In the center of the Kotlik School gym, a single girl dances. She wears a handmade blue qaspeq and beaded headpiece, flicking furred hand fans in time with the drum beat behind her.
The room is packed with her relatives. Many of them have done this dance before, so their hands move in time with hers in small gestures that seem almost involuntary.
Her great-grandparents, Angela Yaayuk and Isidore Caara Hunt, are part of the crowd that surrounds her. The Hunts, who are in their 80s, organized this event. Each year they coordinate with the villages of Stebbins, Emmonak, St. Mary's, and Mountain Village, who all have residents pressed into the Kotlik gym.
Many in the crowd traveled for hours by snowmachine to gather here at this three-day celebration. The heart of it, what’s taking place right now on this first night of the potlatch, called yurarpak in Yup’ik, is the presentation of Kotlik’s first dancers.
It’s a coming of age moment. At the family’s discretion, the child begins to practice yuraq. During that year’s yurarpak, they’ll dance alone as their presentation to the community, afterwards being joined by their relatives and those of their Yup'ik namesake.
Julia Hootch is among the crowd. She grew up in Emmonak and traveled from Wasilla to attend the yurarpak.
“You take out all your anger, all the ugly stuff inside you,” said Hootch. “You take it out, and you dance your head off. That's how you take your sins away. That's what they always say, long time ago.”
The yurarpak celebrations are hosted this time of year in each of these lower Yukon River communities, bringing together relatives in a weekend of dancing and subsistence food gifting.
A room full of family
Branches of the Hunt family pass out gifts of sweet treats and handmade items to relatives of the girl’s Yup’ik namesake. Traditionally, that Yup’ik name honors an Elder who has passed away around the time of the child’s birth.
Angela said that so much of the yurarpak is about feeling family in the room with you. Even those who have passed on.
“The spirits of the old people, people passed, when they get together, those spirits of those people that pass, they come to be spirits and be there the whole time for potlatch,” Angela said. “And when they're done, on that third night, Sunday, they dance again in order to let those spirits go back where they come from.”
The weekend’s festivities also honor the living. On the second day of the yurarpak, all the visiting villages gather in Kotlik’s community hall. Hunks of moose meat, frozen fish, and jars of seal oil are piled onto tarps in the middle of the room. After a blessing, the meat is divided into bags and passed out to Elders of the visiting communities.
A modern celebration
Subsistence food gifting is a staple of the festivities, but as Isidore recalled, the yurarpak he and Angela help organize is a modern iteration of an event lost to time.
“They used to have no potlatch those days, only what they call it is Kivriq,” said Isidore, translated through Angela.
Those celebrations chose kings and queens to shower with gifts from each other’s villages. Dancers used to tease each other during performances, playfully mocking each other with movements, over-the-top expressions, and props. And that teasing sort of defined the celebration.
“I think as the new generations came, this form of teasing, with a lot of the traumatic events that happened, became too personal,” explained Janet Johnson, the Hunts' daughter. “They weren't able to, you know, handle that level of teasing and challenging, so the gathering or celebration was changed to the potlatch.”
Now, to be clear, that teasing is still happening, it’s just less of a focus. This new type of gathering, yurarpak, became a lighter way of being together, even a way of healing in community.
Anna Moore flew in to Kotlik from Nome, but grew up in the area. She said that she’d spent many years away from the celebrations following family grief, but returned when she heard a dancer named for her grandmother would be presented.
“For me, I'm experiencing a spiritual awakening,” Moore described. “I mean, it's unexplainable. It's more beautiful than beautiful. I'm still processing, and it's part of identity. That traditional identity of who we are. For me to be fully participating is preparing me for my granddaughter to dance next year.”
Leaving a legacy
Each January, Angela and Isidore begin coordinating between the village communities and organizing Kotlik’s community yuraq rehearsals. For as long as anyone can remember, the Hunts have kept this gathering alive. But if you ask them, Angela and Isidore don’t see it as any special feat. Johnson, the Hunts’ daughter, said they’ve always been this way.
“It's not them to talk about, you know, themselves and the work that they do, or all the things that they've done in their lifetime,” Johnson said. “And it's never been encouraged to do so. And the work speaks for itself.”
For the Hunts it's all about connectedness, and the beating heart of that is family.
Angela translates for Isidore again.
“He says he was happy for our great-grandkids first dance while we're living and to see,” said Angela. “He was so happy.”
During that first night of the yurarpak, Isidore leads the drummers behind his great-granddaughter as she continues her first dance. And then comes a call in the song. All at once, that lone dancer is surrounded as four generations of the Hunt family, in matching blue qaspeqs, rush to the floor to join her.
