America indian study- Indian Community Event - Essay Example

31st Native American Recognition Days The 31st event of the annual Native American Recognition Days takes place in October through November and involves the recognition of Indian Tribes from Phoenix and its environs (AZnard.org 1). This year, various volunteers from community groups arranged the event. The volunteers created two months of events that seek to celebrate the culture and heritage of its Native American community. This weekend, the event carried on the overall theme of this year’s festivities with a lot of dance, music and art exhibitions.

Throughout the event, various shows of dance and artwork enhanced the participant’s knowledge of Native American culture, especially through the vendors who were eager to explain what they were exhibiting. Since most of the arts have been handed over long generations, it was possible to visualize the Native Americans hundreds of years ago. However, this event was all about the dance and music for most people attending. Going to the event, I expected a day out enjoying the culture of Native Americans in Phoenix, although most of the Native Americans I know act like me most of the time.

The event was more than I expected, however, as I realized that, the Native American culture in Phoenix is more diverse than I thought. For example, there are more than thirty distinct Indian tribes living in Arizona. The congregation of the Indians during their “pow wows” drew me to just how diverse Indian tribes are, rather than the few tribes most of us believe them to be. I expected the natives to be very social with one another, and I was not disappointed. It was possible to strike up a conversation with almost everyone.

However, there was no marijuana anywhere, despite common myth that Native American POW wows are not complete without a marijuana smoking session among the old men. During the course of the event, I learnt many things about Native Americans living in Phoenix. The first one was that the City of Phoenix was a prehistoric settlement of the Hohokam tribe who, however, had disappeared by 1054 A.D., rather than a settlement by the Pima tribe who came later. I was also fascinated to learn that the Hopi tribe in Phoenix had a home led by the mother who was also in charge of the family.

As with several other tribes at the event, the Hopi are a matrilineal society, and they trace their families through their mother’s side of the family. I also came to understand why Native Americans wear a manta over their blouses. The manta was initially worn without anything underneath, fastened from one shoulder across the torso. The missionaries, however, insisted they wear something more modest, which led to the women wearing blouses underneath their mantas. Finally, I also learnt that the way a Native American woman wears her hair reveals her marital status.

Women with butterfly whorls are unmarried, while those with two pigtails are married. One of the most unforgettable events was the dancing routine of the day. First, participants spent some two hours dancing the gourd dance twice in the afternoon and another two times in the evening. This dancing session ended with the blanket dance, during which participants tried to use the most elaborate moves to place money on the center blanket as people danced around with their own blankest (AZnard.org 1).

People joined in the dance, whether in Indian regalia or not, showing appreciation for Native American veteran of World War II. I felt a strong attachment to this dance because both my grandfathers were also veterans of the war. However, the blanket dance was just the opening act as we spent another two hours dancing all together, children and adults, men and women, outfitted in elaborate regalia and dancing for nothing nut plain fun.Work CitedAZnard.org. Native American Recognition Days. 2013. Web. 22 November 2013 .