Gallup, New Mexico, in the American Southwest, has hosted the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial annually since 1922. Ceremonial promotes native traditions, advocates understanding and cooperation among all peoples of the Americas, and contributes to northwest New Mexico’s regional economic development. Ceremonial activities consist of four days and five evenings of special art previews, five all-Indian professional rodeos, Indian pow-wows and ceremonial Indian dances, a Ceremonial Queen contest, a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday downtown parade (America's only all-Indian non-mechanized parade), daily performing arts, Indian foods, Indian fine arts, and educational programs. Participants represented more than thirty tribes, including Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Zuni, Cochiti, Choctaw, Totonac, Aztec, Comanche, and others. The Red Rock State Park amphitheater, with its dramatic backdrop of sandstone bluffs, is the venue for dance performances and rodeos. This short film shows some of the activities of Ceremonial.
"During the Ceremonial in the evenings there are presented parts of ancient ceremonies intermingled with the dances still surviving in the Southwest. At night the stars seem closer to the earth, more a part of the very old world in time and culture which the Indians bring before us. There are suggestions of ancient ritual dance, the earliest form of drama, almost as old as the human race. This survival in the dance and music, still alive and potent in the American Indian's cosmos, is ‘theatre’ in the truest sense of the word and beautiful theater."
—Monroe Tsa Toke, Kiowa Indian, artist, and visionary
