The back-to-back songs, stories, and dance reached a fever pitch on the second and longest day of the annual Cama-i Dance Festival in Bethel on March 16. Fortunately, more than 700 people got the extra energy they needed to power through the celebration this year thanks to the ever-popular Native Foods Dinner.
When the Bethel Regional High School cafeteria opened its doors for the feast on the evening of March 16, it unleashed the collective aroma of traditional dishes spanning the vast reaches of Alaska.
Before long, around 200 Elders first in line for the feast came away with plates loaded with a smorgasbord of wild foods: moose stews and meatballs, ptarmigan rice, frozen whitefish, muktuk with seal oil, generous helpings of whipped fat laced with berries and fish known as akutaq, and of course plenty of salmon, prepared at least half a dozen different ways.
Bethel Elder Ardyce Turner listed off some of her favorite dishes assembled on her plate.
“Fish chowder, muktuk, and neqerrluk, dryfish,” Turner said. “And now I’m gonna have akutaq with whitefish, the best.”
In the weeks and days preceding the feast, donations flooded in from the local community. Even more came with the arrival of performers from across the state.
The lone dance group from Northwest Alaska, Ilaku’s Iñupiaq Dancers, flew in with enough muktuk to give everyone a taste of the Arctic staple of whale blubber served with the outer layer of skin attached.
Some attendees dipped the muktuk in seal oil, others in soy sauce.
Bethel Elder Peter Atchak said that he skipped lunch in anticipation of the feast.
“I was hungry and I was ready to eat when it was eat time,” Atchak said.
Atchak, who grew up in the coastal village of Chevak and is no stranger to seal oil, was grateful for the muktuk, but said that his appetite was piqued by the small portion he was doled out.
“I wanted a big pile of it, but they only gave me three. But I enjoyed ‘em too,” Atchak said.
Fortunately, there was more than enough salmon to go around.
“I always enjoy salmon, even though I get a lot of that. But there’s nothing else like salmon,” Atchak said.
One of the reasons there was so much salmon was that the Kodiak Aluutiq Dancers flew in their own contribution to the feast.
Group member Stevi Frets, who works for the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak, managed to check a large tote alongside the Aluttiq Dancers’ extensive regalia.
“We brought one big ol’ fish box. It was 49.5 pounds, almost too big to fly with,” Frets said, laughing.
Alutiiq dancer Dehrich Chya enjoyed the variety of akutaq that had been donated for the feast, which he said reminded him of home.
“A lot of people do make akutaq the same way with Crisco, and sugar, and berries,” Chya said. “But then some people will call this other version of akutaq ‘piginaq,’ and it's, like, mashed potatoes, and fermented fish eggs, and berries, and seal oil all mixed up.”
One of the feast organizers, Bethel resident Brian Jackson, said the following day that the incredible outpouring of donations and volunteer time made the 2024 Native Foods Dinner a resounding success.
“We learned to recruit a little bit sooner and maybe press people into volunteering a little bit more aggressively,” Jackson said. “Last year we served 656 people and our goal this year was to beat that. And our final count was 707 people total.”
Whether Elder, performer or attendee, tribal member or curious outsider, in 2024, the sharing of culture through food continues to be a staple of the Cama-i Dance Festival in Bethel.
