when the panic sets in I'm the one they call for. For another, unless I'm the one bleeding - somewhere along the 12 years of marriage I got delegated the one who deals with blood.

When I open the door into the bathroom, the sink is running, and the scene is macabre at best. It's Queak, and he's bleeding...copiously. I couldn't tell from where, Daddy couldn't tell from where. Just blood, lots and lots of blood, the blood running down his face, neck, back, arms, stomach.
I didn't pause I walked to him and put on my most genuine stern 'Mommee is in utter control and everything is totally fine voice.'

"You're ok, you need to stop panicking. You need to take deep breaths."
"But the blood is in my mouf, I can't breef"

Daddy in a worried tone "it's coming from his mouth"

Me thinking - its a hemorrhage. I've been here before. My stomach sinks as I remember the night my mother hemorrhaged from her face. I remember the pints of blood, and the drive to the hospital and I think but he's so tiny. Why would he be bleeding like that at his age? That must mean something's really wrong. He's so tiny, we don't have time to drive, I'll have to phone an ambulance. I don't call ambulances lightly - even with 4 kids and blood ticking by.
"Okay, Mommee needs to be 100% sure where the blood is coming from"
"MY MOOUUUUFFF! AAAAAHHHH! I'M SO SCARED MOMMEEEE"

"No you're not going to be scared, because I'm here, and it looks bad but it isn't really, because you are fine. Utterly fine."
I turn the water from cold to tepid and I hand the rolls of toilet paper to Daddy and say "hold this, tightly around his nose, let him breath" I try to get Queak to rinse his mouth.
No good, the blood has oozed past the roll of toilet paper into the mouth rinse and then the toilet paper has been thrown into the toilet.
"Right," I say "I'm getting a cloth."
"do we have time for that?" Asks Daddy
I honestly don't know. I'm not good with how much time do you have questions, I only know one pace, and I really doubt panic will help anything, so I won't go faster.

I go and get cloths from the linen closet. I hold one to his face and hand the others to Daddy. I say "hold this, don't let it past his mouth."
To Queak I say "Rinse and spit and rinse and spit and rinse and spit" handing him a glass of water.
He rinses and spits, by the third time the water runs clear.
"But it's coming from my mouf!"
"no. You're panicked and you're swallowing it, it's running down your throat from your nose. It's bleeding so fast because you panicked and you have a healthy blood pressure. So take a deep breath, hold this until it clots and I'm going to the kitchen to make you a compress and some jell-o" The jell-o is an old wives tale but I had chronic bloody noses as a kid. I have heard every trick, tried every trick, hated every trick. The jell-o sometimes worked and it always cheered me up - so jell-o it is.

By the time I get back from the kitchen the bleeding is almost finished, dripping now. Daddy looking sickly relieved, wiping the counters and floor down.
I start a bubble bath for our victim.
Now that the trauma of it all is by I realize the other kids are screaming, some crying. I suddenly tune them in. I ask Celia to grab the sheets and pajamas, if you get them in a cold wash, before the blood dries we can stop it setting I say. Celia's too old a hat at all this to blink, she just goes and starts the wash.
Buttercup crying hysterically.
Leif freaking out from the top bunk.
Now that the trauma of it all is by, Queak realizes that he's a little boy and mass quantities of his own blood are great fun.
"Hey look, I'm Moshe and it's a river of blood!"

Pause, him looking down into the sink - then
"Mommee, can sharks smell this?"
"I suppose so, yes, but they'd have to swim a long way inland and up the pipes to get you, so I wouldn't sweat it. Think twice about bleeding like this into a dive mask though."

Pause
"Hey Leif, Look at me - I've been in a wreck! Hey Leif, look at me, look at all this blood!!! Hey Leif, you ever see anything so cool? Hey Leif, when do you get to see this much blood without lots of hurting?"
Bleeding now more or less completely stopped. Several bloody rags later, an entire roll of toilet paper and a now full sink of bloody water.  I put him in the bath, sponging off his back and neck and stomach and arms and - eyebrows? How do you get blood in your eyebrows, you dork?

"You've clotted and you're forbidden from blowing your nose until tomorrow. Now, finish up in the bath."
I go to get a towel and contemplate half a glass of wine for my nerves when I hear songs about rivers of blood coming from a little high pitched voice from the bathroom. My mind strays back - and back again - to my mother and the night we took her to the hospital for the hemorrhage. Heaven help me, I probably need therapy now. Meanwhile, the boy's clean, fresh jamas, and on the third chapter of his story.
Sigh.