Picture of support — Kenai missionary helps museum to preserve threatened culture

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Herb Schaan. Herb Schaan, of Kenai, poses for a photo with students in Papua New Guinea recently, where he visited to help set up a new cultural and history museum.

Redoubt Reporter

Herb Schaan’s physical view has changed considerably over the last 40 years — from one end of the Pacific Rim to the other, trading vistas of the lush green mountainsides of the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea for the flat blue expanse of Cook Inlet and snowy Alaska Mountains beyond.

He’s incorporated much of the former into his life in the latter. His home atop the bluff in North Kenai is decorated with treasures from his time in Papua New Guinea — intricately woven brightly colored bags made by New Guinea women and sold at open-air market stands; shiny, crescent-shaped Kina shells, which served as money in the traditional, trade-based economy; and, of course, the photos. Stacks and boxes of prints and slides of images, shot on still-bright Kodachrome film, documenting his time doing missionary work in the country.

When he was shooting during the mid-1960s to 1980s, it was in the vein of anthropological endeavor to document the culture and society of the Enga Province residents, who lived a traditional lifestyle in an area of the country that had previously been closed to outsiders. Forty years later, those photos have become more than just supplements to Schaan’s memory of that chapter of his life. With the Enga region on the verge of massive, near-instantaneous change, Schaan’s photos have become a vital link to the region’s history and traditional ways, and are being incorporated into a new museum and cultural center designed to help Enga residents remember where they’ve come from as they rocket along an uncharted path toward a future of greater integration with the modern world.

Schaan arrived in Papua New Guinea — the independent, eastern half of the world’s second-largest island, off the coast of Australia — in the mid-1960s as a missionary with the Lutheran Church. Previously, outsiders were only allowed along the coastal areas of the country. After World War II, inland regions, including the mountainous Enga Province, were opened to outside access, including to the Catholics and Lutherans, which had already established a presence in the coastal areas.

“People wanted medicine and education and the goodies that the outside world had,” Schaan said. “… We were sent to help set up hospitals and schools and do it in a Christian framework that was liberal to the culture, that did not damage the culture. We were under orders to respect the local ways.”

Schaan and his fellow Lutheran missionaries were tasked with studying the language and culture, and Schaan picked it up better than most. He served as an evangelism director, which had him traveling throughout the province and brought him in contact with many of the residents.

The Enga Province of Papua New Guinea is a scenic, mountainous region.

“I knew the language, I have to say, probably better than anybody else, and I had the grassroots connections in a lot of the areas,” he said.

Wherever he went, he brought his Pentax camera with him, enabling him to capture images of life and culture still operating in traditional ways.

“I went through a wide area and met a lot of people, so I had photography a lot of people didn’t have,” he said.

That photography was relegated to storage after he left Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and settled in Kenai. But when a project began to create a cultural museum in Wabang, Enga Province, one of the coordinators of the project got in contact with Schaan and asked if he could contribute photos from his time in the region to the museum. He was happy to oblige in an effort to preserve the fabric of a culture that is rapidly twisting into new patterns.

Speaking of history — Class preserves Dena’ina Kenai dialect

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Yuzhun Evanoff, a student in a Dena’ina language course at Kenai Peninsula College, speaks what he has written in Dena’ina as part of his final exam April 28.

Redoubt Reporter

From the tales of elders long passed to more modern poems of still-living members, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe continues to share its stories and rich oral history as a way to pass on knowledge.

In recent decades, the tribe had worked with anthropologists and others to put those words to paper in an effort to keep the endangered Kenai dialect of the Dena’ina Athabascan language alive. The culmination of all this linguistic preservation work was demonstrated last week when Kenai Peninsula College anthropology students — some of whom had no knowledge of the language just 16 weeks ago — wrote and spoke in Dena’ina for their final exam.

“Taking students who knew little about Dena’ina to writing sentences in a very complicated language has been 30 years in the works,” said Alan Boraas, instructor for the Dena’ina language course.

Dena’ina is to language what differential calculus is to mathematics. It’s difficult to learn, and even more so when there are no speakers of the Kenai dialect alive and willing to share their linguistic knowledge through typical methods, such as immersion sessions.

“I’ve been studying the language for years now, and I’ve seen the passing of several elders I’ve worked with,” said Michael Bernard, student and Kenaitze Tribe member. “I’ve seen our language disappearing firsthand, so I know the relevance of what we’re doing.”

Instead of relying on living speakers, the class uses noun and verb dictionaries and grammar derived from linguists like Boraas,

Trish Magnusen gets help from Sonja Barbaza with putting on her Ojibwa jingle dress. Magnusen decided to share and honor her own Ojibwa culture by wearing the garment while she read her Dena’ina story.

University of Alaska Fairbanks professor James Kari and the writings of deceased Dena’ina elder Peter Kalifornsky.

“The idea isn’t for them to learn fluency through speaking,” Boraas said. “The goal is for them to understand the structure of this very difficult language, to empower them to read something that has been written in Dena’ina, to decode an ancient story or to write something new.”

It is only after the students can perform these tasks that fluency of the language can be a realistic goal, Boraas added.

“Once these verbs are imbedded in our heads, the next step would be to produce the language without the dictionaries and other tools,” he said.

