care? leave a note

Ichabod!

19 September 2004 16:50

go jii ya!

go jii ya is the fall festival of the jicarilla apache people. we had three days off in the middle of the week so people could celebrate. the town of dulce pretty much shut down on wednesday 15 september, too. a lot of families have camps out at the go jii ya grounds and they stay there most of the week. the big even, however, is the footrace that starts wednesday morning about 11 am. the race is between the red and white bands of the tribe. each band starts out at their own end of the race track in their kiva, where the medecine man paints the men for the race. then half of each band goes to each end of the track. it's a relay race, where a runner goes from one end of the track to the other and the next runner goes back the other way. the race ends when one band completely laps the other. it starts with elders running the track, and then the head runners from the tryouts the day before. the head runners wear feathers on their heads. some runners wear sneakers, while others wear socks, mocassins, or run barefoot.

we got there early so we spent some time walking around the grounds, and looking at the different jewelry and food stands there. one of the women who subs at saint francis sometimes offered us a place to sit in the back of her truck so we could watch the race. her daughter was in the truck next to us and would explain stuff to us. i wanted to stay and watch the womens dance after the race, but the other teachers there with me were too tired and sunburnt. so we left after watching the race for about two hours.

some of our little students were painted up, though the really young ones arent sposed to actually run the course. only those who can reasonably make it across the track do run it, and there were some as young as ten or eleven, i want to say?

all in all, it was really neat to see a native festival, truly native to this country. i guess the best word for it that i can think of is a hawaiian one, kamaiina, of the land.

speaking of the land, its unnaturally wet and rainy here today. the dampness is making my hair unnaturally curly, the sky is unnaturally overcast like the midwest, and the smell in the air is nice and wet like the forests of pennsylvania. not that thats a rainforest in any sense of the word, but in comparison to the usual dryness here its a nice, familiar, comfortable smell.