Cultural Heritage Night

November is "Native American Heritage Month", so at the Cultural Center we decided to put on a series of events.  Tonight we had quliraq (tradtional story-telling) and yuraq (Eskimo dancing).  Two groups danced, and Quentin (the recruiter at the college) told two stories (Panik's Revenge and the End of Warfare and another story about how loons and ravens got their color patterns).

This picture is of the Bethel high school group dancing.  There are drummers in the back who keep the rhythm and sing/chant the song.  The girls/women stand and are wearing traditional dance headdresses made of fur and have dance fans made from woven grasses and caribou "beards".  The boys/men kneel or sit in front of the women and have dance fans made out of wood and feathers.

 

The same song/verse is repeated multiple times, going faster each time.  Sometimes there are alternating verses and parts where the dance is acted differently.

 There is a set dance group, but since many of the songs and dances are traditional and performed often many people know them and you can hear singing in the audience and by the end of the song there are more people on the stage dancing than there were in the beginning.

One of Quentin's stories was very appropriate for the evening because it talked about how drumming and dance developed and became a way for people to communicate their displeasure or dislike of someone's habits without directly saying it to them.  The dances all tell stories, and have particular movements to represent something.  One of the dances was about hunting for birds, and another one was something about smoking cigarettes, kind of making fun of smokers.  All of the dances and the stories Quentin told were very entertaining!