Disinherited trust fund baby becomes an escort specializing in helping older women live their wildest romantic fantasies. (MATURE)
CHASTAIN DEVILLIER, 20, is the loose cannon in a wealthy family descended from two very long and very aristocratic B...
I was puzzled, at first, when all the Native people in the pow wow stands rose up to salute the flag of the nation that had wronged them so grievously.
In fact, the pow wow was held on the grounds of a Catholic mission, too. The famous tourist attraction: San Xavier Del Bac, the "White Dove of the Desert." Built on the land—and the backs—of Native people.
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I glanced at Cici and Lupita who were standing next to each other between me and Ama and some of Cici's activist friends, and they were all riveted on the veterans carrying those flags into the arena. As if none of that carnage mattered.
The drum group chosen to accompany them sang out loud and proud—not The Star-Spangled Banner, thank God. Something of their own, in their own language.
Pow wow music intrigues me. The voices keen and quiver, the melodies follow unusual patterns and there are "vocables" mixed in with the actual words, words from languages with which I am entirely unfamiliar.
But I began to understand that they were honoring warriors who'd gone into battle valiantly despite all that horrible history. They had fought hard and returned--broken, in some cases, but victorious perhaps solely for having gone and returned at all.
The regalia were also splendid and mysterious. I knew nothing about all the different styles and symbols, but the grace and dignity with which they were worn moved me deeply.
And...perhaps it's time for me to explain that we were there to meet Lupita's cousin, Chucho, whom I'd insisted upon paying to ensure a smooth escape. His son was a champion "grass dancer," whose elaborately fringed ensemble did indeed waft like tall Plains grass as he approached us. Stunning boy, he was. Almost the stereotypical Native man they find to play that role in films.
His little sister danced "jingle dress." I was enchanted by the silver cones covering her colorful frock, how they "tinkled" like tiny bells when she moved. Those cones had first been made from the tops of snuff cans--fascinated me, that.
Lupita told me that the sound is meant to heal. There's an Ojibwe story about a young girl who fell ill, but got up to dance, wearing a dress like that, at a ceremony. And as she danced, she began to grow stronger and stronger, as if the tinkling of the little cones had lifted her spirits and cured her of the illness in some miraculous way.
