In the early 1990s, I moved to Los Angeles to begin my master's degree. It is easy to feel lost and disconnected in a city of that size--even moreso, if your roots are elsewhere. Having grown up attending pow wows with my Cherokee grandmother, I began, on a tip, searching for the pow wow circuit in LA.  The stories I collected to share the American Indian perspective became my master's thesis and crystallized for me the importance of cultural identity.