Games may merit credit for rainfall

By Deborah Frazier
Rocky Mountain News

Thank the North American Indigenous Games for Denver's daily dousings of rain this week.

A warrior shooting a rain arrow into the sky is the logo selected by the Colorado Indigenous Games Society, which brought the weeklong event for 8,000 young Indian athletes to Denver.

An 8-foot bronze sculpture by renowned Indian artist Allan Houser inspired the logo.

With the rains, lawns greened and flower gardens perked up after a rainless June.

At the games, the rains worked in other ways.

"At the opening ceremonies, there was a wait and tempers were getting bad in the heat. Some people fainted," said Al Cloud, a Southern Ute who lives in Denver.

"The rain came and cooled everyone down," he said.

"The rain came for a reason. It got us going."

Houser, a Chiricahua Apache who died in 1994, drew on Apache tradition, where the strongest warrior was selected during a drought to shoot a sacred rain arrow into the sky.

Beliefs about rain vary among the hundreds of tribes, but for Indian nations in the arid Southwest, weavings and other art forms include rain or storm clouds.

"It's part of the relationship between Mother Earth and Father Sky," said Sara Stanley, who teaches art and culture at the Monument Valley High School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

At an athletic event, there's always tribal competition that extended to who gets credit for the rain.

"We brought the rain from Saskatchewan," said Vernon Lewis, a broadcaster covering the games from a Cree radio station in west central Canada.

But no one grumped about the rain, not even athletes who had to hustle to finish competitions under darkening skies.

"It's always a blessing. It's a cleansing," said Lisa Wayne, a Navajo who managed the games' sports and venues.

On Tuesday, the young athletes from 30 states and 12 Canadian provinces and territories finished up practices and competitions early to enjoy special discounts at Six Flags and Water World.

That gave the games a hat trick in rainmaking, producing showers three days in a row.

Storm clouds gathered in the late afternoon.

"We Cree don't look at rain as ruining our day," said Lewis. "We look at it as a positive thing that rejuvenates us."