Celebrating rich cultures is one of the benefits of any university experience.

Since Wednesday, the 29th annual Symposium on the American Indian has featured Native American crafts, speakers and performers.

There is much more to American Indian culture than most of us assume.

Raised on an unhealthy diet of cultural stereotypes in Western movies, we hardly know the people who were here before us and still live among us, separated by the imaginary barriers put in place by the reservation system.

Iowa is a place where it is especially hard to find this kind of event right out in the open.

Indians in the state of Iowa do not stand out the same way they do in the Western sections of the United States.

The only Indians most of us know besides the televised versions are as “Iowan” as everybody else.

We rarely see the beauty and splendor of a hoop dance, hear the sweetness expressed in a Lakota love song played on wood flute or experience the hypnotic drums and voices of The Ironwood Singers.

We have consumed aspects of native culture that suited our tastes and had little chance to see the rest.

This Saturday the symposium will wrap up with a powwow in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union, and we encourage all ISU students and faculty to attend, whether they have had the chance to participate in other events or not.

This will be a great opportunity to take part in the kind of ceremony most of us have only witnessed on television and in the movies.

American Indian culture is all around us, yet often seems to be just out of reach. It would take a special effort for most of us to even find out about, let alone go to a powwow or performance, and even then we might feel like outsiders or tourists.

Frankly, that is what we would be.

But this Saturday, the powwow will come to us making it easier than ever to become acquainted with the ancient cultures and traditions that predate the United States.

Don’t let this chance pass you by.

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Sara Ziegler, Greg Jerrett, Kate Kompas, Carrie Tett and David Roepke.