got out of my car in the cracked parking lot of the Memorial Coliseum in Corpus Christi; the September sun and the salty breeze lent this South Texas town the unfortunate air of a forgotten seaside theme park. The coliseum itself had certainly seen better days. Lackluster concrete buttresses and dim red brick walls in the shape of an airplanehangar seemed barely able to support the dilapidated World War II-era dance hall. It took a second glance at my directions to confirm that I was really at the Fifth Annual Intertribal Powwow, a traditional Native American gathering where members of over 50 tribes celebrate and reenact the dance and song that has been part of their custom for hundreds of years.

I experienced my first powwow three years ago while working with a crew of Native American tree planters one spring in northern Ontario. At that point I was eager to go to one of these gatherings, having discovered a few years earlier that my great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. In fact, this had been a revelation to the entire family when, a few months before she died, she told her children about this long-kept family secret. In her day, being part-Native American wasn't generally considered a source of pride.

I, on the other hand, considered it an honor, and I knew the powwow would be a great way to learn more about my Indian heritage. The gathering took place north of Lake Superior, just outside Armstrong, Ontario, a town at the end of the highway with a population of 200, not including the adjacent Indian reservation where about 150 Ojibway natives lived. To get there we took an old logging road to a huge field surrounded by birch and poplar trees. The Ojibway had set up a round wooden corral for the drums so the dancers could circle around them. Everyone camped out, and all weekend there was the constant smell of poplar bark burning and tin metal coffee being brewed. In the mornings a woman would wake with the first cold light and sing chants that seemed to linger with the fog through my tent flap. Each day, we all gathered for a breakfast of watery coffee and Indian fry bread, and for dinner we ate moose and beaver. Around ten o'clock each morning, the drums started and the dancing began, going all day and into the night. At the end of the weekend, when the dancers were packing away their eagle feathers and I was saying good-bye to my new-found friends, I felt a cathartic sense of belonging. It was as if I'd uncovered a part of my past and clarified the person I had become.

I wasn't sure what to expect under the tropical Corpus Christi sun, but I knew I wouldn't be eating any moose or beaver down here -- more like chili dogs and nachos -- and the only camping to be found would be at the Holiday Inn. However, if at first the Corpus gathering did not seem like it would offer what I had come to expect from past powwows, once I heard the deep and rhythmic bass drums sounding from the weathered building, I began to understand that even if the setting was different, the drums, the shrill Indian singers, and the dancers dressed in wild colors and traditional headdress were still the same. The American Indian spirit of celebration and community was alive and well.