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<h2 class="story_headline"
style="margin: 0px 5px 5px; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><small><small>(Source:
Anchorage Daily News:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/8526243p-8420001c.html">http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/8526243p-8420001c.html</a></small></small>)</h2>
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<h2 class="story_headline"
style="margin: 0px 5px 5px; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Tribal
leaders in training learn dances, languages
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<p class="story_subHead"
style="margin: 5px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
NATIVE: Despite modern pressures, youths connect to ancestral
knowledge.
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<p class="byline">
By RACHEL D'ORO<br>
The Associated Press
</p>
<p class="dateline">
<!--start /published/index.comp -->Published: December 29, 2006
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Last Modified: December 29, 2006 at 03:02 AM
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<p class="story_readable">Debra Dommek sees herself as a tribal elder
in training.
</p>
<p class="story_readable">Never mind that her cheeks glow with the dewy
rose of youth. The old soul in the Anchorage teen shines through when
she talks about the traditions of indigenous Alaskans, including her
people, Inupiat Eskimos. At 18, she believes it's her responsibility to
preserve their songs and dances, art and stories.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"This is who I am, who my children will be,"
Dommek said. "Sometimes I feel pressure taking on such a position, but
somebody's got to do it."</p>
<p class="story_readable">Across the state other Alaska Natives are
heeding the same call.</p>
<p class="story_readable">For some it's a counterblow to the grip of
technology that has made life so much easier but led to cultural
erosion in even the most isolated communities. Elders say this is
especially true among young people swayed by the faraway media glitz so
absent in Alaska's utilitarian villages. That disconnect is blamed in
part for chronic problems in Native society -- alcoholism, suicide,
domestic violence, high dropout rates.</p>
<p class="story_readable">But Alaska Natives, who represent 11 distinct
cultures and 20 languages, are fighting back with culture camps and
rural student exchanges. Villages have resurrected dances and festivals
banned a century ago by missionaries. Schools have launched Native
language immersion programs. And yes, sometimes preservation efforts
involve technology.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Even science is recognizing the value of
ancestral knowledge passed on to later generations of Natives, said
Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Alaska Native Science
Commission. The nonprofit organization brings conventional scientists
together with Native partners in studies requiring historical and
environmental perspectives on multiple topics, including climate
change, pollution and subsistence foods.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"There's a reason we've been able to survive
in the harshest of conditions, in the strangest of times," Cochran
said. "It's because of our resilience and our adaptability -- and
that's the strength that our communities have to go back to."</p>
<h3>STRENGTH THROUGH ARTS</h3>
<p class="story_readable">For Dommek, returning to her roots meant
learning ancient arts, particularly dance, in an after-school program
run by the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. Dommek is part
Dutch and German but felt a need to connect with her Inupiat side.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"We have so many strengths," she said.
"Thinking of all the things we are, I get really excited, especially
about dancing."</p>
<p class="story_readable">On a recent afternoon, Dommek and other
dancers entertained center visitors, the young women waving fans made
of caribou fur while the men chanted and beat on wide, flat drums. In a
modern twist, the drums were covered with a synthetic skin of fabric
instead of the usual walrus stomach lining.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Through the heritage center, Dommek also
narrated a short film called "Asveq, the Whale Hunt," documenting the
creation of a dance by Yup'ik and Inupiat high school students.</p>
<p class="story_readable">The dance merges Yup'ik Eskimo lyrics with
Inupiat dance styles. Scenes of teens embracing their traditions
against an urban backdrop are woven throughout the eight-minute clip,
which has been shown at numerous film festivals.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"The big city can be daunting," said longtime
program manager Steven Alvarez, who is of Apache and Athabascan decent.
"Some of the kids are from villages, and this is a refuge for them. It
fills them with pride of culture, self esteem, a sense of place -- and
that can help academic performance."</p>
<h3>PRIDE WITH PRESERVATION</h3>
<p class="story_readable">Some 550 miles to the west, the Nunivak
Island village of Mekoryuk reclaimed its own ancient dances and songs
that disappeared in 1936 after being outlawed in the Cup'ig Eskimo
community by missionaries. The Mekoryuk dancers initially followed
recordings made by tribal council member Howard Amos of an elder who
remembered the traditional festivals once celebrated there. The elder
has since died.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"It has given the community a lot of pride
that they are Cup'ig people," said Amos, who runs a nonprofit
heritage-preservation center. "I feel a lot more like an Eskimo than I
ever did."</p>
<p class="story_readable">Along with dances, there's been a cultural
renaissance in the community of 200.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Early elementary grade students attend Cup'ig
immersion classes as part of a village effort to preserve the dwindling
Native language. Once a month the village school has culture week,
offering lessons in dancing, Native arts and crafts, mask making, ivory
and wood carving, beading and drum making. Junior high and high school
students take winter survival camping trips with seasoned hunters like
Amos, shooting and butchering reindeer and musk oxen for their meals.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"They love it," Amos said. "It's a first for
some of them."</p>
<p class="story_readable">Other students around the state also are
experiencing Native life through a federally funded program that links
village schools and students with their big-city counterparts. In its
seventh year, the Rose Urban Rural Exchange pairs village and city
classrooms to share a cultural curriculum. The program culminates with
selected students and teachers visiting each others' communities for a
week.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Participating students, who stay with host
families, can be any ethnicity, although village students are virtually
always Native. Sometimes urban students come from a cultural mix, such
as 17-year-old Michelle Kanosh, who is Filipino, German and Irish and
Southeast Alaska Tlingit.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Kanosh was among a contingent from Wasilla
that paid a visit last spring to Savoonga, a Siberian Yupik village of
700 on St. Lawrence Island. Kanosh learned Native dances and beading,
sampled chunks of bowhead whale and ate Eskimo ice cream, a dessert
often made with shortening, berries and sugar. She was given the Yupik
name of Piitsiighaav, which means daisy.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Even though she experienced a Native culture
different from Tlingit, Kanosh said she felt a deep connection with
Savoonga residents and even went back to visit in July. Before the
trip, she had worried about being rejected.</p>
<p class="story_readable">"Now I see a lot of them as family and great
friends," she said.</p>
<hr>
<p class="story_readable"><strong>Rural Alaska is crumbling.</strong></p>
<p class="story_readable">Winds and water continually wear away at
scores of Native communities. Every year whole chunks of land simply
float away.</p>
<p class="story_readable">And this vast place is eroding in other ways
too.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Dwindling funds have nudged some small
governments to the brink of extinction. They couldn't afford to pay
their workers or keep up with the skyrocketing cost of fuel.</p>
<p class="story_readable">Native languages are fading. Youngsters in
even the most remote villages weigh their lives against the hype and
glamour blasting from their TVs and computers.</p>
<p class="story_readable">But Alaska's most remote residents -- many of
them indigenous peoples -- are looking for new solutions. And they are
clinging to past traditions for their survival and a measure of
independence from Western civilization.</p>
<p class="story_readable">The Associated Press, in a five-part series,
examined the impact of erosion in its various forms as well as the
strengths of Alaska Natives who have endured some of the harshest
conditions on Earth for thousands of years.
</p>
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