The din from the crowd drowned out the morning birdsong. It rose from the mountain valley into the pink-orange sky, joining the sand kicked up by the dancers in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped arena. The dancers didn’t seem to mind the sand though; their eyes remained wide open despite the beige grains of silica slicing into their corneas and coating their otherwise vibrant ritual attire of scarlet, orange, yellow, sky blue, and most of all, turquoise.
And why should the dancers care? Countless others who had danced the exact same movements all across the western reaches of the continent had suffered far more over the prior centuries: dispossession, indoctrination, murder. If anything, their discomfort reminded the dancers of the cost of victory.
A victory whose meaning was still disputed.
Across the valley, a small convoy of armored vehicles rolled onto the desert flat northwest of the gathering. A woman stepped out of the lead APC, her black, knee-high moccasins leaving shallow prints in the sand.
The rest of her attire was a mix of traditional and modern, her black skirt considerably more form-fitting and less burdensome than the usual Navajo fare, but still with a few silvery lace inlays of blanketflowers. Her blouse was lilac and studded with dozens of small, golden buttons on its lapels and 3/4-length sleeves.
Turqouise was everywhere on her, from the ornamental spurs on her moccasins to the half-dozen rings on her fingers to the round patterns on her earrings and the ovoid brooch she wore on the end of a golden necklace chain. Even the right side of her face was painted turquoise, with two triangles, one over her mouth and another over her right eye, symbolically matching the Navajo Nation’s Great Seal.
She was holding a carbine in her right hand with the barrel slung across her shoulders. The thing looked like it had been around at least since the Navajo were first granted autonomy centuries ago. The dozen bodyguards accompanying her were kitted out with considerably more hardware and considerably less traditional attire. While the same turquoise could be found in the accents on their otherwise jet-black armor and weapons, they still looked much more like private security at a nameless corpo R&D plant in the Mojave Republic next than they did Navajo warriors upholding over a millennium of tradition.
“BIDZII! GET OVER HERE. NOW!” The woman yelled as she fired a lone shot into the air, the bullet whistling through the dust cloud.
A young man emerged from the crowd. Like the woman who fired the shot, his clothing was also a mix of Navajo and outside influences. Unlike her, his influences were the tribes of the past; he wore an oversized muslin shirt of bison hide with a headdress of splayed feathers and turquoise colored—but certainly not studded—bracers on each wrist. He walked over with the four dyes of his shirt—abalone, white shell, jet, and turquoise, matching the Great Seal—shining in the sun, even if they were partially covered in sand and dust.
“Yes, auntie?” He said, smiling.
“I am not your auntie. Not now at least. You will address me as High Councilor Doba. More importantly, how could you perform this desecration here?!? At the base of the sacred mountain that I am sworn to protect!” She yelled, gesturing at the peak behind him with the carbine’s barrel.
“Desecration? High Councilor, this is a celebration of our victory! Can you not see our joy? We are giving thanks to Mother Earth, Father Sky, and the rest of the Ye’ii for restoring the sacred peak of Tsoodzil to us!”
“Yes Bidzii, the Ye’ii did indeed restore this holy mountain to us. But that is not thanks to you and your . . . “friends’” outside, heretical practices. Our people have never accepted the Ghost Dance.”
“Our people? Our people accepted the Ghost Dance all over this continent, and many of them did it centuries ago! The Prophet was right, even if he never lived to see his prophecies fulfilled. The United States, the great den of the demonic ch’iidii is dead, and we, the Autochthonous Americans, are ever so alive!” He yelled, pointing to the crowd.
Doba was unimpressed. “The Prophet was wrong. He claimed that all the lands to the west of the Mississippi would return to the tribes, and that the United States would remain in the East. Neither of those things has come to pass. Not to mention that dozens of other tribes remain scattered, with only three exceptions, including us.” She paused.
“But more importantly, our people are the Dine, the Navajo, not the other tribes hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. They do not know our legends, they were not given our lands, they do not worship the Ye’ii. They do not and cannot have our history.” Doba said, her tone slowly rising back to where it was in the beginning of the conversation.
“But High Councilor, they do have our history. The same history mourned in the Ghost Dance. Lost lands, lost friends, lost family. We’re trying to put it back together, but this time, we will be united, instead of the dozens of squabbling tribes who were overrun so easily. Yes, there is a great amount of work to be done—the Iroquois alone are split between multiple countries—but we will all work for each other. This is our best chance in 500 years to take back what is, and always has been, ours, and wipe this plague from our continent. Don’t you see that?” Bidzii said.
“No Bidzii. I do not. We already have what is ours. And we gave up so much for it. Maintaining our lands is no easy task either, with both the Mojave Corpos out west and the Compact Collectives to the east desperate for our uranium. Do you really think our nation could survive a conflict with either of them?” Doba paused again, but picked up before Bidzii could open his mouth.
“Not to mention that most of the remaining tribes are a tiny percentage of this continent’s people. What happens when just a few of the larger successor states unite, even temporarily, in the face of your ‘unified’ tribes, and that’s if you can even get the tribes to agree on anything in the first place? They, you, will suffer the exact same fate as as the first practitioners of the Ghost Dance: a shallow mass grave. Please, stop now, before you’re put in one yourself. Otherwise, I will have to stop you.” Doba said, waving her left hand forward. Her security detail advanced.
“Are you threatening me High Councilor? I can’t say I’m surprised. We both know that the Council isn’t ready for what we propose; if you had things your way, it would still be Mount Taylor rather than Tsoodzil. But fortunately, we’ve found that the common people are very much ready for The Dance.” Bidzii smirked, his heart racing as he saw six of the twelve security team members assault the others, clubbing them over the heads with their rifles and handcuffing them.
One of the loyalists managed to dig his pistol out of his belt through the handcuffs and shoot off a rebel bodyguard’s ear; the rebel was sent to the ground grasping at what little remained of the organ. Another rebel kicked the loyalist’s gun away before he could fire again. Picking up the pistol he had just kicked into the blood-stained salt flat, the second rebel put three bullets into the loyalist’s skull, creating a reservoir of crimson on the otherwise-parched land. Upon seeing their brother’s punishment, the rest of the loyalists knew enough not to attempt an escape nor a counterattack.
Doba pointed her carbine towards the traitorous bodyguards, only to hear the cocking of an old revolver’s hammer behind her. She turned to face her nephew.
“I know you’re thinking about it High Councilor, but you never reloaded that ancient thing. If you try it, you’ll have two dozen bullets in you before you’re even a third of the way there. Now please, lay down the gun, join us, and you’ll live. I promise you.” Bidzii said, one hand still firmly on his revolver while the other reached out to Doba.
“No Bidzii. This is nothing but treason, and I will not betray our people, nor the Ye’ii.” Doba said.
“Treason?” Bidzii laughed. “This is not treason Auntie.” He said. “I’m just helping you join The Dance.”
He fired.