Son Who Returns

by Gary Robinson

  He laughed and the audience laughed with him. Everyone was having a good time.

  I leaned over again to Nana and said, “Now I’m sure I need to do this. This is almost as good as surfing.”

  Chapter 6

  The First Step

  When Adrian finished his round of competition he came over to where we were sitting.

  “Mark has something he wants to tell you,” Nana said.

  “What is it?” Adrian asked.

  “I want to become a powwow dancer,” I said. “I need you to show me how.”

  Adrian looked at me for a minute. He picked up a hand towel that Nana brought and wiped the sweat off his face. He looked at me again.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” I replied.

  “You show up at your first powwow, and all of a sudden you think you can dance,” Adrian said in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I—”

  “Don’t talk to me right now,” Adrian said. He was almost angry, but I wasn’t sure why. “I’m going to change out of my dance outfit.”

  He marched off toward our RV. I looked at Nana to see if she knew why Adrian was acting that way. She just shrugged. She, Pablo, and I gathered up our folding chairs and followed him.

  By the time we got back to the RV, Adrian had calmed down. As he changed his clothes, he said he needed to explain a few things to me. Nana and Pablo went inside the RV so we could talk.

  “Deciding you want to get involved in the powwow is a serious thing, man,” Adrian said. “You can’t just snap your fingers and, poof, you’re a powwow dancer.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “There are steps to follow,” he said without looking at me. “Cultural protocols.”

  “What’s a protocol?”

  “It’s the way things are done,” he said. “It’s the stuff you’re expected to know in order to do something the right way.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said.

  “This is something that Nana and Pablo have to agree to, because it will require their time and energy. Not to mention the money involved.”

  He was getting worked up about this all over again.

  “I get the picture,” I said. “I’ll talk it over with Nana.”

  “And another thing,” he said. “You have to stick with it. You can’t just decide one day to get involved, and then a few days later decide to drop out. It takes commitment.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I finally said. “I get it. You don’t think I’ll take this seriously, and therefore you don’t want me to do it. Is that it?”

  Adrian took a deep breath before speaking.

  “No, it’s not that I don’t want you to do it,” he said. “I’m sorry if that’s the way it sounded.”

  He had finished changing clothes, and he sat down to put on his shoes. After tying his laces, he paused and looked at me.

  “All right,” he said. “You have to answer one question before we go any further.”

  “Sure. Ask me.”

  “Why do you want to do this?”

  I took a deep breath before answering. Then I told him the truth, even though it sounded kind of weird.

  “The drum called to me,” I said simply. “When the Grand Entry began, the drum started pulling at me. Like a magnet. I can’t explain it any other way.”

  Adrian just looked at me for a long minute.

  “What?” I asked, when he didn’t say anything.

  “That wasn’t the answer I expected,” he replied. “I thought you’d say it was because it looked neat. Or you wanted to impress your surfing buddies. Or some other shallow reason.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that all? Well, I also have to admit that it does seem like a great way to meet girls.”

  We stared at each other for a second, and then Adrian broke out laughing. I let out a loud, deep laugh, too. And it took us a couple of minutes to recover.

  “Okay, bro,” he said when the laughing stopped. “You passed the first test. Welcome to the powwow trail.”

  That was the day I began my journey as a powwow dancer. Somebody once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. That was my first step.

  When we got back home, Nana, Pablo, Adrian, and I sat down for a family meeting. Adrian laid out all the things I needed to do. In addition to picking a dance category and making a dance outfit, there was an important step I didn’t know anything about.

  Before I could dance at my first powwow, I’d have to host a “give-away.” That’s a time-honored tradition during which the family of the new dancer gives gifts to important people within the powwow circle. This happens during a break between the regular dance sessions at a powwow.

  I would need to collect hundreds of things like blankets, towels, dishes, hats, belts, and other things that people in the powwow circuit could use. These things would then be given away to all the people who were involved in putting on the powwow. It was like a formal announcement that told the powwow world that you were serious about this.

  Nana and Pablo had, of course, been through this process when Adrian started dancing. So they knew all about it, and readily agreed to organize it for me.

  “This is all pretty overwhelming,” I admitted during our family meeting. “I really didn’t know fully what I was getting us all into, did I?”

  “Good thing for you that we knew what you were getting us into,” Adrian laughed.

  All of them promised to support me any way they could. I, in turn, promised to make the commitment to see it through and do my best with all of it.

  I had studied all the different powwow dance categories and decided to follow in Adrian’s footsteps in the Men’s Traditional category. He said that was the best option because Crow was one of the tribes that dance in the Traditional category. I’d be in the teen division.

  “That’s good,” Nana said. “That’ll speed things up. We kept all of Adrian’s outfits that he outgrew, so we already have most of what we’ll need to create your first set of regalia.”

  During the daytime, Adrian started teaching me about the Men’s Traditional dance style. He said there were several different kinds of songs in this category, each with its own type of dance steps to go with it.

