Na'ii'ees

The Apache Sunrise Dance is a kind of four-day Bat Mitzvah for Ndee girls.  I dreamed about actually seeing one for years, while realizing that I probably never would.  They had big public dances associated with tribal fairs and rodeos for July 4, but being a teacher, that was just too close to the end of the school year for me to wrap up work, get started traveling, and make it to the Southwest unless that was the main reason for the trip.  And that was the era before YouTube, so I was just going to have to live without seeing Na'ii'ees.

In the summer of 1987 (I think) my brother and daughter and I camped across two-thirds of the country.  On a Friday afternoon we paid for a camping permit at the Mescalero Apache tribal office and stood chatting with the cashier.  She asked if we were going to the Sunrise Dance that night.  I was stunned into incoherence and the woman explained what it was and that two families had arranged for a ceremony for their daughters in a big meadow nearby.  I must have stammered a question about invitations, because she gave me a funny look and then said that she was inviting us.  There was a direct road from the campground over the mountain to the dance site, but it was unpaved, unlit, winding and mountainous.  So that night we drove about 12 miles south, 12 miles east, and another 12 miles north to get to the ceremony.

It was clear where we were going once we arrived.  A huge bonfire burned in the middle of an open field.  A large circle of at least a hundred vehicles, mostly pickup trucks was parked at a good distance from the fire, rear ends facing in so that people could sit in the truck beds in lawn chairs and rockers with a good elevated view of the dancing.  To the side was a long brush arbor and women with big stew pots were cooking and distributing the banquet on paper plates.

I am a high school teacher, so I immediately noticed a group of teens leaning on a car parked near ours.  School apparently opens in August out there, and these kids were talking a lot of mess about what what happen on the first day, mostly about who was going to fight who.

Meanwhile, closer to the fire, masked dancers with kilts, painted chests, and high, wood-slat crowns were performing.  The drummers were setting the beat and chanting while the ankle bells of the dancers kept time with the drum.  After a while the two girls came out, in pristine beaded leather dresses and they, too, danced around the fire, hands held in the air.

We stayed for a good long time and nobody questioned our presence, although I admit to being too shy to go over to the ramada for some dinner.  Like other things that I have imagined for a long time before actually witnessing, the dance's reality was much more than anything I dreamed of.

Writing the story "The Giant Believed Her" for Stones from the Creek was not so much a matter of suddenly realizing that my memories of the na'ii'ees would fit the theme of a people's survival in a new context.  Rather, I knew from the beginning that this scene would have to be a part of the book.  And then I discovered that it was at just the time the stories in the book take place that Alchesay chose to bring the na'ii'ees out of the shadows and allow it to be public again.  The story of White Clay Woman tricking the Giant, too, was not consciously on my mind when I chose the title Stones from the Creek, referring to the weapons David picked up for his duel with the giant Goliath.

I tend to plan my writing carefully.  When there is this much apparent coincidence, it has less to do with serendipity and more to do with themes that have been percolating in my thinking for a very long time.