Sam:
Back around 1937, Cup’ig dancing stopped. Even though Cup’ig dance stopped, the spirit lives on, because men continued to make ivory and wooden masks for sale. And our mothers, they continued to make reindeer beard dance fans, IRA Council continued to sell reindeer beard for making dance fans. My father was a Native missionary and he continued to make beautiful wooden masks. And sometimes he sings Native songs while he’s working on masks. He continued to sing. My father’s name is Peter Smith and one of his masks is hanging at International Airport in Anchorage.

When I see other villages having dances or when I attend Camai-I festival in Bethel, sometimes I wish, you know our people could dance too like that. I also attended RHS class in Bethel and graduate and in those classes they told us, you know like, I understand that we’ve been ashamed of our Eskimo dancing for a long time.

You know we need strategy on how to start Eskimo dancing again if we want to. I could see our elders and church, they’re not willing to start it. So I made a school presentation at high school, ah, 1998 on culture dance, returning culture-dance to students. And students they sign up, they signed up their names; who like to see revival of Native dancing and in December of 1998 IRA Council made survey on people who want to revive the culture dancing.

I want to go back to 1997, I put up poster where it says, “people who like to see revival of Cup’ig dancing please sign your name here.” 1997. And November 5, 2001, Nuniwarmiut Piciryarata Tamaryalkuti, one member he want to see revival of culture dance. And on November 7, 2001 I requested a letter to Howard Amos, school board, to start Eskimo dancing. And from there IRA took over and I lost control. (Laughs) Its on its own power now, you know.

And like even we start our Eskimo dancing, I don’t want to stop here. Next I like to go into like our Native values. ‘Cause through play we can learn. And I don’t want, you know, nothing to happen fast, because when things happen fast, people are in shock. That’s your university stuff. (laughs)

Robert:
How long has it been, when was the last dance?

Sam:
Like 65 years ago! And uh, you notice that there’s no elders dancing. Have you noticed? In other villages elders are dancing and young people are not dancing, but here you notice young people are dancing, because they want it. They want it and our elders have been, you know, spiritually abused. It will take, it’ll take time.

Robert:
I noticed that some elders, were coming and sitting and watching practices.

Sam:
You know, I been told, if we try to do something Native way, if we do not know how, when elders see us trying they will come and help us. So it’s happening here. I’m a elder too. I’m sixty… how old, sixty-seven. Today’s my birthday.

You know it seems like things are prepared for us to start this revival. When I think about how to decorate the gymnasium, we have kayaks already, you know, for decoration. And I see these kayaks, those are objects you know, they are Native objects, but I was thinking if we put spirit in those objects it will be complete, because there’s object with spirit.

Ted:
What was the response from young people, was there a big response when you asked people if they want to dance, when you finally decided to get the dance group organized?

Sam:
Yeah, there was some response. Some show up, some drop out. But our women, you know, there’s lots of ‘em right now. And I told them, first time will not be, you know, good as it should be, but we are starting. Like costumes, we’re not complete, ‘cause we’re not trying to be perfect (laughs).
So, like this kind of activity, like we been ashamed of our language, our Eskimo dancing, living in shame, it’s not good. But if we start to be part of ourselves, you know, our language and our dancing, we don’t have to do drugs to feel better about ourselves.

Robert:
How do you feel about the visiting dancers from the other villages that you’ve invited? How did that work? Inviting them over, how did you choose what villages or who to, what groups to ask?

Sam:
I don’t know how the planning committee worked on that. But we end up inviting close people here.
Howard Amos, Nuniwarmiut Piciryarata Program, he recorded our elder, Kay Hendrickson, video and audio recording, that’s the songs we are singing. I used to think, I used to say, if someday Nunivak Island start their Eskimo dance they will copy other village dances or songs, but it end up we have some recordings.

Robert:
Do you want to say the names of the songs that you’re gonna do from Kay and talk a little bit about the meaning of the songs?

Sam:
Our group is gonna sing two songs tonight and throughout three days, we’ll sing two songs. And one is, name of song is “Tama’a,” it’s about messenger that came from, sound like it came from tip of Alaska Peninsula. The messenger thinks he’s coming from tip of Alaska Peninsula. And another part of song it says he thinks he’s coming from mouth of Kuskokwim Bay. And when the messenger came to Nunivak Island he asked young people for driftwood for firebath. He must be tired after long trip (laughs).

