Canku Ota

(Many Paths)

An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

February 7, 2004 - Issue 106

Village Students Share Their Dances

“The dancing, the youngsters keep me young,” she laughed.

BE HAPPY		TO THE MAT
Rose Anna Dan-Waghiyi of Stebbins says preserving traditional Yupik dances makes her happy and the children happy when they learn to dance the rhythms and songs. These are some of the students who participated in the 11th Stebbins Traditional Yupik Skills and Dance Festival Jan. 29 and 30.		Nolan Murphy of Stebbins coaxes grasses with many loose ends into mats at StebbinsYupik art and dance festival Jan. 29.

Dan-Waghiyi flitted from class to class during the day to check into traditional skills classes, stopping five to 10 minutes where busy youngsters with busy fingers concentrated and appeared to thoroughly enjoy beading, skin-sewing, listening to elders’ stories, braiding grass mats, made drums, wove whaling nets and twined together sinews like their mothers and grandmothers did when they were young. In the evenings, Dan - Waghiyi sat for hours on the gym floor drumming and singing for Stebbins’ young dancers and even those from neighboring villages.

The Stebbins elder organized the festival years ago when she saw few smiles on young faces in the village.
“They didn’t look happy, and they didn’t act happy. I was afraid,” she said. “I wanted to make them happy, to make friends from other villages. I wanted to keep them away from crazy things like sniffing, breaking in, stealing. I wanted them to exercise their bodies and to listen to their traditions, to remember who they are and to enjoy themselves,” she said.

Waghiyi said the dancing was a hit. “They are really interested in learning and dancing and making new friends. They don’t say a word, but you can see it on their faces.” Last week kids from all over the Bering Strait region had an opportunity to make friends outside their villages. The evening dance schedules showed performers who had flown in from Teller, Koyuk, Shishmaref, Golovin, Kotlik, Shaktoolik, Elim, St. Michael, Brevig Mission and Unalakleet.

TRADITIONAL WAYS		FORGET THREE-PLY
Marie Olana of Brevig Mission celebrates old ways in new days at the 11th annual Stebbins Traditional Skills and Dance Festival. About 275 youngsters traveled from their villages to attend. The meet was supported by Hageland and Bering Air, Norton Sound Economic Development Corp., Bering Sea Lions Club, Alaska USA, Norton Sound Health Corp., BSNC and Stebbins IRA.		Damien Otten of St. Michael shows a new fisherman how to use braided twine, because it is stronger and picks up less dirt. Tom caught whales last year, but even more in 2000. "I gave most of them away," he said.

Some of the songs youngsters learn in Stebbins came from neighboring St. Michael and Nelson Island and Tooksook Bay where some ancestors lived. “But most of the songs are made up here,” Dan-Waghiyi said. “Stebbins people make them up, about outdoors, hunting, weather, boats, and comedies — teasing songs — for our teasing cousins from Kotlik.”

CONCENTRATION Theresa Prince of Kotlik helps Jordan Johnson and Sean Paul Martin to get their skin sewing under contol Friday at the festival of Yupik learning and dancing at Stebbins.

Why pick on Kotlik? Some Kotlik people came from the same origins. “Some people in Kotlik had ancestors who lived like we did, in the old village of Atriviit, the first village here before Stebbins. They are our cousins. We call them our teasing cousins.”

Local history goes down with the songs in the villages, Dan - Waghiyi said. As for her, she teaches the students “how the song goes, what it meant then, what he was doing when he made up the song,” she said. “I asked the old people long ago before they died. The songs still have their power.

“They love the weather song. When we sing the weather song, the weather always gets good. My students can’tgo very long without the weather songs,” she said.

The songs move the weather and they move Dan-Waghiyi.

“When I sing the old songs it makes me feel really good, really, really good. I feel the people who have passed away are around me,” she said. “I didn’t really lose them. I can remember how they look, how they lived. It makes me feel so good and strong. But all this, I do it only for the kids. I want them to feel it too.”

GUESS WHO MADE THIS DRUM?		I SEE YOU
Drums help dancers to portray rolling thunder and lightning striking, Northern Lights, hunting and "teasing cousins."		Keanu Akmalenguk gives a stranger the once-over from under his father's chair. Dad is George Koontz of Stebbins who taught a carving class during the festival.

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