The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

month, they work together and learn about
resources and skills and the tremendous
amount of technical knowledge that needs
to be known to put on really big festivals.
I would also like to add that the Cherry
Blossom Festival at the Seattle Center is all
Japanese, and it is a narrow sort of snapshot.
But, another thing that happens in Seattle is
the Japanese-American Bon Odori Festival,
which is the annual summer Buddhist Day of
the Dead festival. The Buddhist church where
it occurs is within the Black community. The
participants are of every racial group you can
think of. They all join together to participate
in Japanese traditional dances. They learn
them, they practice them, every age group.
It’s a lot of fun and it is definitely crossracial.
Shawna Shandiin Sunrise: I am speaking from
the level of who I am as half Diné and half K’i-
Wa, which is Santa Domingo Pueblo. I think it
is just awesome that there is another individual
here who is half Diné and half Pueblo—we
don’t come from the same village—but as I
was growing up, we went to everything, and
my parents always really pushed us. There
are a lot of Pueblo women who don’t butcher
animals, but when my dad and I would go
hunting, he would say, “You need to know this
because you are Navajo.” So, that was the kind
of diversity of tribalism, and there are a lot of
people who have many tribes on many levels.
I never thought about the quantum things until
we had to go to IHS, which is Indian Health
Services, to get health everything. Still, at
that point, I didn’t notice it because all of my
aunts were nurses, so we didn’t know about
the whole signing-up routine. As long as you
were part of the community and people saw
you, that is how you are acknowledged—as
being multicultural or, in my case, multitribal.
I also serve on Gathering Nations, which is a
huge social event. It is an inter-tribal gathering
that has been held for almost 25 years. It happens
in Albuquerque and is where a pancultural
environment has been developed. The event
has taken the pow-wow, which is mainly Plains,
and brought in Navajos, Pueblos who aren’t
Plains Indians—they grew up dancing and learning
these dances as another level of their own
tribal dances. So, as a young person, I grew
up dancing not only my traditional dances on
my Diné side, which is my Navajo side, or my
traditional dances on my K’i-wa side, which is my
Pueblo side—I was also a dancer in pow-wow,
so I had three levels of participation, and to me
it was pretty much normal. I didn’t feel like I
was displaced, I didn’t feel like it was a stretch.
I would be dancing pow-wow in the afternoon
and go perform later on. In one day, I could
dance three different dances and know the
difference, and I was all of seven years old.
So, on that level, there are so many individuals
and Indigenous beings and children out there
growing up with that perception yet also being
told those different levels. It is a difficult thing
to understand, and when I do find somebody
who is half Pueblo or half Diné, like myself, it is
like, “Oh, yeah! You know what I am talking
about; we don’t have to explain anything” in
the sense of being not enough of this or that. I
have been in a whole group of odds and ends
and they’re like, “Oh, but she’s Pueblo; don’t say
that because she has some other perspective.”
Also, being in my own village, there were times
growing up when we were with my mother’s
family a lot, and we would come in and they
would say, “Oh, there are all those Navajos,”
and I would say “Wait, but I am half . . .”
As I have grown older, I see that level, but I
don’t feel bad about it. I believe I was meant
to be who I am and I accept it, and I am
comfortable with riding that level because I
think that purpose is one of the reasons I am
who I am today. Speaking about the Maori,
who are really awesome, they don’t carry that
level of, “Okay, you don’t look like you are
Maori enough” or “You only have this much
Maori.” For some odd reason, within the lower
48 other than up in Canada, we justify levels of
quantum and that has to do with the government
and all of the services that are available.
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