And the other song he talk about the water around Cape Romanzof area, and our people used to travel by skin boats, put on sail, mast, like that. There’s some song I like to make, make it so English speaking can understand it, because it’s about traveling.

Robert:
Is the language of the songs hard to, hard to figure out or translate sometimes?

Sam:
Yeah. You know it seems like it’s backwards, last words are first words, kind of hard to understand.

Robert:
Muriel (Amos) made a comment to me that she was thinking that those songs were an older dialect or had parts of older Nunivak dialect that doesn’t quite exist anymore, do you think that’s the case.

Sam:
Yeah, I heard one elder woman talking like that, our Cup’ig language is changing you know, there’s older Cup’ig dialect around here.

I grew up (in Mekoryuk) until I was 17, then I went to high school at Mount Edgecumbe. There was two villages then. Back in 1953 there were people at Nash Harbor and here at Mekoryuk. That’s when I left the island. I came back in 1974 from California. I left 1953 and until 1974. I came home only one month or two months, so when I came back in 1974 my father didn’t even recognize me.

When I went inside the house he didn’t recognize me. Finally he asked me, “Who are you?” (laughs). So he welcomed me, he welcomed me and it’s just like returning, returning prodigal son. He didn’t scold me, (he) welcomed me, hugging me, you know. So, if he didn’t show any love to me I probably would go back to California and continue to drink and. So I finally got this job in alcohol program, five dollars an hour and other people were making good money, you know in construction work, but I stay with it, to try to help my people.

Sam:
Can I read this letter I wrote to Howard Amos?

Robert:
Sure.

Sam:
This was dated November 7, 2001. This letter is addressed to Howard Amos, Chairman of Nuniwarmiut School Board.
“Dear Chairman Amos,
Sixty-five years ago in the year of 1936 our first missionary, Jacob Kenick stopped all Eskimos dancing at Mekoryuk and Nash Harbor, Alaska, along with other Native ceremonies. Ever since then our fathers have been fearful to Eskimo dance. Today we still carve beautiful wooden and ivory masks and our mothers still make dance fans to support our families. We have been living in shame about our Eskimo dance for a long time now.

“Other churches have already apologized for taking away their Native dancing and taking away their culture from their people, hurting their way of life. In a sense an Eskimo dancing is celebrating his successful to provide food for his family or to socialize with their favorite cousins, (? word) traveling and other storytelling, and making people laugh.”

“I am enclosing information from Dennis Griffin on how the first missionaries took dancing away. This information came from Smithsonian Institute.”

Some of this is repeat, surveys, surveys.

“There aren’t many activities in the communities for our young people to do. Many of our young people have in the past requested and showed interest in reviving of our Cup’ig Eskimo dancing. This letter serves as a request for Nuniwarmiut School Board to support revival of Eskimo dance on Nunivak Island so the students can identify themselves as Cup’ig Natives, to be proud to be Cup’ig dancers and walk in Cup’ig beauty. You will make a big history if your board agrees to support.

Thank you, Samuel Smith.”

I don’t want to, you know, to feel responsible for starting this Eskimo dancing. You know we have surveys, surveys, doing people’s will.

Once again we went around the elders and church. Because they still have block. So we go through young people. That’s why you see young people dance.

Ted:
Has there been any gesture by the church to soften their stand regarding Eskimo dancing?

Sam:
Ahhhh, when was it, maybe five years ago I called, I looked for old missionary that used to be here at Mekoryuk and I trace him at, I trace him up to Unalakleet and I talk about reviving the Eskimo dance you know, he said, “no.” Then sometimes I feel like writing letter to home base of Covenent Church in Chicago. Sometimes, (writing) my thoughts you know.

Robert:
Well it’s, for me as an outside person it’s very exciting to be here. There’s, you can feel the energy here in the village and watching the practices in the gym, people are clearly really excited about it. So, you must be maybe getting a feeling that this is really a beginning and that it’s gonna, these younger people are gonna continue what’s beginning now.

Sam:
Yeah, I have feeling you know, they will continue to practice more dance, dance forms. And once again I don’t want to stop but maybe later on go into Native values. Because, you know, we are living in contemporary world and traditional world. We are living between. Like dancing, we will dance in traditional way and in contemporary world in dancing we’ll still dance too (laughs). So we live between two worlds.

And in the spiritual world our people say, there is a "man of universe." Man of the Universe. And Bible say, you know, we have God. So, it’s same person we are dealing with. We’re same, same. You know, I think we’ll get more support from our elders later on.
[end of interview]

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