Over the weekend my friend Emily and I traveled to Bethel, AK to attend the Cama-i (cha-my) Dance festival and visit her mom and some of our Americorps*VISTA friends. Bethel is on the tundra in the southwest part of the state in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. About 6,500 people (~65% Alaska Native) live there. Trees are absent from the landscape, and the flat tundra extends for miles and miles. It’s quite beautiful. Cama-i is an amazing Native dance festival that draws in hundreds of people from surrounding villages.Here is one of the youngest dancers that performed at Cama-i. She is from Nunapitchuk, AK ,and her dance fans and headdress are most likely made with caribou fur.
Here are some other dancers from Nunapitchuk, AK. Male dancers use a different type of dance fan and often have different motions as well. The Tsimshian dancers have fabulously crafted costumes. The symbols on the back indicate the clan to which the dancer belongs.During a "Close-Up" with a dance group from St. Lawrence Island (35 miles from Russia) I learned how to do some native dances. The picture below is of me and the dancers practicing the "Basketball Dance". Basketball came to St. Lawrence in the 1970s, and one of the elders who loved the sport composed a fun song with motions that incorporate native culture and the game.