Apache Gaan Dancers

At a Tucson cultural festival, the crowned dancers stretch and warm up. Each of the dancers is painted ashen white and decorated with black symbols depicting rain and lightning. Cloth masks cover their faces, while wooden crowns rise above their heads, sticks pointing up in all directions. Like their painted bodies each crown is unique to every individual dancer. The Gaan dancers hold wooden sticks in each hand, which they click together rhythmically while they dance, swirling and twirling.

The appearance of the Gaan Dancers onstage causes the audience to buzz with excitement. There is a higher concentration of Native American faces in the crowd for this event. There are children of all colors sitting on the floor along the front row, waiting expectantly.

Big Jim Griffith, local folklorist and founder of the Tucson Meet Yourself Festival, introduces the leader of the Gaan dancers, a man who has brought dancers to perform at the festival every year since its inception. Dressed traditionally, the Apache leader, Edgar Perry announces that this year is special because he just retired from teaching high school. He says he really enjoys being retired but drawls the vowels so that it sounds like he says, “I enjoy being…