After three packed days, the 2025 Cama’i Dance Festival is a wrap. On Sunday, March 30, the final beats of the festival rang out through the Bethel Regional High School gymnasium from the cauyat frame drums of the final performers — the Bethel-based dance group Qasgirmiut.
The Gladys Jung Cranes and Bethel Regional High School (BRHS) Warriors Dancers also represented Bethel on Sunday, joined by groups from across the region and from far afield to push through their third and final performances of the festival. With most of the Scammon Bay Dancers held back by foul weather, the group found fill-ins and made the most of their Cama’i appearance. Attendees who stuck around for the third day of the festival were rewarded with a large dose of cuteness in the form of the qaspeq parade, where festival dancers and attendees showed off a rainbow of qaspeqs, including some made at a class during the festival.
The theme of this year’s festival was Ciuliamta Cauyait, or “Drums of Our Ancestors,” and festival organizers chose to shine a light on the lower Yukon Delta. Kotlik Elders Caara Isidore Hunt and Yaayuk Angela Hunt received this year’s Living Treasures Awards, while the Cama’i dedication went to the late Cakicenaq Stanley Waska of Emmonak. Unfortunately, the Emmonak dancers, led by Waska’s son Raymond, came down with the flu and had to cancel. But the award-winning 1988 ethnographic film “Uksuum Cauyai: The Drums of Winter,” which features Waska and screened at the festival, showed festivalgoers what is so special about the community when it comes to preserving tradition.
