Symbol of Home in Wartime On Center Stage at Indian Event

"It's a dance that represents me as a woman," she said. "I'm representing myself as a young girl growing up and becoming a young woman, giving birth and having children and becoming the center of the family."

Cromwell's 10-year-old daughter, Dominique, had another story to tell in "the butterfly dance."

Wearing a long blue-and-green dress and three feathers in her hair and wrapped in a shiny, multicolor shawl, Dominique opened her arms wide as she twirled and hopped with 12 other children.

"I like butterflies," Dominique said. "I like dancing, too. I dance for my family members that passed away." Her Native American name is "dancer the butterfly."

Some people traveled from Canada to attend the powwow.

Daynelle Pyawasit, 16, arrived in Washington with her family and friends. She performed a "jingle dance," which she said originated in her tribe, the Ojibway, during the 19th century.

The jingle dance is traced to the myth of an Ojibway girl whose grandfather was sick. She wanted to help him, but all the medicines she gave him did not work. One night she had a dream in which she was dancing, wearing a dress decorated with cones made up of snuff cans that jingled as she swirled. In the dream, her grandfather was cured, so she danced it for him the next day, and it worked. It became part of the Ojibway lore.

Jingle dancers decorate their clothes with 365 small cones fashioned from snuff cans. Each cone represents a day in the year. The sounds the cones make when the dancer moves to the beat of the drums scare away negative spirits.

"I feel really good dancing it because it's a healing dance," said Daynelle, who lives in Ontario. She could not remember how many powwows she has been to, because there have been so many. But she said she considers participating a link to her heritage.

"It is important, especially the social end of it," she said. "It keeps our culture."