Benito Concha of Taos Pueblo demonstrates an Eagle Dance, which portrays an eagle hunting for prey, during the Fort Lewis College Pueblo Feast Day in 2014. This year’s Pueblo Feast Day, an all-day event, will be Friday. It will feature dances, influential pueblo women speakers and a fashion show.
Benito Concha of Taos Pueblo demonstrates an Eagle Dance, which portrays an eagle hunting for prey, during the Fort Lewis College Pueblo Feast Day in 2014. This year’s Pueblo Feast Day, an all-day event, will be Friday. It will feature dances, influential pueblo women speakers and a fashion show.Durango Herald file

Native American students from regional pueblos are coming to Fort Lewis College in increasing numbers, helping to give rise to the Pueblo Alliance and the annual Pueblo Feast Day, now in its third year.

Friday, the Feast Day, which is separate from Hozhoni Days, will be a celebration of women in Pueblo culture. The daylong event will include speakers, a fashion show, dances and workshops focusing on traditional skills, like making pots. It also includes contemporary activities, like Zumba. The event caters not just to students but their families, tribal leaders and the public.

“It’s a beautiful, wonderful way for Fort Lewis to open its arms up to pueblos,”said Yvonne Bilinski, director of the Native American Center. Annual Feast Days are held by pueblos for a variety of reasons, including blessing the land and honoring new leaders.

Event founder Mariah Gachupin from Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico was inspired to focus on women because every year, Diversity Programming, an FLC office, puts on events for women’s history month, but they don’t include Native American women.

That’s changing this year for Feast Day. Debra Haaland from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico is coming to talk about being a Native American woman in politics and why she pursued this endeavor. Haaland is chairwoman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, and she ran for the lieutenant governor in 2014.

Few pueblos have female governors, and some women leave to get more involved in politics, said Gachupin, a senior gender and women studies major.

Gachupin helped found both the event and the Pueblo Alliance to fill a need.

“I really felt that pueblo people weren’t really represented on campus,” she said.

The number of students from 22 pueblos in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas has risen from about 35 in 2006 to almost 100, Bilinski said.

Each of these pueblos are independent, and they have their own culture and language.

“I wanted to give them a space to come to learn about their roots, their history,” Gachupin said.

The alliance gives students from different pueblos a forum to talk about their differences and to learn more about each other, Bilinski said.

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Feast Day schedule

Pueblo Feast Day will be held from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Student Union Ballroom at Fort Lewis College. It is free and open to all.
Workshop topics include pine needle basketry, Zumba, pueblo storytelling and painting, pinch pots, team-building and communication, and circle talks.
10 a.m.:
Opening prayer and welcome.
10:
15 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Rose Simpson of Santa Clara Pueblo on the importance of pueblo women.
11 a.m. to 12:
30 p.m.: Workshops.
12:
30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.: Lunch and pueblo dances
1:
30 p.m. to 3 p.m.: Workshops.
3 p.m. to 4 p.m.:
Debra Haaland, keynote speaker.
4 p.m. to 5 p.m.:
Honoring Miss Hozhoni royalty and pueblo dances.
6 p.m. to 7:
30 p.m.: Fashion show, contemporary and indigenous styles.