“Get back up there and sing another song.” After singing my first song I turned to sit down and she said to me, “Where do you think your going?” I was afraid I had offended her by singing, but she was intimidating and insistent. When I finished with that song and sat down, Judy said to me, “Gary, now you’re a real Paiute.”

This happened in 1986 after my Paiute mentor, Art Cava-naugh, told me I could begin singing with the rest of the singers for the dance. I was very nervous, because people at this rez didn’t know me and had never heard me sing. And this is where Judy Trejo...