De Anza College hosted its first ever Two Spirit drum circle to help queer campus communities build cross-cultural connections on Tuesday, Feb. 3 at the Euphrat Museum of Art.
“We’ve been praying for this drum program for awhile,” Adriana Garcia, Program Coordinator for the Office of Equity, said. “This way of building community is so loving, gentle, and tender, and we need more of that in the world.”
The Two Spirit identity encompasses Indigenous people who exist outside the Western binary gender system. This Two Spirit drum circle is uniquely open to everyone, centering Two Spirit and Indigequeer QTBIPOC people.
“Not all drums in native communities allow men, women and other folks that have different genders and identities… to sit at the drum together, but we can around our drum,” M. Zamora, drumkeeper and adjunct faculty of ethnic and women’s studies, said.
To begin the circle, attendees each took a pinch of tobacco and sprinkled it on the drum while sharing a dream, prayer or intention.
Zamora said that tobacco is communication because “you’ve put a little piece of you down on the drum” to “say what you mean.”
Attendees joined the inner circle and drummed in unison, leading the first of four rounds of prayer.
The common beat is “the heartbeat” of the drum circle, and Zamora described how “your energy… will further the drum, you are going to further the causa. The causa is us.”
Zamora said “la causa” is a general term for a community-led movement for the people.
The drum circle continued with prayers for the self and for the community, showing gratitude and saying farewell.
“When we pray for ourselves, … we are affecting and healing others in the future and the past,” Zamora said.
The tobacco used during the ceremony is returned back to the ground as a blessing to the earth. As is tradition with drum circles, attendees are invited to eat and drink at the ceremony’s conclusion as an act of self-care.
“Physically and emotionally, I think you can tell that there was a community created,” Fatima Artan, 19, Euphrat Museum of Art intern and psychology major, said. “I think that is important for all of us.”
Zamora said there are plans for the Two Spirit drum circle to perform at the grand opening of the Women’s Resource and Advocacy Center in March and at the Queer and Now conference in April.
“I am the drum keeper, but I don’t carry the drum alone,” Zamora said. “The community holds the drum.”
