Yuraq makes March happy

Yuraq is traditional Yup'ik dancing, and every March Hooper Bay has The Louie Bunyan Festival in which the dance groups in town dance for the community, as well as groups from visiting communities, such as Chevak, Scammon Bay, Stebbins, etc. Every year different groups come, though the villages close by almost always come (and Hooper Bay goes to their festivals as well). I wrote more about the history of the festival in the spring of 2007 here and here.

It was my goal to bring Esther to practice with the school dance group every Sunday night and perform with them this year. We did it! I am beginning to feel more and more tied in to the dancing each year; I am beginning to remember the dances (instead of just having to watch and follow one of the leaders), which frees me up to be more creative with the movements. The crowd loves expressive dancers and funny endings to songs; they love to laugh at silly and vehement dancers, which encourages the dancers to be sillier and more vehement. The songs and lyrics are all very old, but they are free to be interpreted in new ways. It feels like this is one tradition that is not dying out because it is adapting to the new world; of course it is not the same as it once was, but nothing is. What will survive are the things that can change and yet stay the same in substance... I think this is one tradition that is just that. Here is a picture of the girls in their matching qaspeks that I made for them:

The Bladder Festival

So the big culmination of the Yuraq dancing (see previous post for description) is the Bladder Festival in mid-March, often called the Louis Bunyan Festival in recent times. But most people still recognize it as the Bladder Festival, the time of the year when all the bladders of the seals caught during the year, dried and filled with air, are sent back to the sea. Helen Smith, an elder I've been speaking to lately, told me that they used to poke a big hole in the ice and push the whole cache of bladders through, and the bladders would sink without any weight attached. She said the cache of bladders would never re-appear later in the year, never wash up on the beach like many things lost at sea do. They believed this was because the spirits of the seals resided in the bladder, and sending the bladder back to the sea would let those seals hunted and caught be born again into new seals. I don't know if anyone in the village still does this with seals caught in present-day, but it's memorialized with this festival.

During the festival there is lots of Yuraq, traditional dancing, with Hooper Bay groups and visiting village dance groups. I was slightly nervous about dancing with the group, because I knew it was alright that I had practiced with them, but I wasn't sure if it was OK if I performed with them. So I went to a woman who is Esther's great-aunt and also in the group, and also a teacher-aide in the school, and asked her if she thought the group would want me to perform with them at the festival. She said "Yah! If they didn't want you to dance at the festival with them the would have already told you to get off the way in the practices. Anyone who practices with us enough is free to dance with us." So that made me feel better about dancing with them, but I was still nervous during the performances and made a million wrong moves.

Sorry my back is to the camera, but I didn't get too many good pictures of myself dancing. Esther, on the other hand, looks great in this picture, so that makes up for it. I try to stand on the end to try to not draw attention to myself! :) As you can see in the picture that begins this post, the rest of the group looks fabulous. This is all in the new school's gym, by the way.

Our Winter Activities

This winter we really got into what outside and traditional activities we could enjoy. It feels like things came together for us, Esther and I, as far as what my vision of our lives could be, this winter: Esther is old enough to join in, and our new house location is really very conducive for us to have access to lots of things. I just realized that I can put a picture into this blog post itself, so check out the images attached -- or that I hope to attach when I'm done writing.

First up: My new Yellow Honda!

Here is Esther, all decked out in her cold-weather gear, sitting on my brand-new "Honda" -- all ATV's, regardless of their make or model, are casually called "Honda" in Hooper Bay. It's totally been our ticket to ride this winter, letting us go out to visit the beach, visit relatives, and explore the frozen tundra beyond the village. It's a freedom I haven't known when I have lived here before; I definitely am a bit sad to see the days of walking while pulling Esther in the sled behind me go, but we did a lot of that, and now we can join in with more community activities that happen outside of town, like ice-fishing, or manuking.

Yuraq -- traditional Yup'ik dancing
Many of you know how entranced I've felt about Yuraq since the first time I tried it, in Pilot Station, and I haven't ever felt like I've reached the same level of involvement since I left that village in the spring of 2000. It was such a great experience that led to so much understanding of Yup'ik people and village life, and brought me so much acceptance that I have been eager to try again, here in Hooper Bay. This year I set it as my goal to participate in one of the two local dance groups, and I wanted to bring Esther with me, to have her growing up around this strong tradtion. We joined the school group and danced often with them, and Esther tried her little baby best and was precious. In this picture she is holding dance fans and wearing a qaspeq, often spelled kuspuk. This type of dancing is done by waving fans or your hands in motions that tell a story, while bouncing in one place. There are both women and men dancers, though women often dance standing up and men often dance kneeling down (though there are no strict gender roles). Mostly men sing and drum the songs, and the words of the songs tell the stories that the dancers tell with their motions. The songs are repeated several times, each time getting more lively and fast, with the dancers dancing more animated each time. It's totally a thrill-- quite a rush to dance in front of an audience. And I've felt wonderful acceptance from the dance group, and I feel honored and priviledged that they allow me to dance with them.