Chris Petu has been teaching a Siberian Yupik and Native dance class for over a year now in Gambell, a village on Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.
Petu has been a teacher for so long. He’s welcoming and kind to all of us students and he’s so respectful to everybody in the community. He said dance was much more strict in the past. He said in the past, only the composer’s daughter or wife could dance to the song.
“Those were the only ones that danced,” he said.
He said he probably wouldn’t have been a drummer if he had grown up in the old days because his parents weren’t drummers. Petu told us back then, women would practice dance moves, but if a dancer made a wrong move, the older women would throw a shoe at them.
“They had a big pile of shoes,” Petu said. “There were some girls dancing, but once [they made] a little wrong move, they would be thrown. A woman threw [a shoe] at the girl.”
Long ago, the traditions were a lot stronger than today. We would have been so happy to have experienced that. But then we are grateful that we don’t have to be put in that position where we get shoes thrown at us. We would be so scared.
Petu told us a sad experience about missionaries coming here last century and saying what our people couldn’t do, that drumming, dancing, hunting, eating walrus, and speaking our language was evil.
“That was when, at one time the drummers listened to the church, because all since the church first came here, they said it was evil,” he said. “It was instilled deep in their heart that this was evil, that drums and church don't mix.”
Petu told us about five years later, when the younger ministers started working, they realized it wasn’t evil and came and apologized. After they apologized, the people here in Gambell started relearning the songs and dance and made new songs.
As the years went by, the traditions slowly became less strict. For about forty years now, everyone has started dancing to any song. We asked Petu how the younger generation can stay connected to these traditions.
“Young people can stay connected by still showing up for dances, still learning these moves,” he said. “Keep learning. Know [the] little story behind the song.”
We also asked him what parts of the tradition are most important to protect.
“The language,” he said. “How to get the foods and how to prepare them, not just as hunters, but how to pick greens and storing them, getting them ready to make sour and all that stuff, all the way up to mixing them into the dish, the foods.”
Petu said he wants to bring back regular sunday atuqs–a dance and drum performance. We would feel so happy to bring those sunday atuqs back.
High school students Noongwook and Ungott wrote and produced that story, with help from Alaska Public Media health reporter Rachel Cassandra. It’s part of a grant-funded collaborative media project focused on health and wellness in rural Alaska.
