FAIRBANKS – The 2016 Festival of Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, held March 3-5, was a rollicking, noisy celebration. As usual. Alaska and Lower 48 Native performance groups performed in Charles Davis Concert Hall for six hours each night to loud cheers from the big crowd. Athabaskan, Southeast, Inupiaq and Yup'ik traditional performers shared the bill with fiddling and hoop dancing.
Near the Rasmuson Library, however, tucked away from the big show was a lovely island of calm -- the Elder's Room. Here older folks could relax, refresh and swap stories and songs with the host, George Holly.
Holly first set up the room when he lived in Fairbanks in the 1990s. He's since moved to the Kenai Peninsula but has recently started traveling back up to UAF for the annual festival. With help from UAF students, he arranged for the room and supplied a buffet of smoked fish, wild game soup, crackers, cake, coffee, tea and other goodies. He brought in lamps from his house "to make it feel more like a living room," he said.
"I wanted to honor my grandparents, Nick and Nellie Demientieff," Holly said. "They were very hospitable people."
Nick Demientieff was a very well-known and successful barge operator on the lower and middle Yukon River. He designed and built his own boats and once got a bank loan for a project based on a sketch he'd made on the back of a napkin.
A big man with a gorgeous tenor voice, accomplished on several instruments, Holly entertained his guests with music. Some who stopped in brought their own instruments and reciprocated. Between songs, stories of the old days flowed, along with much discussion about all that music means to people.
A man from Barrow borrowed a hand drum and delivered a pitch-perfect song from the American Southwest. "Wow! You must have spent a lot of time down there," Holly said.
"Not really," the man replied. "I just heard it and liked it and studied it."
"Ah," said Holly with a nod. "It spoke to you."
One of the innovations at this year's festival was "The Heartbeat of the Drum," at which all drummers from all kinds of groups try to maintain a steady rhythm to fill the hall. The practice was started at the Cama-i Festival in Bethel some years ago but was new to most of the FNA folks. Several drummers had left the building or put their drums away before they realized they could participate. The effect was still pretty powerful.
Another development was a timekeeper who walked in front of the stage between the audience and performers with signs telling the performers how much time they had left, looking a little bit like the ring girls at boxing matches but more modestly dressed. Some performers were put off by the signs warning, "5 minutes" and "2 minutes," saying it made them feel pressured. But the three nights stayed closer to the published schedule than in previous years and the stage was still crowded each time a group leader called for an invitational dance.
The Cama-i Dance Festival, by the way, will take place April 1-3 in Bethel. Guest performers this year will be the Shasta Taiko Drummers from California and the Artistic Drift hip-hop group. The festival will be dedicated to the late Paul John of Toksook Bay and will have the theme of "Community Strength through Drumming." If you can't make the trip to Bethel, you can follow the performances via webcam at camai.org.
Poetry Out Loud winner
Congratulations to West High School student Shannon Croft, the winner of the Poetry Out Loud State Finals held in Juneau on March 15. Croft took first place in the competition with her recitation of John Keats' "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be." She will represent Alaska at the national finals in Washington, D.C. in May. The 2015 Alaska champion, Maeva Ordaz, went on to finish in first place at the nationals last year.
Us v. feds
History professor Stephen Haycox will present "Battleground Alaska, Fighting Federal Power in America's Last Wilderness," a look at four critical environmental battles and the state's dependence on "corporate exploitation of its natural resources" in a free talk at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 24, at the newly-remodeled UAA Campus Bookstore. Haycox will particularly examine the creation of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the passage of ANILCA and the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990. Parking is free for UAA Bookstore events in the South Lot, Sports Complex NW Lot, West Campus Central Lot and Sports Campus West Lot.
Drama for pioneers
ActingUp, Anchorage Community Theatre's senior acting troupe, meets every Thursday at 1 p.m. at the theater, 1133 E. 70th Ave. Participants, who don't need to be senior citizens, read and discuss scripts, perform at various community functions and take part in the spring production at Anchorage Community Theater. Find out more by calling Gail High at 345-5782 or email gailhigh@hotmail.com.
Free day at the museum
Wells Fargo is paying everyone's admission to the Anchorage Museum starting at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 20. It's the last day of Spring Break, so take advantage of the free ticket to get back in the education groove by looking over the current exhibits and learning something with hands on family activities.
Slow down in the slush
Finally, I promised to bring up an issue that has little or nothing to do with arts. Acquaintances who live on the streets asked me to use the formidable power of the press to plead with readers who drive to slow down as they approach pedestrians and try to avoid spraying Anchorage's un-automobiled with water, slush and mud. "We may be homeless, but getting wet is no fun," said one. I assured him that readers of this column are all too civil and sensitive to thoughtlessly send a tsunami of road muck onto a fellow human being who is standing or ambulating along the side of the road. But I agreed to make the supplication in print nonetheless.