Night parade a big hit

Dancers in the 86th Annual Galulp Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial spin and dance during the night parade in Down town Gallup. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — As they have since the 1920s, families from the nearby reservations traveled to Gallup Thursday to enjoy the first of two Ceremonial parades.

By 7 p.m. — two hours before the parade was scheduled to start — hundreds were already sitting along the streets of Gallup, some on the curb while others brought deck chairs and food to wait until the parade started.

Except for the deck chairs, it probably looked a lot like it did 70 or 80 years ago — with one major difference.

In the old days, remembers local Indian trader Ellis Tanner, coming to the Ceremonial was the high point of the year for many Navajo families who would travel to Gallup in their wagons and camp just outside town, providing locals with a night-time view of hundreds of campfires among the hills and valleys leading to the town.

Sharon Nelson’s family probably took three or four days to travel the 97 miles to Gallup by wagon from Whitehorse Lake in the old days, stayed over for a few days to take in the events and then took another three or four days to get home.

Today, she traveled with her family by car, but made sure that she got here by 6:30 p.m. to set up at her favorite spot in front of the El Morro Theatre on Coal Avenue.
“I’ll be getting here at 6:30 a.m. for the Saturday parade as well,” she said, saying she realized that both parades were basically the same but she had been coming since the 1960s and knew that the Thursday night parade was Ceremonial Lite and the Saturday parade was bigger and better.

Technically, she said, none of the parades today can hold a candle to the ones back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. “You had a lot more Indian tribes involved back then,” she said.

This year’s parade lovers might notice a little less of that parade spirit since the Ceremonial Association decided to do away with the middle parade that was held on the Friday morning of the Ceremonial.

The least attended of all the three parades , the Friday morning parade just never caught on, said Louis Bonaguidi, chairman of the Ceremonial Association. Most people were at work and if they wanted to see a parade they had one they could go to at night or on the weekend.

Cutting the parade has saved the association some money. “We pay the dancers to perform during the parades,” he said, adding that eliminating the Friday parade probably saved the association $12,000 to $15,000.

By 7:15 p.m., the parade route, at least on Coal Avenue, was getting crowded.

By 8:15 p.m., the crowds downtown on beginning to get two- and three-deep as police try to control hundreds of drivers who were trying to find that last remaining empty parking space in all of downtown Gallup.

Most of the real action, however, was at the Gurley Body Shop next to the Aztec Five Theater. That’s where Ceremonial officials with clipboards and bullhorns were trying to get the bands, dance groups, princesses and queens in some sort of order so they could start the parade.

The dance group led by Johnny A. Montoya from the Taos Pueblo was there as they have been for the past 35 years. With 13 members — the youngest being 6 — the group is now in its third generation of dancers and holds the record for its appearances at the event.

The group goes back to the most controversial portion of the Ceremonial’s history — the last few years at the old Ceremonial grounds where the armory/city recreation hall is now located.

These were the years of the Indians Against Exploitation, a group of young Navajos who mounted a number of protests during the event to make a commentary on the deplorable conditions of the houses on the Ceremonial grounds where the association lodged the dancers each year.

These protests petered out when the association went over to Red Rock Park and the dancers this year said they have no problem with the housing accommodations.

Melanie Flyeagle, a member of the Taos group, said she and the others look forward to coming to Gallup. “It gives us a chance to get together with the other groups,” she said.