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Dance groups from across the Bering Strait region gathered in Wales last weekend for the Kingikmiut Dance Festival, a three-day event centered on sharing songs and dances that leaders say were absent from some communities for decades.
This year marked the event's 25th anniversary.
Fog limited the festival's opening night. Groups from Gambell, Savoonga, and Brevig Mission couldn't make it in, leaving just the groups from Wales and Unalakleet to perform.
The Kingikmiut Dance Group from Wales took its place in the center of the gym. Drummers sat in a line, skin drums held in front of them as they sang. Dancers moved in front of the drum line, following the songs.
Sixteen-year-old Cain Seetook was among the group's younger drummers and dancers.
“It heals my heart and makes me happy. And I don't know. That's just it,” Seetook said.
Seetook said he has been drumming since he was about one year old and practices with the Kingikmiut group once or twice a week.
His cousin, 15-year-old Frank Komonaseak, moves between the drum line and the dance floor.
“It feels good to be dancing again,” Komonaseak said. “I grew up doing it, and I'm proud of who I am, and I'm proud of my cousins because they're all good dancers too.”
Komonaseak moved back to Wales about a year ago after living in Anchorage for several years. He said he stopped dancing while he was away. After returning to Wales, he began attending practices and relearning the songs.
“It is really sad to not have dancing,” Komonaseak said. “Because I don't think I can go a week without Eskimo dancing. That's how much I love it.”
Robert Tokeinna Jr. is the boys’ uncle and the drum leader of the Kingikmiut Dance Group.
“It was 50 years without drumming and singing, and this community had to overcome that, had to overcome being told not to express who they are,” Tokeinna said to the crowd during an intermission. “And today we get to express it with our kids here, with our aunts and uncles, with our grandparents.”
Tokeinna said it’s been a long road to rebuild dancing in Wales. He said missionaries and forced assimilation policies in the 20th century suppressed dance, song, and language, interrupting the teaching that once happened between generations. In Wales, the group began its revival in the '90s with few songs and limited participation.
He said he dreams of having 20 drummers in the group one day. At this year's festival, roughly 15 lined up to perform.
“My vision is coming true,” Tokeinna told the crowd. “My vision of having 20 drummers sitting next to me is coming true.”
The Wales group rebuilt some of its songs from elders' memories, Tokeinna said. Different elders remembered different pieces, allowing the group to reconstruct songs that otherwise might have been lost.
The group also performed new songs learned through exchanges with other communities, including Diomede, Gambell and Point Hope.
Tokeinna said that exchange is one of the festival’s purposes.
“We should be able to teach each other,” Tokeinna said. “Because if it’s not taught, it’s going to get lost.”
Tokeinna said the Native Village of Wales pays for each visiting dance group’s travel, food and lodging for the festival. He described it as an investment in young people's cultural education.
“I tell them [the kids] that ‘you're going to have a roomful of experts, and you should learn from them,'" Tokeinna said. "'If you're curious about a song, go ask them about that song.’”
Uŋalaqłiq Iñuutchak returns to Kingikmiut festival
After the Kingikmiut group performed, Unalakleet's dance group, Uŋalaqłiq Iñuutchak, meaning Unalakleet Comes To Life in English, took the floor.
Amber Cunningham, whose Iñupiaq name is Kapuukaq, is one of the group's cofounders. The group began in 2022, and this was its second year in a row attending the festival.
“We are surprised to be invited again. It's a real treasure to be invited,” Cunningham said.
Roughly 17 members of Uŋalaqłiq Iñuutchak performed, including several younger members and a small rotating drum line.
Cunningham said dance was dormant in Unalakleet for more than a century. When the current group started, songs had not been passed down locally.
“Most of our songs are borrowed because we didn't have songs,” Cunningham said.
They started by learning songs from other communities like the Reindeer Love Song from Stebbins and the basketball song from Napaskiak.
Later, some songs did return through memory.
“It's possible. Like we thought it was impossible,” Cunningham said. “We had one song that we were practicing for like a month, just over and over and over and over, and then people would start to remember a song from time to time. But even if you don't have songs, it’s still possible.”
Chris Masters, a lead drummer with Uŋalaqłiq Iñuutchak, was part of an earlier effort to reintroduce dance in Unalakleet schools. He was in fifth grade when he and another student were selected as the community’s designated drummers.
After fifth grade, Masters said, students stopped learning dance at school. When the current dance group began decades later, he worried that he had forgotten what he once knew.
“Once [I] started hitting the drums and hearing the songs, all of a sudden it just started kind of flowing out again,” Masters said. “It wasn’t totally lost. I mean, maybe it was forgotten, stored away in there, but it came back to life.”
Masters said the Unalakleet group has grown more confident since attending the Kingikmiut festival for the first time last year.
“It almost feels like the Super Bowl of festivals,” Masters said. “And it's more than just dancing. It's full community engagement. It's everybody coming together for something so special.”
Masters’ 9-year-old son, Noah, started dancing and drumming with the group when it formed.
His favorite part of the festival, he said, was “dancing with everyone.”
And his goal for the future: “Just to be good at it.”
Masters said he hopes to give Noah a chance to develop his own connection to drumming and dancing.
“To just connect with it and show its importance and its beauty and its power,” Masters said. “And to show him that all that is okay, and it's fun, and it's beautiful and powerful. To be just inspiring of him and supportive of him for the future.”
Cunningham said watching the Kingikmiut Dance Group's revitalization inspires her to unite Unalakleet's generations of drummers and dancers.
“It gives us hope. Because we’re only going on four years in,” Cunningham said. “Their kids never have gone without dance. We see all these little tiny kids just barely walking, and they’re dancing, stomping. I’m like, ‘That’s going to be Unalakleet one day.’ So that’s our hope.”
Lucy Kitchen, whose Iñupiaq name is Saġvanna, is an elder from Wales who teaches Iñupiaq at Kingikmiut School.
Dancing became scarce when she was a young child, she said, after the elder who taught it died and no one continued the instruction. Now, she said, watching the group learn songs and practice for the festival has brought something to the community.
“It's brought a lot of love,” Kitchen said. “The kids are excited. They work hard practicing and dancing and learning the songs just for the three days of Kingikmiut Dance Festival. And every year, even though I've heard these songs, I can sing them now, and I'm just so excited.”
Kitchen doesn't dance. But from her spot in the crowd, her eyes stayed locked on each dancer's movements, and her face remained lit with a grin as the hours passed late into the night.
Savoonga’s dance group arrived for the second night of the three night festival, while groups from Gambell and Brevig Mission were unable to make it in due to fog.
