Columnist Susan Snyder: Festival revels in the jingle

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004 | 8:04 a.m.

Four-year-old Dominique Thompson danced proudly in the dress her mother and grandmother made for her.

It jingle-jangled as Dominique stepped in time to the Navajo music that pulsated from loudspeakers set up outside Overton's Lost City Museum. The jingling came from 150 metal tobacco-can lids that Dominique's female relatives had hand shaped into cones and hand stitched to the dress.

The wearer of the jingle dress often dances as if crippled -- stepping lively with one leg, and dragging the other along, Candice Herrera, a 24-year-old Navajo dancer, told onlookers gathered for the museum's annual Native American Festival.

The dance is popular among native powwow competitions, and it's a real workout, she said. An adult's jingle dress carries 400 to 500 cones.

"It gets pretty tough after a while to keep up with the beat," Herrera said. "But when you get 30 dancers in the arena doing it all together, it sounds like rain."

The 15-year-old festival at Lost City Museum commemorates Nevada Day and also marks the beginning of November, which is National Native American Month.

"I think it gives people a chance to see what Native Americans are doing now, and that is not exactly what they see in movies and on TV," Kathryne Olson, museum director, said.

Herrera performed her native Navajo dances with help from her 10-year-old sister, Naomi McCabe; their brother, Jeremy McCabe, 18; and Donovan Thompson, Dominique's 12-year-old brother.

Herrera has been dancing since she was about 7 but added she is "just getting back" into shape after having a baby four months ago. She danced into her seventh month of pregnancy and competed in 25 powwows last year.

"It builds character. It builds strength and keeps me in good health," she said.

And it helps educate people about the vast differences in tribal cultures. The dances Herrera's group performed were typical of those danced at large powwows, where tribes learn about each other.

U.S. Census figures show about 13,700 American Indians and Alaska Natives (the Census Bureau lumps them together) live in Clark County and are among some 49,200 statewide.

Saturday's exhibitors included not only the Navajo dancers, but a Cherokee bead-worker, a Southern Paiute bead-worker and a Southern Paiute storyteller -- all of whom live in Clark County.

"These are some of the items I keep in my classroom," said Julie Smith, a member of the Paiute Shivwits tribe who teaches second grade at Bowler Elementary School in Logandale.

Smith also visits other classrooms at Bowler and those at Perkins Elementary School on the Moapa Reservation to teach children about the Paiute culture.

"These are Mesquite beans," Smith said to onlookers Saturday. "My grandmother used to grind them up, add water and sugar and it was like Kool-Aid."

Smith hopes her presentations unravel some of the mystery so residents will be encouraged to learn about their American Indian neighbors.

"There are a lot of activities they could take part in," she said, "if they would just go onto the reservations."