A group of fifteen Alutiiq dancers from Kodiak Island performed this morning for about 1,000 attendees at the First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference in downtown Anchorage at the Dena'ina Center. The Kodiak Alutiiq Dancers started officially in 1987 but has roots back in the 1970s, when elders first tried to reconstruct many of the traditional Alutiiq dances from centuries past, before Russians colonized Kodiak Island in the 1700s.
"We were told we weren't allowed to be Alutiiq when the Russians came," said Alutiiq dancer Samantha-Lynn Shults. "They formed us into what they believed was right. We were called 'savages.'"
For almost three decades, the dance group has been trying to rediscover its culture in order to preserve it. That includes making overseas trips for a better understanding. "When we travel to Russia or Europe and we'll go to the museums, they'll have paintings from when the Russian explorers would come to Kodiak. They would paint what our people would look like. They have so much over in their museums -- it's crazy -- of our people. And so we're learning about our people over in Russia," said Shults.