IndigeQueer & QTBIPOC Community Powwow Drum Circle (July 22)

IndigeQueer & QTBIPOC Community Powwow Drum Circle

with Wakan Wiya Two Spirit Drum

July 22 @ Downtown Huchiun-Oakland

All are welcome to join this special drum circle focusing on Powwow drumming, songs and protocol. As always, our circles are an opportunity to center IndigeQueer & QTBIPOC peoples, our connection to culture, community, and always, spirit. Please join us.

Our Wakan Wiya drum has been invited to drum at powwows in the coming year, so we continue to hold circles focused on f drumming at community powwows. We'll share several types of songs for these occasions, as well as expand our discussions of protocol for our drummers as we learn more about the role of the drum at different social spaces and ceremonies. While these will be teaching circles, we will still hold the form for each other in prayer. Join us!

Offerings: Please bring tobacco - or other medicine from your tradition - for our drumkeeper each time you attend the drum, as is our protocol. Also, we ask everyone to bring a financial offering to each circle for our venue cost. Our drum medicine is always free, though we rely on community for this energetic exchange to keep our circles going. Please help our home organization, Xochicalli- House of Flowers, with a small donation ($5-$10-$20) as you are able. Your donations are necessary to pay for our venue and to offer support for Xochicalli. Donations can be made in person or donate via this link (Paypal/Venmo/Credit Card). Your gifts in gratitude and reciprocity will help gas up the car to roll out the big drum, support our travel/invited visits from elders, and enable partial support for future drum travels for ceremony and powwow invitations.

Our Drum Story & Protocol:

Our Wakan Wiya Drum is open to all. When our drum was retired from Two Spirit Ceremony many years ago, it was gifted to us in the Bay Area to serve all, and always, to focus on IndigeQueer and QTBIPOC community healing. Drumkeeper Zamora accepted tobacco to help folks learn about this drum medicine and lead our drum. Circle up and find again that heartbeat medicine. Zamora guides us through energy movement. We will lay down tobacco prayers/intentions for the future. This is the manda of our drum, to bring drum medicine to the people. Help us continue our work of growing our IndigeQueer and QTBIPOC community. We will take turns sitting at the drum and learning more about how the drum helps us Hold the Form for each other. We will share palabra and songs, all these forms of heartspeak (cuicatl, as our Mexica maestras remind us!). In these ways we honor cultura Indigena in collective practice and give expression to our prayers, give thanks for the ways in which our full selves, especially our Two Spirit selves, can and do make our way in this world.

Friends, we potluck after the Drum! Break bread, renourish together. Please bring food, snacks, drinks to share, along with your own utensils and waterbottles! And we want to encourage those who have medicine to share, any plantitas, seeds, or things to clear out and pass on, to please bring as giveaways, it is a good time to share.

HEALTH AND SAFETY:

Let's do everything we can to prepare for a safer drum gathering.

3 days Prior: By RSVPing to join the circle, you are committing to keeping each other safe by following these COVID guidelines beginning at least 3 days before the gathering:

If you are not feeling well and/or are experiencing cold/flu symptoms, please protect our communities and do not attend our circles until your symptoms have cleared AND you have tested negative for COVID 2x within 48 hours. Please do not attend if you have a known COVID positive exposure. If you have any questions regarding this, please contact the drumkeeper directly at xochicalli.indigequeermedicine@gmail.com.

Please use Rapid Test for most accurate testing before arrival.

As much as possible, masking indoors in public places and in settings with people outside your pod. This means at the grocery store, doctors appointments, etc. If outdoors in crowded spaces, please also consider masking.

Day-of Masking: Everyone is asked to please wear N95 or kn95 masks at all times, unless eating or drinking. Surgical masks or lower quality fabric masks are not effective against COVID. Masking while taking a turn at the drum will help create more safety for everyone to be part of the circle. If you cannot remain masked, you are encouraged to stand or sit back around the drum and still receive prayers and the drum heartbeat. We will always do our best to help with airflow in our spaces. Please note that Drumkeeper Zamora does not mask throughout the drum circle, as singing with the mask on is not sustainable for them throughout the 2.5 hours of singing.

Vaccinations: We encourage all who join our community to vaccinate and boost as required, and to develop your own personal COVID protocol/ precautions to help our communities stay healthy. Drumkeeper Zamora is committed to timely updating of their vaccinations.

Outdoor setting: As warmer months are coming now, we will try to hold drum circles outdoors in the hopes that this increases our safety in attending.

Eating/Drinking: Food is shared after our circle. Folks are encouraged to bring food or drinks that are individually wrapped, including fruit, etc. Those preparing food to share should be symptom free and should test themselves for COVID before preparing and offering food for our drum gatherings

*Wakan Wiya (Sacred Woman) Two Spirit Drum is our Native American drum founded and led by IndigeQueer community in the Bay Area. Our drum was gifted to us to support access to drum medicine for our IndigeQueer and Two Spirit peoples, our friends and familia, so that we might return to our Native drum traditions where healing medicine is for all. Our intertribal circles are open to everyone, while always centering Two Spirit & Indigequeer QTBIPOC people and their healing. We ask everyone who attends to be respectful of this focus. Follow the Two Spirit Drum at WakanWiyaDrum on Instagram. To receive notices about additional programming, follow xochicalli.IndigeQueerMedicine on Instagram

*Drumkeeper M. Zamora is a Chicana, Yaqui and Tongva IndigeQueer feminist educator and community organizer. Their ancestors come from the Los Angeles Basin and northern Mexico’s Sonora and Chihuahua regions. They have served as ceremonial singer/drumkeeper in their Two Spirit community for 20 years. Zamora has led several drums. In 2024 Zamora brought the Wakan Wiya Two Spirit Drum to Xochicalli- House of Flowers where it is now the drum in-residence, supporting healing medicine workshops for Bay Area QTBIPOC communities. Zamora has taught Ethnic Studies, Chicana/o Latina/o Studies, and Gender Studies and Feminist Theory, most recently at Skyline College, De Anza College, California State University East Bay, and University of San Francisco. Zamora currently serves on the volunteer Board at Queer Cultural Center.

For more info on drum circles, our Two Spirit Drum can be found @WakanWiyaDrum on Instagram. For more IndigeQueer programming follow xochicalli.IndigeQueerMedicine on Instagram.