Teller celebrates 19th Cultural Festival

By Ariana Crockett O’Harra and Diana Haecker |

Dance groups from across the region flocked to Teller for the 19th annual Teller Cultural Festival, held last weekend, but none had to brave a more adventurous trip than the young dancers from White Mountain who encountered all sorts of adversity on their long trip via boat and van to Teller. 
Their eventful journey began at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, September 26, with what should have been plenty of time to reach Teller for the 7 p.m. start of the festival. First, the eight chaperones and 13 school age dancers piled into four boats for what is normally a 30-minute ride up the Niukluk River to Council, but after one boat ran out of gas and another became stuck, the trip stretched into an hour. 
Upon their arrival in Council the plan was to switch modes of transportation. The group had rented a van and an SUV to make the trip from Council to Nome, and then Nome to Teller, but the van had a flat tire. When they went to pump up the tire, to their chagrin, they discovered that the tire pump was broken. They ended up waiting three hours before the problem was resolved. 
Finally, the group followed the Nome-Council Highway 75 miles to Nome, and then the Bob Blodgett Highway for another 70 bumpy miles to Teller. The tired bunch finally arrived in Teller at 9 p.m. but luckily didn’t miss their midnight dance slot. 
Dance group leaders Melody Bergamaschi, Yvette Barr-Apok and Felicia Ione originally started coming to the festival as kids with Dorothy Barr. Until their young adult years they were under the leadership of Barr but this year, the three of them stepped up to bring the younger generation to the cultural fest. 
“This year, finally, we just took the role, and it took three of us to fill her shoes,” said Bergamaschi. “And then even we still were going to Dorothy like, ‘What do we do?’”
Felicia Ione is the bi-cultural teacher at White Mountain and she keeps the kids dancing on a regular basis. The older generation in White Mountain doesn’t practice drumming and dancing and, like in so many communities, the tradition of drumming, dancing and songs was lost. 
“We lost our songs a long time ago, and nobody was ever able to remember anything,” said Bergamaschi. “I know a lot of dance groups say White Mountain had some really nice songs, but nobody in White Mountain remembers them. Nobody was taught them.”
“I don’t think our grandparents then knew any of our songs, too. So it’s been years and years and years that we’ve had them lost,” said Bergamaschi.
Bergamaschi said that White Mountain dancing resurgence was started by June Lincoln. 
With the loss of their own songs, the resurging dance group had to rely on being “gifted” songs. “I believe it was St. Michael that gave her a song. And then we got songs gifted from Savoonga, Gambell. And then King Island,” said Bergamaschi. 
Bergamaschi said that it’s conflicting to be performing someone else’s songs. 
“We wish that our dance group kept growing and growing and as it did, and we had our own original songs, because there’s some sort of guilt in us that we’re like, ‘Man, we’re performing everyone else’s song,’” said Bergamaschi. She added that there is  also a part that makes them proud that they are still dancing. 
Ione added that they’re grateful for the songs that were gifted to them. 
“We’re so thankful for ones that are gifted to us,” she said. 
Bergamaschi expressed the hope to come up with their own songs. “I’ve been wanting to compose some songs,” she said. “I just don’t know how to go about composing them. I know what I want the songs to be about. I have stories upon stories that I would want them to be about, but I just don’t know how or where to start with composing our own song. If we can get advice from somebody, I’d be willing to take it. I have asked Auntie Sugar [June Lincoln] ‘I want to compose a song.’ And she says, ‘Go ahead, you can figure it out.’”
Cora Ablowaluk has organized the Teller Cultural Festival for the last 21 years, but the event took a two-year break during the COVID pandemic. She said that it’s good to see the lengths people go to get to the festival. “They want to come. That’s why they’re all here. They want to come,” she said.
Ablowaluk echoed the theme of communities sharing dances after some villages lost theirs.
“Teller doesn’t really have its own dancing. It’s all from Diomede,” she said. “So a lot of sharing of the songs and dances, mainly, is what I think brings everybody together.”
Asked what the festival means to her and why she keeps organizing it, her face lit up and she said, it’s the gathering of friends and the healing power of the drumming and dancing. “A lot of people say that the songs and the dances and the sharing is healing to people, and I believe it,” she said. 
Dolly Kugzruk of Teller said that Ruth and Moses Milligrock, originally from Little Diomede, brought dancing back to Teller. “I think they were kind of like aching or itching to dance,” she said. “They decided to have practices here, and all the kids got involved.”
When people moved from Diomede, they brought their dances with them and taught them to students at the school in Teller.
In addition to the Milligrocks, others pitched in. “There was James Okpealuk, James Omiak, Roger Menadelook Jr., Lillian Weyanna, Sig Wien Omiak, of course, and his wife Maria Omiak, and Virginia Menadelook, they taught us,” Ablowaluk said, “I was in high school at the time. They taught us how, because they missed dancing so much.” 
