The deer dance is performed within Waehma, the Yaqui Lent and Easter, a ceremonial season that runs the full forty days and takes over the entire community. It is not a Catholic observance with indigenous decoration, nor an indigenous one with Catholic decoration, but a single ceremonial system built in the mission period and held by Yaqui religious societies who inherit the obligation. The Fariseos or Chapayekas, masked figures who represent the pursuers of Christ, take control of the village during the season, move in silence, carry wooden swords and daggers, and are subject to rules of behaviour that are strict precisely because their role is transgressive. Their masks are burned at the end.
The deer dancer and the pascolas, the masked and joking dancers who hold the other side of the ceremony, perform through the nights of the season and at the culminating Gloria on the Saturday, when the Fariseos assault the church and are defeated by flowers thrown by the assembled community, an event in which the flower world is doing the work.
The Yaqui hold Waehma as their own. Parts are open to visitors and parts are closed, photography and recording are generally forbidden, and communities in both Sonora and Arizona state their own conditions for attendance. This article describes what those communities and the published record make public and goes no further.