Cy*Burr // spring 2004

Later, they discuss plans for the Kent State Powwow and look at the catalog of the Crazy Crow Trading Post, a supplier of Native American craft supplies and kits.

“People who want to be Indian, they buy drums,” Yates says. “We make our own.”

But, she admits, she gets “regalia envy” looking at the catalog.

Regalia is the special dress Native Americans wear for special occasions such as powwows.

“It’s never called a costume,” says Kandis Schoenfeld, a sophomore pre-med major who is Lakota Sioux. “We’re not pretending to be anything.”

Yates unpacks her regalia from a box, wearing a “Rez Chick” t-shirt (rez is slang for reservation) and a watch with a band she beaded herself. A traditional regalia takes a year to complete, and everything is handmade. It all smells like sage, which she burns in an abalone shell for purification. She dances in the women’s traditional cloth category, so her dress has no beading on it—all patterns and accents are done in cloth. Her dress is red, something she just knew she had to have.

“You don’t argue with your dream,” Yates says.

A long fringe of ribbons goes all down the sides of her black shawl in a red, orange, yellow, light blue and black rainbow.

On Yates’ bead loom is what will become a purse to hang from her belt. It takes an hour to bead four rows, she says. She has a sketch pad of graph paper with the bead designs she uses. Patterns are never copied, but patterns and colors often are passed down through a family.

One design she uses was given to her by a friend. In Native American culture, a gift honors a person and cannot be refused. After powwows, for example, Yates gives gifts to drummers, dancers and anyone who helps. At the last powwow, she had two blankets laid out with gifts and nothing can be taken back—it all has to be given away.

“Sometimes even the blankets go,” she says.

Yates started the Native American Student Association at Kent State when she transferred from Baldwin Wallace College in 2001. As of fall 2003, there were 135 students at Kent State who identified themselves as Native American, but Yates says many do not identify with the Native American culture and go uncounted. Yates says her dedication to tradition comes from being raised on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah for the first 11 years of her life.

One part of this is being “on the red road,” which means no drinking, smoking or drugs.

Shane Roach, a producer/director for Kent State Teleproductions, says the phrase also represents spirituality or “living right with the world, with nature, with everything.” In some aspects, Roach says the red road, or red path, is a return to fundamental beliefs and a sense of traditionalism. Abstaining from smoking or drinking is a rejection of white culture, he says. Native culture is holistic, and separating the spiritual and the physical is impossible.