Illustration by Christine Hipp

Ten years ago, powwows were a yearly occurrence at UC Santa Cruz. The American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) wants to restore indigenous culture on campus to its former vitality, starting with a Drum Feast.

Michelle Neumann, a second-year sociology major, interns for the AIRC and said she hopes the event will bring awareness to the indigenous communities on campus.

“Native American people are present on campus,” Neumann said. “Because we do have such a small community — I think that a lot of people forget that. We want people to familiarize themselves with aspects of the Native American culture.”

Powwows and Drum Feasts are family and community based events that unite native peoples from various tribes. They both have singers, dancers, indigenous crafts and food — however, a Drum Feast is smaller. The AIRC hopes to host an actual powwow in the near future.

AIRC director Carolyn Dunn said she challenged AIRC students to organize the Drum Feast along an estimated budget.

“The students went out and raised all the money,” Dunn said. “They’ve just been amazing with all the fundraising they’ve been doing, talking to the community members and just believing in this vision I had of this small event.”

There will be many of the same activities seen at a traditional powwow, but the event won’t be as large. AIRC hopes that powwows will become annual for the campus.

Activities include dance competitions, raffles, singing and dancing. The event will feature craft vendors who sell everything from bead work to textile calendars. There will be plenty of food to “feast” upon as well. An Indian taco booth will serve an arrangement of fry bread, beans, lettuce and meat.

Adrianna Montano, a second-year feminist studies major, became involved with the AIRC to help her get in touch with her Native American background.

“Through this event we’re hoping to bring diversity on campus,” Montano said. “By doing this, we hope to educate other people about what our history and culture is.”

This year’s Drum Feast is dedicated to Sophía García-Robles, a former financial aid advisor at UCSC who passed away last year. Through her guidance and perseverance, García-Robles helped many students of underrepresented backgrounds succeed.

“She did a lot to help out Native American students, Mexican-American students, especially [California state law] AB540 students in the financial aid department,” Neumann said.

Neumann had not met Garcia-Robles, but said she is well known and highly spoken of throughout the Chicano Latino Resource Center.

“Sophia was Navajo, a dear friend to Rosie Cabrera, the director of the Chicano/Latino Center, and really helped a lot of people get through college,” Dunn said. “A lot of alumni have said if it wasn’t for Sophia they probably wouldn’t have made it through college.”

Jessi Felix, who also interns at the AIRC, said there is a lack of Native American and indigenous presence on campus, even though the AIRC is available.

“It’s crucial that Native American/indigenous students are aware of resources like the AIRC that are available to them and the events that we host,” Felix said.

Dunn said UCSC would benefit from greater indigenous visibility.

“I think a lot of people think they know something about American Indian cultures and they really don’t,” Dunn said. “People can come to the Drum Feast to learn about native cultures in a good, positive way with people who truly understand the culture.”

Graduating in June, Felix is happy to have seen leadership in action through interning at the AIRC.

“I am very blessed to be part of this event because I have witnessed the amazing work all the AIRC interns have put in to make it happen,” Felix said. “This event is very dear to our hearts.”

CHP: Where did the inspiration for “Ghost Dance” come from?

Dunn: Nearly 20 years ago, a friend, and I were just talking about how the Indian world views time, and how the non-Indian world views time, and looking at how it seems like everything is so immediate in the non-Indian world. Like, if someone has a prophecy or if someone has a vision about the end of the world, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to occur exactly as the vision happened.

CHP: How would explain the story of “Ghost Dance”?

Dunn: “Ghost Dance” was, and is, a still practiced ceremony that originated from a vision of a Pauite man named Wovoka. It is a ceremony in which people were to participate in a dance that went on for four days and four nights. The interpretation of it was if the people danced this dance and performed this ceremony, then the ancestors would come back and run all the white people out of the land and then all things would return to the traditional Indian way, and so this prophecy took off across Indian country during the time in the 1890s.

CHP: The story is based on true events, what elements are more factual and which are more fictional?

Dunn: I based the protagonist on a historical character from my tribe, the Creek Nation, Alexander Pose. He was a very traditional Creek who spoke the language and grew up among the traditional people who went to college and became educated. It’s still a very modern play even though it’s a play based on historical events. It’s not an “am I Indian or am I white?” play, which is a lot of what contemporary native theater seems to be about, but it’s more about “Who am I when I don’t have my nation? Who do I become when I lose my land? Who do I become when I’m away from my people?” So what it’s really about is diaspora.

CHP: Have you been working closely with Katie Ventura? What has production been like?

Dunn: I adore Katie Ventura and Carlos Joaquin. I’m amazed at what Katie has done in terms of the staging of the play, I think her vision of this piece is amazing and I hope to incorporate that into the script at some point. I have really been taken aback by the level of deep thinking the students have really come across with this piece. There’s only a couple of people in the cast that are American Indian, but a lot of them have an indigenous background so it has really affected them in ways that they’re really thinking deeply about the subject matter and what a struggle it is to be a person of color in this country. Even though it’s a historical piece it really speaks to them.

CHP: What is the most important message you hope gets across to the audience?

Dunn: That native people, and I don’t want to sound like a cliché, but that fact that we’ve been through a genocide, we’ve come out on the other end of it, and no matter how hard the federal government systemically tries to destroy our families, our tribes, our communities, our people that were still alive. We continue to survive because we still have our stories and we still have our language even though language is in danger. We still have that indigenous knowledge, the indigenous epistemology that is not going away and that could not be destroyed. We’re entering into a new phase of an Indian country.

CHP: How long did it take you to write “Ghost Dance”?

Dunn: I see it as an ongoing process. I first published it as a poem in 1993, then I wrote the play from my MFA at USC in the 2004, and it’s been workshopped a couple times with Native Voices at the Autry and Los Angeles Theater Project. This play is really close to my heart and I think a lot of native people who hear it or see it are really affected by it. I’ve had the actors who have done the readings and are really affected by it and causes them to think deeply about their own crisis of identity that they’ve gone through in the past.

What do you feel is the most effective form of bringing awareness to under- represented cultural groups like Native Americans?

Theater and art. Art is activism. It’s a way to use our creative processes to engage in dialogue with others. Theater is ceremony and ceremony is theater, it’s ritual and we go through rituals in order to enter into that sacred space and I think that performance is an effective tool to engage people in a conversation they normally do not engage in.

The play will take place at UC Santa Cruz, Stevenson Event Center, May 10 and 11. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., shows will begin promptly at 7 p.m.

Ticket prices for all showings of this production will be free. Students, seniors, children and general admission included.

The Stevenson Event Center is located at 101 McLaughlin Dr.