At first, all is relatively quiet. The Friday sun is beginning to set; the circular arena is enveloped with the lulling buzz of conversation. Then the drums begin, strong beats joined by strong voices. You can feel the leading beats in your chest. Conversation ceases. The procession begins, slow-stepping bearers bringing forward the eagle staffs and the flags. The head dancers follow, flashy and energetic. Behind them, younger girls dance, representatives of other gatherings. In order, group by group, category by category, the dancers enter the arena, moving to the rhythm of the song, surrounded by the overpowering voices of the singers and the Master of Ceremonies, who announces each group as it appears.

The colors are what strike you first. Bright yellow and crimson and pale pink, turquoise and orange and black, gold and ivory and deep green. No two outfits are alike. Some sparkle with beads, others clink with bells. Some ripple with fringes and ribbons, others shuffle with feathers. Some wear their hair bound, some braided, some loose; some carry feathered fans, some brilliantly patterned shawls. Toddlers trot alongside their parents and grandparents; no age group is unrepresented. A little girl in a long purple dress bites her lip as she steps, the metal cones sewn to her skirt jingling. As the dancers move in a broad clockwise circle around the ring, stamping down the grass, the songs change but the sentiment stays the same: these people have come from all over the country to be here, at Stanford, for the first Grand Entry of the 2008 Stanford Powwow.

This year’s Powwow was Stanford’s 37th. Founded in 1971 by the “newly formed Stanford American Indian Organization,” explains Katie Jones ‘08, this year’s Powwow publicity coordinator, the Powwow was organized for the purpose of “offsetting the negative image of the [Stanford] Indian mascot and bringing a diverse Native American presence to the campus.”

Since its inception, the Powwow has grown to become both the largest student-run powwow in the country and the largest student-run event on Stanford’s campus. Seventeen subcommittees, headed by thirty-five Powwow Committee members, are involved in organizing the event, aided by around 200 volunteers during the Powwow itself.

“Almost every [Stanford] student attends Powwow at least once,” writes Joseph Cartwright’09 in an email, but “we do in fact draw crowds from around the Bay Area and across the country.” Cartwright is one of this year’s Powwow Committee co-chairs. The Powwow Committee expected 30,000 people to attend over the course of the weekend.

Saturday morning, the grove is again alive with activity. People are everywhere; the few bleachers and hay bales available for seating are already overcrowded. Dancers and drum groups and other attendees have set up their own tents around the circle and sit in the shade, waiting for the arena activities to begin.

Toward the far boundary of the clearing, vans and trucks and bikes have been parked. One van’s trunk is open. A young woman, already dressed for the afternoon’s Grand Entry, sits and smiles as another separates and braids her hair. An older woman steps forward to correct a young girl’s fancy shawl technique: Keep your shoulders back. The little girl grins and twirls, the bright cloth clutched in her hands a blur of color.

“My one complaint is that it’s too dusty,” Earl Sherman comments. “Not enough grass.” Sherman, a Navajo-Ute, works as a Special Education teacher most of the year, but he travels north in the summer to attend powwows. “It’s my vacation,” he says. Sherman ventures to other powwows to compete as a traditional dancer with other members of his family, but this weekend, he has been helping his niece sell jewelry. This is Sherman’s first visit to the Stanford Powwow.

He stands beside his niece’s corner booth, wiping dust off the sets of earrings. “I’m planning to come back next year,” he adds, gazing toward the arena, “and dance.”

At the center of the Powwow festivities is, of course, the dancing. Both men and women can compete in a variety of dance styles, each corresponding to particular outfits and sets of footwork. At this weekend’s Powwow, women could compete in Women’s Traditional Dancing, which the powwow program explains “involves a slow- or non-moving bouncing step” and intricately decorated dresses; Fancy Shawl Dancing, which features complicated footwork and whirling of the eponymous fancy shawls; or Jingle Dancing, an adaptation of a healing dance in which competitors wear dresses adorned with up to seven “tiers” of metal cones that shake and jingle as they move.

The men’s divisions included Grass Dancing, described in the program as “the most highly-competitive form of Northern dancing to be found today”; Men’s Fancy Dancing, in which competitors wear huge feather bustles and jump and spin about to the beat of the drum; and Traditional Dancing from both the Northern and the Southern tribal traditions.

The prizes in these competitions ranged from $800, given for first place in a division of men and women aged fifty and above, to one dollar and a handful of Jolly Ranchers, given for participation in the “Tiny Tots” special dance, open to “future champions” aged six and below.

