Ceremonial seeing green
Chairman says annual event is getting bigger and better

Beth Arthur and her daughter Sandy, 13, from Sarasota, Florida peer inside a glass case containing several Zuni Fetishes inside the Exhibit Hall at the 86th Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial on Friday afternoon at Red Rock Park. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

Ambrose Begay hangs onto the bronc during the Bareback Riding Competition at the All Indian Rodeo during the 86th Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial on Friday afternoon at Red Rock Park. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

GALLUP — There’s a lot of talk each year during the Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial about the need for such an event to preserve Indian culture and promote Gallup as the nation’s Indian capital.

But if you talk to people in Gallup, there’s only one reason why the Ceremonial has been around for 86 years: money.

Which means that if the Ceremonial is doing well and brings in the people, local business people are happy. When the attendance goes down, the Ceremonial Association has problems getting support from the locals.

Louis Bonaguidi, chairman of the association, feels that the event is getting the support back that it lost in the late 1990s and early part of this decade when the association was floundering and there were questions about whether it would continue to be held, at least here in Gallup.

One reason he thinks that support is coming back is because of how well the Ceremonial Magazine is doing in the local hotels and restaurants. A total of 20,000 copies was printed up this year and placed around Gallup a couple of months before the event.

“We have gotten a number of calls asking for more copies,” he said, adding that the numbers that are being taken indicate that many of them are being picked up by locals.

Getting local support for the event has been something that the Ceremonial Association has been working on in recent years, after statements were made by many business owners that the Ceremonial wasn’t the draw it was in the past and that other events, such as the Red Rock Balloon Rally and the Wrangler rodeo, were bringing in more people to town than Ceremonial was.

There was a time, back in the 1970s and early 1980s — sometimes called the Ceremonial’s Golden Years — when the event attracted hundreds of foreigners from counties like Japan, Germany and England, who would plan their vacations around the Ceremonial.

But things began to chance in the late 1980s — the Santa Fe Indian Market started getting more and more attention. Then in 1993, the hantavirus scare occurred and foreign visitors to the Navajo Reservation just ceased almost completely.

Tourism officials in the tribe and in Arizona are both reporting that more and more and more foreigners are visiting the area nowadays.

Bonaguidi said he sees this happening here as well. This year, a tour group from Japan was here, as well as a group of tourists from France.

Perry Null, a local Indian trader, said his business during this year’s Ceremonial appears to be “steady” with what his business has done in the past, but he has talked to people who have told them that they planned their vacation this year around this time so they could attend the Ceremonial.

Sales at the exhibit hall at Red Rock Park appears to be up this year, indicating a greater interest among buyers and collectors.

Ceremonial officials reported sales during preview night on Wednesday to be $30,610. While there were no figures on how this compared to previous years, officials at the exhibit hall expressed confidence that they would be able to beat last year’s overall sales of $55,000 by the time the event ends on Sunday.

Sarah Keeler, a manager at Shush Yaz, which has had a booth at the exhibit hall for at least the past 13 years, said sales are up from last year, and that this looks like it will end up as the best the company has had at the event for the past several years.

Sales are up at their store in Gallup , she said, and she thinks that part of the reason for this is that the Ceremonial Association decided to go back to its traditional time as the second weekend in August after experimenting with earlier times in recent years.

The affect of the ceremonial on local motels and hotels has been mixed, with some reporting good turnout and others reporting that room sales are down.

Anthony Pircher at the Inn said room occupancy has not been as good as it has been in recent years. “It’s been less than normal and I’ve been hearing the same from others in town,” he said.