Powwow of Dream Is Taking Form as Tribute to Cerritos Air Crash Victims

The two American Indian boys grew up as close as brothers in Oklahoma during the ‘40s. When Howard’s mother remarried, it was to Melvin’s uncle. Later, Howard went into the Navy and Melvin went into the Marines. Their tours of duty took them through Southern California, and after they got out, they stayed here and stayed close.

So it was particularly wrenching to Melvin Ahhaitty when Howard Yacktooanipah, his wife and four other members of his family were killed by the Aeromexico jet that landed squarely on the Yacktooanipahs’ rented home in Cerritos on Aug. 31, 1986.

“The pain was so bad for three, four months. I continually dreamed about him,” Ahhaitty said. “In each one we were together at Indian powwows. The last dream I had was in January, and it was at a powwow in Cerritos.”

With that, in the middle of the night, Ahhaitty awoke and began planning a memorial gathering of Indian tribes that has been the focus of his family’s life--and its checkbook--for most of the year.

This weekend the dream will unfold in a two-day powwow featuring Indian dances, songs, craft work and food to pay tribute to Yacktooanipah, his family and the rest of those who died in the Cerritos crash--the 67 aboard the airliner, the three aboard the private plane that collided with the jet and the nine others who lived in Yacktooanipah’s attractive neighborhood.

The free program, to be held at Cerritos College in Norwalk from noon to 11 p.m. Saturday and from noon to sundown Sunday, is being staged not as a sorrowful memorial but as an uplifting celebration that a year of mourning required by Indian culture has ended, Ahhaitty said.

“Now we put our sorrow and our weepings behind us, and we look to tomorrow for what God has in store,” said Ahhaitty, a 50-year-old construction plumber from Hacienda Heights who has been unable to work for more than a decade because of lung cancer. “The dance is not to eulogize the dead, the ones that passed on. It’s for the living. We all come together to dance, to sing, to smile, to laugh, to forget our past.”

Joanna Freeman, executive director of the American-Indian Free Clinic, a co-sponsor of the powwow, said it is expected to be one of the largest Indian events ever held in Los Angeles. “Everyone is talking about it,” she said.

Ahhaitty said he and his wife, Glenda, and their four grown children have spent about $18,000 to finance the memorial, exhausting much of their savings.

They emphasized that the powwow is intended to appeal to all of Southern California touched by the Cerritos tragedy.

‘Time for Us to Forget’

“It’s not only for the Indian people,” Melvin Ahhaitty said. “We’d like to especially honor those people in Cerritos that perished on the ground. We would really like the presence of their relatives. This dance is time for us to forget.”

Howard Yacktooanipah was a Comanche, and between 200 to 300 Comanches, mostly from Oklahoma, are expected to travel here for the memorial, along with smaller numbers from the Sioux, Arikara and Pawnee tribes, Ahhaitty said.

Yacktooanipah’s death stunned the Los Angeles Indian community’s 60,000 members. For decades he had been active in cultural affairs in addition to his job as coordinator of the Orange County Indian Center’s employment training program, a federally financed post.

“He grew up in what we call the powwow world, in which we traveled to different states and places to dance and sing,” said Ahhaitty, who is of Comanche and Kiowa ancestry.

The night before the plane crash, Yacktooanipah, 47, and his wife of nine months, Sharon, 36, a member of the Arikara tribe, had attended a powwow at the Barona Indian Reservation in northern San Diego County. Howard Yacktooanipah was the lead singer during the ceremonies.

The other members of the Yacktooanipah family who died when the plane struck were Sharon’s two daughters, Jennifer and Sandra Star; Sandra’s fiance, Freeman Jackson of Chula Vista; and Juanita (Missy) Logan, Yacktooanipah’s niece.

The Ahhaittys had hoped to defray the cost of the powwow with substantial corporate donations, but said they have not been able to attract them. As a result, they have committed to personally paying for the transportation and lodging of hundreds of Indians from Oklahoma and the Dakotas in addition to buying food for a Saturday night dinner and the printing of thousands of flyers to promote the powwow.

“The financial part is on our shoulders, but we are not supposed to worry about how much money we’re going to spend, how far we’re going to travel,” Melvin Ahhaitty said. “My dad says somewhere down the line God is going to replace what you put out. This is our way. . . . These are the teachings we’re trying to teach our young.”

Variety of Dances

The memorial will begin with the blessing of the grounds by tribal elders. Throughout much of the two days there will be a variety of warrior, women’s and inter-tribal dances in the Southern Plains Comanche tradition. One ceremony will feature a lone horse--borrowed from the widow of the late Indian actor Will Sampson--carrying warrior’s paraphernalia, its tail braided by eagle feathers.

The participation of various tribes underscores that the members of the Yacktooanipah family who died in Cerritos came from four tribes.

“When our tribes come together, we all become one because we all have that feeling. We all want to dance,” Ahhaitty said.