  “There’s the Crow Hop, the Sneak-up, and the Duck and Dive,” he explained.

  I laughed when I heard the names. I couldn’t help it. They sounded so funny.

  “Laugh all you want to,” he said sternly. “But each one has a story behind it, a meaning, that is older than any of the music you hear on the radio today.”

  I could see he was serious, so I stopped laughing and listened.

  “The important thing to remember about tribal dancing is to feel the music and the beat,” he instructed. “Don’t think about it too much. That’ll just get in the way.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “If you need to think about something while you’re dancing, think about your Crow ancestors,” he advised. “What was it like for them out on the hunt or in battle? What was it like living in a tipi and moving to follow the buffalo so everyone in the village could eat?”

  At night, I worked with Nana to create my first dance outfit. She laid out regalia from two of Adrian’s earlier outfits. I could see that parts of both outfits were worn out in places. She pulled out pieces from each of them that we could use to make a single nice outfit.

  “One of the optional pieces of the Men’s Traditional dance regalia is something called the coup stick,” Nana said one night as she, Adrian, and I worked. She said the letter p was silent in this word and pronounced it “koo.”

  “In the olden days, when the Crow lived on the open plains,” Adrian said, “one of the things a warrior had to do to become a war chief was to hit or touch an enemy without killing him or being killed by him. That was called a coup. It showed that you were brave. The stick you used to touch the enemy with was calle
d a coup stick.”

  Adrian took a long wooden box out of his closet and set it on the bed. Opening the box, he took out a long object wrapped in deer hide. Inside the hide was an old stick covered in beadwork. At the end of the stick was the claw of a bird with its talons ready to strike.

  “This was our grandfather’s coup stick,” Adrian explained. “Nana gave it to me when I started dancing, but she wanted me to just keep it and not use it.”

  “That way it could be passed on to your kids and to their kids,” Nana added.

  I took the stick and turned it over in my hands. The beadwork was beautifully done.

  “That’s the claw of a golden eagle,” Adrian said. “It came from Montana, where our Crow relatives still live.”

  I handed the coup stick back to him.

  “So, if you want, you could have a coup stick of your own as part of your regalia,” Nana said.

  “Where can we get one?” I asked.

  “Right here,” Adrian answered.

  He pulled another box out of his closet and presented it to me. Setting it on the bed, I opened it. Inside was another coup stick with a beaded shaft, leather strips hanging from one end, and an eagle claw on the other end.

  “Awesome!” I shouted, turning the stick over and over.

  “We ordered this from a Crow elder after you said you wanted to dance,” Nana explained. “It just arrived in the mail.”

  I hugged them both and then pretended I was dancing in full regalia at my first powwow. The coup stick really gave me a feeling of power. I imagined what it must have been like to be a Crow warrior on the plains a hundred and fifty years ago.

  I got goose bumps, along with a mental image that flashed through my mind. For one second I thought I was on a horse riding fast in a group of fellow warriors. In another second the image faded. Now I knew my dance outfit was complete.

  Other things started falling into place too. When other members of the family heard I was going to start dancing, they began dropping by with gifts that I could use for the give-away.

  In one short month, we had put together all the things I’d need to hit the powwow trail. Adrian said it took some people a year to get ready. It was mid-August and already almost time for school to start. So it was good that we’d gotten so much done so quickly.

  Adrian showed me the list of upcoming powwows that he was planning to attend. He had to choose events close to us because of school. We’d couldn’t head out until after school was over on a Friday, and we had to be back in time for school the following Monday.

  So we planned to host my give-away at the Pala Tribe’s powwow the weekend before school started. The Thursday night before the powwow, we stacked all the give-away stuff in the RV’s back bedroom. It was piled floor to ceiling.

  When we got to the powwow grounds the next day, Adrian made all the arrangements for the give-away with the arena director and the emcee. They said we could hold the give-away Saturday afternoon before the dinner break.

  At around three o’clock that afternoon, several of Adrian’s powwow friends came to the RV to help us unload the gifts. We started piling them up behind the emcee’s table.

  At four o’clock the emcee announced my give-away over the loudspeakers. He explained, “This afternoon we are welcoming a new dancer to the powwow world. His name is Mark Centeno from the Chumash Reservation. He is of the Chumash and Crow Nations and is the younger brother of Adrian Blackwolf, well-known in powwow circles.”

  It took about an hour for the give-away. After all the gifts were given out, the main drum group started playing an honor song. My family and I began circling the arena. As we moved past the arena seats, dancers joined in behind us. Spectators also fell in the circle. Soon we were followed by a couple hundred people, all honoring the powwow tradition and welcoming me to their world.

  When it was all over, Adrian said, “Now all these people are kind of part of your family. If you ever need anything, they’ll do whatever they can to support you. In turn, you must be available to help out any one of them if they need it.”

  “That’s kind of a big responsibility,” I said.

  “Powwows are based on things that Native Americans think are important,” Adrian explained. “Honor, respect, tradition, and generosity.”