The 19th Teller Cultural Festival was dedicated to Sig Wien Omiak, who had been the dance leader since Moses and Ruth Milligrock moved away from Teller. 
Organizing the festival is an immense effort. Ablowaluk said that in the past, the festival would cover some travel costs for groups, but they haven’t done that since the pandemic. And travel is not cheap. They came by boat and car, over the choppy seas of Port Clarence from Brevig and the bumpy road from Nome. Also, John Waghiyi and his wife Arlene made the trip from Savoonga, bringing a piece of a harvested bowhead whale with them to share with the people at the cultural festival. Over breakfast on Saturday, just as people peeled out of their sleeping bags and had breakfast of strong coffee, pan cakes and sausages, the Waghiyi’s broke out the whale meat and gave an impromptu cultural lesson on properly cutting it and appreciating the gift of the whale. This whale, Waghiyi said, is nourishing nearly 5,000 people all across the region. 
Although all visitors are pitching in and sharing their foods, the festival costs about $10,000 to put on. It takes funds to pay for the gathering – putting on the potluck, buying food for visitors, paying someone to cook that food, hiring someone to clean the building after the dancers leave. And despite no travel assistance, dance groups find their way to Teller for the festival. “The last maybe three, four years, everybody’s been coming on their own. We haven’t paid anybody’s fare,” Ablowaluk said. “I’m amazed that they all get here on their own, without any funding assistance, and let alone rental assistance. And, you know, they want to come.” 
“On the past years, we would have donated reindeer meat from the local reindeer herders, and then we’d have men go and get the reindeer but now it’s getting harder to do that,” Dolly Kugzruk said.
 Ablowaluk said that the festival is funded through a variety of grants and donations.
Dolly Kugzruk said that organizing the festival is hard work. “‘I’m hoping that other people besides Cora will step up to take on this,” she said. “It’s a hard-working tradition to keep alive.” 
A traditional token of Teller hospitality, a collectible art that is given out at every Teller dance fest, are leather buttons beaded with colorful beads. Ablowaluk and other ladies in Teller are busy all year to create hundreds of these pieces of art for festival goers to take home as a souvenir.
Next year will be the 20th Cultural Festival. Asked if funding weren’t an issue, what her dream lineup of dance groups would be, Ablowaluk said she’d love to see Central Yupik dancers participate, as well as Unalakleet, Golovin and Siberian Yupik groups. “We only had Stebbins one year and I would really like to see somebody from that area again,” she said. 
Other communities are also experiencing a resurgence of dance. Talivaaq Wellert, of the Sitaisaq group from Brevig Mission, said that it can be hard to restart a dance group after the tradition has been lost.
“I come from Brevig where we weren’t brought up dancing for a long time,” she said. “It was shunned in our community, and we weren’t allowed to dance.”
The Sitaisaq group is named after the Inupiaq name for Brevig Mission. Wellert said that growing up, she didn’t know Inupiaq name for Brevig.
“It’s been really beautiful to see the name come alive,” she said. “I see it in school, and it’s starting to slowly wake up.”
Wellert said that performing at the Teller Cultural Festival was an emotional experience.
“What I noticed about growing up in Brevig is we carry so much shame, and that shame brings us a lot of pain” she said. “And even tonight was an emotional night for me and my dancers; it was hard to stay composed.”
Another tradition Sitaisaq is bringing back is gift giving. They opened their performance Friday night by passing out gifts to the children, to Elders, and to various dance groups. After passing out gifts to a group, Sitaisaq would ask them to join them in a dance.
Wellert said she was nervous to bring back the tradition but was inspired to do so after someone at the cultural festival a few years back said that gift giving should come back to the Teller Cultural Festival. Still, she was nervous about getting it right.
“In our dance community there’s certain practices and protocols that we have to do” she said. 
Dolly Kugzruk was impressed by the Sitaisaq dancers.
“I am so amazed about them, because they made up a lot of their own dances,” said Kugzruk. “And with them dancing last night and giving stuff away, really inspired me, because that’s how it should be.”
Wellert said that the dancing is in part, about reviving their language and dance.
“We don’t have traditional ancient songs and dance because they were taken from us,” she said. “This is about us bringing back our language.”
At 7 p.m. on Friday night, the 19th Teller Cultural Festival began with the hosts, the Teller dancers performing. Brevig Mission’s Sitaisaq dancers followed. On the program were the Nome/St. Lawrence Island dancers, Inaliq dancers, the Anchorage Kingikmuit dancers and the young White Mountain dance group. As midnight neared, the dancers from White Mountain – despite their long journey – were up to the task of performing. They danced several dances. including the Igloo-building dance and a chores dance, which depicts the dancers performing the daily chores. After the last invitational dance around 1 a.m., the first night of the festival was over. The school gym emptied out, Teller folks went home and visitors retired to their assigned classrooms to rest. The next day, the cultural gathering continued for another night filled with sharing food, drumming, dancing and giving gifts.