Issue date: 3/5/10 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Brittney Barsotti Right: A dancer performs the traditional Native American hoop dance as a part of the Livermore Pow Wow last April. During the dance, shapes are formed in storytelling rituals such as the butterfly, the eagle, the snake, the coyote, with the hoops symbolizing the never ending circle of life.

After receiving a "hateful" note in her locker at Livermore High School, Smoke Johnson started what has become the Livermore Pow Wow and Expo.
After spending two years in limbo, as the search for a location that could hold the size the event had grown to, the pow wow expo finally found a home at LPC last spring.
The Native American Culture Club (NACC) was founded in Spring 2009 partially to help organize the expo and pow wow. But, This year the NACC is shaking things up a bit to education LPC's students and the surrounding community a little differently.
President of the NACC, Mario Jaramillo hopes the pow wow and expo will bring a new light to the Native American culture for students, faculty members, administrators and the surrounding community.
Jaramillo feels the general public knows very little about the Native American culture, either traditional or contemporary, as a lot of people tend to think that Native American culture is simply a topic for history classes.
"This is probably because Native Americans constitute less than one percent of the US population and only half of those actually practice their traditions," Jaramillo said. "This type of ignorance leaves a lot of room for misconceptions and stereotypes, as many cultures know, and so the event was made to diminish those stereotypes, or at least explain why it is those stereotypes have materialized."
Instead of the pow wow and expo happening in the time span of one week as it has done for the past few years, different events will take place over a month and will cumulate in the Pow wow happening in the time span of one week as it has done for the past few years, different events will take place over a month and will cumulate in the pow wow.

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