  “There’s so much that goes into this,” I observed. “It’s a lot more than just dancing. Where did you learn all this stuff?”

  “It started with Grandpa,” Adrian replied. “He began teaching me when I was little. He grew up in a powwow family from Montana. The rest I learned from other people along the powwow trail. So will you.”

  That night, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, powwow songs rang in my ears. The faces of people who’d danced with me flashed in my mind. The beat of the drum pounded in my chest. It must have been midnight before they all faded away so I could get to sleep.

  Chapter 7

  The Powwow Trail

  School started a few days after my give-away at the Pala powwow. I had to forget about the whole intertribal cultural thing for a while and turn my attention to the classroom.

  The Santa Ynez Valley High School was located only a few blocks from the reservation. It was an easy walk back and forth each day. No waiting for a bus or a carpool.

  I quickly discovered that several of my extended Chumash family members went to the same school. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because I already knew a few kids at my new school. Bad because anything that happened at school was immediately known by everyone else in the family. And everyone on the rez. Bye-bye privacy.

  Back in Texas, Dad did get himself a laptop so we could email and message each other. He began contacting me once a week. We set this up for Wednesday nights. I missed him, but this helped.

  “I think it’s rad that you’re involved with powwows,” Dad said online.

  “Rad?” I shot back. “That’s so twenty years ago, Dad. I don’t think the teen slang works for you.”

  “Okay, sorry,” Dad replied. “I think it’s great that you’re involved with powwows. It’s character building and good exercise. But schoolwork has to be your number one priority.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “Nana said I could do my weekend homework in the RV while we’re driving to a powwow or coming back.”

  “That’s fine, but I’m going to check in with Nana to make sure you’re doing that,” he replied.

  We put the RV homework rule to the test the very next weekend. We headed out for the Serrano powwow Friday afternoon. This would be my first full competition.

  The Serrano Reservation was located in the California desert, east of Los Angeles. When we got there, the camping area was already jam-packed with RVs, vans, and tents. But friends of Adrian’s had reserved us a spot in the crowded campground.

  Adrian and I got to the registration table just before they closed down for the night. There were still a few dancers waiting in line ahead of us. I introduced myself to the teen dancer at the end of the line. He was a little taller and heavier than me and looked a little older.

  “I’m Mark, and this is my first competition,” I said with enthusiasm. “Teen Men’s Traditional.”

  “The name’s Charley,” he said. “Same category. You probably heard of me. Where are you from?”

  “Chumash Rez, up near Santa Barbara,” I answered. “Sorry, I haven’t heard of you. Where are you from?”

  “I live in LA, but I’m Lakota—Pine Ridge,” he said. “My dad’s a Native actor. He’s been in several movies.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  A space at the registration table opened up, and the registrar said, “Next.”

  Charley was next in line, but before moving up to the table he said, “Sorry to say you’ll be wasting your time and money this weekend. And every weekend for that matter. I never lose.”

  He turned and stepped up to the table to begin his registration.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet. What Charley said about never
losing might be true, but I didn’t think he was supposed to be bragging to a beginner. Adrian had said that wasn’t part of the spirit of the powwow.

  When Charley finished registering, he turned to me.

  “You know powwows aren’t really meant for California Indians,” he said. “You’re all mostly watered-down mixed breeds. You should leave this stuff to real Indians like me.”

  Then he walked away.

  What a rude put-down, I thought. I wasn’t expecting this from another more experienced dancer. I didn’t have a quick comeback for him. Adrian was standing behind me in line talking to one of his friends. But he heard what Charley said.

  “Ignore him,” Adrian advised. “I have heard of him. He’s a well-known bragger. Powwow dance competition is more about doing your best than trying to beat everyone else.”

  I followed Adrian’s advice and put Charley’s put-down out of my mind. I had to prepare myself mentally for the next day’s events. I registered and got my very first competition ID, number one hundred twenty-three.

  The registration lady said there would be two Grand Entries on Saturday. The first one was at one o’clock in the afternoon. The second one would be at seven in the evening. Everyone had to dance in both to be eligible for the prize money.

  I’ll never forget what it felt like to dance in my first Grand Entry. I was part of a parade of dancing colors that moved in a slowly swirling spiral—like a kaleidoscope that you hold up to a light while twisting the outer ring. It was like everything that was good about being an Indian all rolled up into one totally awesome experience.

  My first dance competition came late Saturday afternoon. When the emcee called for dancers in my category, Nana, Pablo, and Adrian all wished me good luck. Adrian stood at the edge of the arena with the video camera. He wanted to record my performance so we could talk about it later.

  There were nine or ten teen Men’s Traditional dancers who stepped into the arena. Charley, of course, was one of them. Three judges stood nearby, each with a clipboard to mark down scores.

  I was nervous, but I tried to ignore it as the drumbeat began. I just started moving with the beat. As before, the drum pulled at me like a magnet. Its beat flowed through my body.