Island

Chubby aboriginal men, acne scarred, wearing tanned and beaded leather garments, beat a drum, while around them dancers dance, shaking their jingled feet, their belled leather, their chokers with turquoise beads, on the lumpy pounded dirt. Around them the native men and women wear Reeboks and have their pagers set to vibrate and carry braided leather lighter holsters and their Status cards. The white folks ask the wrinkled man with the headdress and smile if they can take a picture with him, and he nods, draping his arm around the little one and showing his teeth for the flash. The little Ojibway children run through the dirt with Pogs in their fists and, when they forget about that, they pretend as Ninja Turtles as they pull themselves up hills, and along the chain link fence that surrounds the complex.

A man in a booth offers to embroider my name into a tobacco pouch that he has made, and I swear that he was here just a week ago when the same grounds were occupied by the fair. All the while I can hear the four-oh-one overpass rumble in the distance and can smell cigarettes that the elders blow in the four directions as a prayer to the Great Spirit. There’s even the smell of candy floss underneath all that leather, and maybe a hint of cedar. But, I’m probably imagining the candy floss because I can always see the chain link fence that tells me this is where the fair grounds stop, this is where the roads and businesses begin, this is the edge of the Pow Wow.