Stretching to loosen his limbs as the voices of singers ascended over the incessant drumbeat, Myron Burger fitted a 15-pound black bear hide on his head.

The animal is his brother, he said, while tapping the breastplate on his chest formed from bear rib bones.

“In my language, Black Bear is my name, so I carry him in a good way,” said Burger, a member of Shuswap Nation in Canada and a resident of Santa Fe. “I’m happy to be alive. I’m the 1% to survive.”

He was one of hundreds of people who converged Monday on the Santa Fe Plaza for an event that has become an Indigenous Peoples Day tradition. The third annual Honoring Native Nations Powwow, organized by the Santa Fe Indigenous Center, drew dancers representing a wide swath of Native nations. They held the crowd in thrall, moving through

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