Additional special dances were announced during the weekend, as well. Both the Head Man Dancer, Adam Tsosie Nordwall, and the Head Woman Dancer, Jennifer Young Bear, sponsored dance specials. The family of Desi Small-Roderiguez, who will receive her Master’s degree in Sociology from Stanford later this year, sponsored a dance special in which teams of three to five women performed synchronized dances. And in the LGBT Community Resources Center’s Switch Dance, the men dressed and danced as women, and vice versa.

Around 200 dancers registered to compete in this year’s Powwow, though many entered the arena to celebrate their culture without officially registering to compete. During the weekend’s intertribal social dances, when dancers in the audience were invited to join the registered dancers, it was not uncommon to see individuals in jeans and tank tops stepping alongside individuals in full traditional regalia.

“The Stanford Powwow truly showcases the richness and diversity of Native American cultures,” Jones asserts. “It demonstrates that our cultures are not relics of the past, but are instead alive and thriving.”

Before Grand Entry on Sunday morning, as the sun is making its way to its apex and many Powwow-goers are still making their way forward from parking lots and campsites, a group of eight young adults, Stanford students, takes to the hay-strewn floor of the arena. Jones is among them. To the side, a man with a shovel attempts to even out the ground for the dancers, reorganizing hay, tossing sticks and rocks into a bucket. The young adults are the Cherokee Student Group, which, Jones explains to the audience, “focuses on Cherokee culture, food, and language.” Wearing bright red t-shirts and holding sets of lyrics before them, they sing four songs in the Tsalagi language, from a children’s lullaby to a piece sung during the tribe’s removal along the Trail of Tears. The group’s presentation is one of the only student performances of the weekend.

The scents of burning sage, fresh fry bread, and stamped-down hay mingle around the vendors’ area Sunday afternoon, drums beating in the background. Vendors like Earl Sherman and his niece have set up their booths in long lines flanking the circular dance arena. Signs advertise everything from hanks of colored beads to printed t-shirts, handmade jewelry to pottery and ceramic instruments, herbal remedies to dream-catchers.

On the far side of the arena, promises of lemonade, Indian tacos, fry bread with strawberries and whipped cream, or massive cobs of corn draw great crowds to the food vendors’ stands. The breeze picks up and covers everything, everyone in a thin film of dust. Eucalyptus leaves shower down like feathers on Powwow attendees.

George is a middle-aged Sioux man who has been dancing since he was four. “My parents taught me,” he says, drinking an iced beverage while wandering around the powwow grove. Originally from Montana, George now travels to various California powwows to compete in grass dancing. He has danced in five or six Stanford Powwows before now.

Today, his regalia is black, decorated with small mirrors and beaded flowers in white, yellow, red, and blue. The powwow experience is really “about the people — the extended family,” he explains, “the Powwow family. Part of it’s the dancing, too — you dance for your family.”

Aside from the Fun Run/Walk, which took place with ninety registered participants, this year there was a new addition to the collection of Powwow activities: Sunday morning, sixteen teams took part in the First Annual Maurice Morsette Memorial Basketball Tournament. Morsette, Jones explains, was “a dear community member who passed away last year. Mo was a fervent basketball player, and we thought that this tournament was the best way to honor and remember his life.”

All the proceeds from the tournament will be donated to the scholarship Morsette’s family has organized to allow a high school student from New Town, North Dakota, Morsette’s hometown, to go to college.

It is the last competition of the Powwow: hand-drumming. Six teams of drummers walk up to the microphone at the head of the arena, one by one, to sing their songs. The arena is cleared of people, at first. As the music builds, a few young girls, still in traditional dress, run out to the floor and begin to dance, in groups of three or four, around the perimeter of the circle.

What begins as a group of maybe a dozen young women grows quickly to a throng of dancers over 100 strong as the Master of Ceremonies announces that these Round Dances will be the last chance for dancers to step together in this year’s Stanford Powwow. The circle grows and grows. They hold hands.

“Come on out here!” exhorts a middle-aged man with white stripes painted across his face and arms, feathers fanning out at the back of his head, as he passes the bleachers.

“I’m eating,” replies the man he’s addressed, gripping his plate of strawberry-adorned fry bread.

“It’ll still be there,” the first man says, beckoning again.

The second man, wearing jeans and a green polar fleece, hands his plate to the woman beside him and steps forward to join the circle.

“For me,” Jones says, “it’s incredible to be part of an event that... brings the community together in such a powerful way.” Watching the final dances, the laughter and the affirmation, so many disparate groups of people joined together on a common ground to dance common steps, it seems this year’s Powwow has accomplished just that.