Transcript:
Okay.
I couldn’t think of it.
Yeah.
Okay, okay, that’s the part.
Well, all these years, I wanted to make a song about my dad. Some sort of story to begin with. Growing up, my dad brought me up to a subsistence lifestyle. We were always hunting and fishing together, and always being in the country. And after I started Eskimo Dancing for the Marshall Dance Group. I’d always thought of it from the very beginning of when I started Eskimo Dancing.
"How can I compose a song about my dad?” And since he passed on in 2006, it was really hard to get by. But I’ve always wanted to compose a song about my dad. One day I prayed about it, and asked the Creator to help me with the words, the motions, the whole song.
And it still couldn’t come out. But one day, it came out all at once, and I just started singing like I already knew the song. But the song is about a moose hunting song with my dad and one of my cousins. Moose hunting on the Yukon River.
Anyways, the song is about my dad watching over me. You know, he was the caretaker for my family. But I was the youngest of my sisters, youngest child in the family.
But he raised me up, like I said, in the country, living a subsistence lifestyle.
So the song goes: that we’re going out moose hunting. He’s watching over me, and everything I do. And make sure I’m okay, make sure, you know, I’m fed and properly clothed, and everything.
But the chorus goes with me and my cousin and my dad, were traveling along the Yukon River to go moose hunting. And there is a moose, and it stands up over there. So we go and pursue it. So, we started hunting it.
And at the...They call this the cauyaquciaq at the song, the very ending where there’s only drumming. The cauyaquciaq is where you’re going along with the boat. When you see the moose, you grab your gun, you load the gun, then you shoot the moose
And there goes the moose, falling down. So, that was the song I composed. And I was very grateful the youth really, really liked the song. So, it’s one of their favorites and I’m very proud of it. We performed it this weekend. In fact, there’s a young lady that did her first dance in Marshall during our potlatch.
She chose this song, being that it was local. So, she chose this song, and I was grateful that she had asked me if she can do this song for her first dance, so we did it. It was awesome. I mean, we’re not used of a really big crowd like here in Cama-i. We’re used to, like, you know, a couple hundred people or less. But here, it was awesome.
At first, I was kind of nervous, being ten years ago we were here.But I got nervous. But it was fun. It felt so real.
It was awesome. It was really good. Here’s "My Aata, Tangvaaraanga [My Father, He’s Watching Me].” My father is watching over me. My father, he’s watching over me. Quyanamaa uyangtaanga; "Thank you for watching over me."
Do I see my cousin here, as I go along the Yukon River Tuntuq-wa nangertellria; "There goes the moose that just stood over there."