This year, the internationally-renowned Inuit soul band Pamyua has drummed, danced, and sung across the world, with performances as far from home as New Zealand. On Aug. 1, though, the band brought the music back to its roots.
“It's really meaningful for us to be able to come home,” said Pamyua band member Qacung Stephen Blanchett. He’s from Bethel, and said it brings a special sense of pride to return home to perform. “It's rare, and especially [to] do something that's positive and not a funeral,” he said with a laugh.
Blanchett emphasized that the shared knowledge at home also makes the performance more significant.
“Most of the places that we travel to and perform at are not in Yup’ik communities, right? So they have no idea what we're talking about or singing about. So when we're actually in a place where people actually understand this and connect with us on a deeper level, it's a special feeling, and it's not lost on me, and definitely something I think about when I come home and we take these shows,” Blanchett said. “It's a little funny because we're a little bit relaxed, but also, like, I want it to be perfect.”
Some band members are not from the region. Blanchett said that the performance in Bethel was a chance to connect newer members with the band’s origin.
“A lot of the guys that are playing today, this is their first time coming here,” Blanchett said. “So it's great for me to be able to share my hometown with them, and the deep history and the deep roots that I have here, and this amazing community that helped, you know, raise me and Kilirnguq [Phillip Blanchett].”
The concert, along with a raffle and a community barbecue, were sponsored by telecommunications provider GCI. Ana Hoffman, the president and CEO of Bethel Native Corporation, said that the event celebrated the fiber optic broadband project AIRRAQ.
The AIRRAQ fiber project is a collaboration between GCI and Bethel Native Corporation, funded by over $100 million of tribal broadband connectivity grants administered through the Biden administration.
“We are the beneficiaries of the federal funds coming to the region, helping to support our infrastructure that we need,” Hoffman said. “We're a community that this investment is worth putting into. And that's what this celebration is about.”
The project is named after the Yup’ik storytelling practice of airraq, where a loop of string is used to create complex designs that communicate lessons, tell stories, or share history.
“Who better to bring than Pamyua, who is from Bethel, who helped celebrate their culture, and language, and dance with the integration that we'll see at the gym?” Hoffman asked.
Once completed, the initial stages of the AIRRAQ project will lay hundreds of miles of fiber optic cables across the tundra and under the ocean in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The project promises to bring higher-speed, more reliable internet connectivity to the region at urban Anchorage prices.
“This has been an opportunity for us to expand our relationship with the region, which is so important,” said GCI president and COO Greg Chapados. Chapados said that he thinks the project could transform the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
“It's not just bringing the world to Bethel and the [Yukon-Kuskokwim] region, it's our opportunity to bring our culture, our language, our history, our point of view, you know, all those things to the rest of the world,” Chapados said. “So this is sort of the start of that. I mean, I would dearly love that if we had the fiber in place right now, we could live-cast this [concert] on the internet.”
Although that internet capability hasn’t reached Bethel yet, Pamyua brought connection to their performance at Bethel Regional High School. As the band performed, audience members joined in to yuraq, or Yup’ik dance, with the adapted versions of familiar songs.
