Brandy Paddock and her son, Kalsin, are two of seven Alutiiq dancers that performed on the outdoor main stage Wednesday, July 2, in the middle of Washington D.C. The group shared dances about traditionally hunting ducks, seals and whales. Some of these songs were taught to the original dance group in Yupik and translated into Alutiiq.
This year’s Folklife Festival theme is “Youth and the future of culture,” featuring roughly 500 culture bearers, like Paddock’s son.
Mary Linn is the curator of language and cultural vitality at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She said they wanted the festival to highlight Native youth and their efforts from around the country in the capital city.
“A lot of times only the Elders are really celebrated in this, and the young people are really driving, especially, language revitalization throughout the United States. Young people are really driving the need for teachers," Linn said. "They’re driving the…just the momentum of, I would call it, a social movement for reclaiming language and culture; and they’re the ones that are asking for it.”
The four language groups represented this year include the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people from Kodiak Island, the Ahkwesahsne Mohawk from New York and Canada, a Ka’olelo Hawaii group and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.
Linn chose the groups that were invited to this year’s festival, but was limited by how much money the Smithsonian had raised.
Linn used to work in Oklahoma where the Myaamia language had gone silent for decades after the last fluent first-language speaker died in the mid-1900s. She said the young people from that Tribe are working to revive their language.
“And so they are inspiring people to show that your language can be silent; you don’t want it to get that way, but it can be silent for a while and then you can really reawaken the language," she explained. "It’s a long process, many generations long it will be. But you can do it.”
That’s similar to some of the language revitalization efforts Alutiiq people have been pushing forward around Kodiak Island. One of the Alutiiq Dancers, Mariah Stapleton, is the first in a few generations of her family to speak the revitalized Alutiiq language. Stapleton also brought her daughter Remaliah, who she is teaching Alutiiq, with her to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
She told the crowd on Wednesday, July 2, during the group’s performance on the main stage that the dancers were excited to debut special summer regalia that was better suited for the 90 degree temperatures in Washington D.C.
“We knew it was a lot hotter here than back at home, so we were like, ‘we’re going to make some summer regalia, finally.’ These are the first summer regalia that our group has made since being created in the late 1900s," Stapleton said.
The new pieces include shorter sleeves with tans and brown colors rather than the traditional black winter regalia the dancers usually wear.
Aside from dancing for the hundreds of gathered during the five-day festival, the Kodiak Alutiiq Dancers are also holding social dances for anyone to participate in. They’re scheduled to give lessons about wild plants and food, demonstrate traditional games like Kakangaq, which is involves players tossing disks at a target on a seal hide and host workshops on the Alutiiq language.
Another dancer, Hunter Simeonoff, told Alaska’s Newssource that he was bringing red cedar wood with him to carve and teach people in D.C. about some of the history of Alutiiq peoples’ artwork.
The dancers are also performing inside the National Museum of American Indians for the final days of the festival and one of their main stage performances can be viewed online at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s website.
The festival has dozens of workshops, demonstrations and performances daily through Monday, July 7.
