Dancing at a funeral

It's certainly not the way we do things, but it was a good reminder that we're not where we normally are, anyway. I mean, we are the only white people around.

A gentleman born in Stevens passed away in Fairbanks a week or so ago and wanted to be buried here. He was an Episcopal priest and had a large family in Fairbanks and they all came in for the funeral and the subsequent potlatch. We didn't go to the burial itself, never having met the gentleman, but we did brave the cold Alaskan winter for our first community gathering outside of the school that night, our first Koyukon Athabascan potlatch.

The community we were in before, Venetie, was Gwich'in Athabascan, like the overwhelming majority of our school district. Koyukon Athabascans speak a different language and have different customs, and definitely have different potlatches.

There were chairs lined up all around the walls of the community hall (a good Alaskan log structure with a "stove" to heat it, of course), and we found a spot for the whole family and settled in to wait. There was quite a bit of waiting, as the fish was still being cooked, but we entertained ourselves by talking with members of the immediate family (none of whom lived in Stevens) and seeing all the people slip when they first came into the doorway.

Before the fish arrived, an elder grabbed a traditional drum off the wall and EVERYONE jumped out of their chairs and got in a circle and started dancing and chanting in their language. A different gentleman had already warned me that I would be waved in to join if they saw me sitting on the sidelines...which of course I was, because I don't dance....but he waved me to join and off I went. I tried to get away with standing in the back, but they brought me towards the center. Women make an outer circle around the men in this culture. The dancing was a bit more complicated than tapping your front foot hard in rhythm to the drum, but I saw a few of the others getting away with just that, and no one was moving around in a circle or anything, so I went with that. I looked around self-consciously at a few people, but thankfully realized that no one was watching me, or watching anyone else for that matter. They were all having a blast, but it was a very serious fun; this was one of their customs. The drum beating and chanting caused an emotion not unlike being in the middle of people jumping up and down and yelling at a loud rock concert, but was more fun in a way because we were the ones making the music. Honestly though, it's quite hard to describe the whole experience. I survived (and enjoyed, although I don't need to do it again) the 3 or 4 songs they went through and made it back to the safety of my chair.

Gwich'in, based on our experience, don't dance with a drum. They "jig" with a fiddle. When the fish finally arrived, we found another cultural custom that is different with the Koyukon people. In Venetie, someone said "grace" and we all lined up, and it was a pretty long line in Venetie, so there was a bit of thinly-veiled rushing to get to your place in line. Here, they set out a wide strip of white paper at our feet all the way around the community hall. Someone got up and made a speech about the "soup", which had moose meat in it (brought from elsewhere; no one in Stevens got a moose this year), and was meant in a very symbolic way to be shared by the whole community out of the same huge kettle. Then, all the boys and young men got out of their places, grabbed a dish, and started serving each person, all the way around the community hall. Eventually our kids were offered the opportunity to help as well. All the dishes were divvied out to everyone, which meant you got a TON of food on your plate, way more than even a very hungry person with a large appetite could handle for a meal. I was about to protest and beg the next server to skip us when someone started passing around large resealable freezer bags to package all the leftovers in. I had 3 freezer bags full of moose meat alone, not to mention the king salmon and the rest of the food. As a side note, I hate fish. Unless I'm in Alaska. I love king salmon (and crab cakes). But don't ever try to get me to eat at Red Lobster.

So, we ate. Then the speeches began...which were, not to be rude, much too long and numerous for our poor 2 year old, especially because the community expected (and got) pretty much silence when someone else had the floor. A lot was said about the deceased and his life, some was said about God, some was said about education of the young, some was said, in undertones, about fixing the divides in the community, and some was said about holding on to the traditions. Finally the speeches ended and the FIRST part of the potlatch was over. We were done for the night; the rest of the community was going to come back in about an hour or so and REALLY start dancing. They danced until about 2 a.m. from all accounts I heard. And that, I guess, is how the Koyukon do funerals.