he drums are first. I’ve never been able to figure out if the drums echo my heartbeat or if my heart races to match the drums. From my first step into the arena, I can feel the drums thrumming under my feet. Then the singing registers, voices ferocious and free, like lightning, like wind—all the voices singing as one. And then there are the dancers—a kaleidoscope of performers, from tiny toddlers in full regalia spinning like tops, to stately senior women elegantly swaying, to young women in dresses with bells that chime to the drumbeat, to men in the Fancy dance competition whose feet hardly seem to touch the ground as they transform into blurs of color. Everything is drumming and singing and dancing. I take a moment and absorb it all: the difference in styles, the grace and power of the dancers, the regalia, the feathers, the feather fans, the bustles, the moccasins, the buckskins, the beadwork, the individual or familial patterns and designs. In a world that often claims
