Loud drums and clacking of the jingle dress fill the room. The audience is sitting in their chairs admiring the Indigenous People performing their cultural dances. Nov. 9, was the day the RAD event recognized Indigenous People. The event begins calmly with a storytelling from an Indigenous preschool teacher which then amps up to the impressive music and dances which are danced with passion.
The beautiful dancers do not lose focus, skillfully moving their bodies, and hitting every beat. Their expression does not show the difficulty of the heavy 40-pound dress they are dancing with. The four drummers, drum with such precision and synchronization, not missing a beat. The audience watches in awe admiring this underrepresented group showing their culture and tradition.
“[This club] is to bring awareness and to bring a level of respect to these different peoples, it helps bring a lot of information and knowledge to a lot of people,” senior secretary of RAD River Glenn said.
Indigenous people have been overlooked and underrepresented for years and still are. RAD helps bring awareness to this by showing their culture and providing knowledge to people about these groups. Not only does it bring information, it brings our community together.
“It’s really neat to see when people bring younger kids or when we have an older group of people from Del Webb that they come to these events and it really does feel more community-oriented,” creator of RAD Shaina Pocztowski said.
A joyful moment of community showed when most of the audience joined the dancers to learn, physically appreciating the culture. This does not just bring people together, but it represents certain people in our community and district who usually are not represented.
“Our goal was to highlight groups of people and to show that they were seen and valued in our school district because sometimes we felt like there are certain people who are elevated or talked about more than others,” creator of RAD, Brian Truax said.
The main goal of RAD is to make people feel represented and it is important for our community to do exactly that.
The loud drums die down and the dancers slowly leave one by one, jingle dresses still clicking with every step. This gorgeous group had a chance to be looked at through this event and will continue to spread and share their amazing culture.
