King Island Dancers

Last fall, our school staff had some grant money to play around with.  We decided to use it to fund an artist-in-residence for our students.  That set off an almost year-long process that culminated this past week with 6 members of the King Island dance group coming to Elim and spending 4 days teaching our kids to dance.  The 4 men drummed and danced, the 1 female of the group did a lot of the dancing, and the little 7-year old switched back and forth between drumming and dancing. 

Elim does not have a strong dance tradition.  When the missionaries first moved through, they discouraged/banned dancing because of ignorance - they feared a link between native dancing and pagan spirit worship.  The missionaries were also enamored with white indoctrination, which is why the native language started to disappear.  As a school, we would love to see the students learn the language, learn the dancing, learn the native ways of their ancestors, but that push has to come from the community.  They have to initiate it.  That is why the community outpouring of support for this group was so encouraging.  If adults start to bring back these ways, the kids will pick it up and run with it.

The present state of King Island is sad.  It is uninhabited by humans.  For some reason, all natives were relocated to the mainland (Nome area) in 1964 and have since scattered across Alaska.  The highest concentration is in Nome, which is where the dance group is based.

The students were split up by ages and each group had a set time during the day to learn how to dance.  The kindergarten/first-grade group was in the middle of the morning - during our 90-minute reading block.  That was nice.  It shortened the long reading time into a more manageable 45 minutes, which I used for review before we start the next level of the reading curriculum this coming week.  I took a lot of pictures, but they all have kids in them so I can't post them. :-(  On day 1, the girls learned the rabbit dance and the boys learned the walrus dance.  The best part was listening to the boys grunt like walruses at the end of their dance. :-)  On day 2, we reviewed the dances from the previous day, and learned the green-picking dance.  The dances tell stories.  For example, the rabbit dance mimics some of the movements of rabbits; the walrus dance mimics a walrus.  The green-picking dance is about picking fresh greens, piling them up, showing them off.  Day 3 was a resting day.  The dancers did not want to wear out their voices, so they showed the students part of a video from a 1979 potluck/celebration that they danced at in Nome.  Day 4 was reviewing the dances we had learned in preparation for the evening performance.

Before the performance Thursday night,  we had a community potluck.  Only in Alaska would a potluck look like this: sloppy joes, several king crabs, turkey, ham, pasta salads, baked beans, rice, muktuk (whale blubber), berries, agutuq (Eskimo ice cream), and fudge. 

At the performance, the first 45 minutes was showing off the dances we had spent the week learning.  My fear going in was that students would get stage fright and not want to dance in front of such a large audience.  I shouldn't have worried.  Most of the kids were so excited to get up there, even if they had no idea what they were doing.  That was so encouraging.  Even the adults were excited.  The first and last dances were invitational dances - anyone could get up and dance.  Some of the adults were old enough to remember the dancing they had done as children and got up to dance.  If we can find a way to capitalize on that excitement and enthusiasm, there is hope that native dancing will find its way back to Elim.

The second half of the performance was the dance group doing its thing.  That was cool.  The first dance Butch and Jessica did was part of the Wolf Dance - a traditional dance/celebration that usually lasts about 3 days.

The headgear the Butch is wearing is made out of eagle feathers.  His mitts are made out of sealskin, with the little jangling tokens made out of puffin beak or ivory. 

This is the Raven dance.  I could see the mannerisms of ravens in the movements they were doing.  The little boy, Martin, was so intense.  He's been dancing since he was about 4, and totally knows what he's doing.  He was so cute to watch.



After that, they stopped introducing the dances.  Sometimes I could figure out what they were depicting and sometimes not. 

 

I'm not sure what these masks were supposed to depict, but I know I wouldn't want to meet on in a dark alley late at night.

Sylvester, on the left, has got to be at least 60, but he was able to dance with the same range of movement as the younger men.  He does not show his age. 

Another walrus dance, but these two had masks for this one.

In case you were wondering, the clothing they are wearing are called kuspuks.  It is a traditional clothing garment that both men and women can wear.  Women's kuspuks are longer and look more like dresses, while men's kuspuks have a shorter hem and look more like shirts.  The drums they are using are made out of walrus stomach, stretched on an oak frame.  Trees are scarce on King Island, so traditionally, the frames were made of spruce gathered from the driftwood washed up on the beaches.  The handle could be made from either wood or ivory.