To understand how the language came to nearly be lost, the clock must be turned back to the first half of the 20th century. The United States, in an attempt to accelerate assimilation of indigenous people into the mainstream, washed mouths out with soap or perpetrated other harsh forms of punishment on school children caught speaking in their Native tongue. It didn’t work as well as the government hoped.

“This proves our language is not lost, or dead or caught in a moment of time. This shows we’re still here,” said Sasha Lindgren, a Kenaitze elder and student in the course. “Our language is being renewed and adapted to this time. People in this class are writing about things happening now, and that was the goal of all the elders who went before, who spoke it, kept it and worked on it.”

Student Scott Schaedler gets some last-minute instruction from professor Alan Boraas before reading his story, which dealt with various concepts, including cheating at poker.

Student Yuzhun Evanoff originally hails from the Nondalton area, across Cook Inlet. He said there are only about 12 elders that still speak Dena’ina — albeit a different dialect — back where he calls home.

“The language stopped being taught in my home area during my father’s generation,” Evanoff said. “This class was a unique opportunity for me to connect with my culture.”

In addition to cultural identity, Boraas said the Dena’ina language offers a different way of thinking and viewing the world. This alternative perspective was also being shared with the class participants, to be taken back to their places of origin, some of which were quite far from the Kenai Peninsula.

Student Trish Magnusen moved to Kenai from Wisconsin last summer. She is of Ojibwa heritage, but said taking the Dena’ina language course and working on her story has inspired her to continue learning about the language.

“Before I came here in June, I didn’t know anything about Dena’ina,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot and would like to keep going by doing an independent study through the college to translate Native stories into Ojibwa and Dena’ina.”

Student Dana Vergoossen came to Kenai in August as a foreign exchange student from the Netherlands, and, like Magnusen, she developed an appreciation for this place, its people and language.

“I took the class because I wanted to learn more about the Natives of this area,” she said. “I’ve really enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I’ve learned a lot about the culture though studying the language and stories.”

Vergoossen’s feelings about the Dena’ina language were also expressed in the language, as she closed her final exam story by writing “ch’u nughu ch’u ch’ehden et tghesyu,” which she translated into, “With happiness and sadness I go.”

The stories written and read by the class covered a gamut of topics, from traditional ideas, such as hunting moose by bow and arrow, to more modern concepts, such as cooking hamburgers, falling off bicycles and cheating at poker.

Boraas recorded to video all of the students’ works, but it pained him to erase their Dena’ina words from the board.

“I hate doing this,” he said.

Bernard comforted him by stating a few choice words that any instructor would love to hear. Tapping the side of his head he said, “It’s still in here.”

Culture of learning — Soldotna students readies for Costa Rica exchange

By AdriAnna Newberry

Photo by AdriAnna Newberry, for the Redoubt Reporter. Tatyana Scott plays flute in band class at Soldotna High School last week. She will be a foreign exchange student next year.

For the Redoubt Reporter

Though they may seem to be separate corners of the world, there is a connection between Samoa, Soldotna and Costa Rica — Tatyana Scott.

Tatyana is a junior at Soldotna High School, and has lived in Soldotna with her family since 2003, but she’s got connections to other parts of the world that are about to get even stronger. Tatyana learned Polynesian dancing from her mother, Faata Scott, and has cooked her share of pigs on a spit. Tatyana’s father, John Scott, is a world traveler who has lived in Japan, New Zealand, has visited 17 countries and twice traveled the United States on a road trip. Her mother, born and raised in Western Samoa, works at Central Peninsula Hospital, and her father is a retired linguist.

With such a colorful and unique background it is not surprising that the travel bug zoomed in to bite Tatyana. For some high school students, the most realistic way to travel abroad is through the foreign exchange program. For Tatyana, this has the added plus of blending a family heritage of travel with her dreams for the future, from the strengthening emotional changes that come from living in a foreign land, to the open doors as colleges smile at the travels on her transcript.

Travel is expensive, however, and for Tatyana, it is prohibitive. Her father is disabled and the family finances frown on trips abroad. So when Nancy Cranston, treasurer of the local branch of the American Field Service, told John Scott that scholarships were available for hopeful foreign exchange students, Tatyana went online in hopes of going abroad.

The scholarship she had in mind was the Gaia Scholarship, with the winners being sent for 11 months to Costa Rica. In her essay, Tatyana wrote about her unique family background and their travels, along with her dream of visiting Latin American countries like her father, and her predisposition to learn new cultures. To her shock and great pleasure, Tatyana’s essay placed eighth overall in the nation. It was not enough for the Gaia Scholarship, but it did result in her being awarded the Global Leadership Scholarship, which is almost the equivalent. The scholarship gives Tatyana about $2,500, one-third of the necessary funds to go to Costa Rica.

Scott has fond memories of Costa Rica, having spent several weeks there while on a road trip with relatives in 1958.

“It’s much more worthwhile to see things slowly and in detail … meet a lot of interesting people who are curious about the trip,” he said.

Scott said he is “very, very pleased” that Tatyana placed so well with her essay and that she will now get to travel.

“It’s in our blood, our family line, that we’re interested in foreign peoples and traveling abroad,” he said.

Beat of their own drum — Kenaitze youth group develops tradition of laughter

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

The drumming can be heard from the parking lot outside Fort Kenay in Old Town Kenai: a rhythmic pulsing that sounds like a heartbeat. In a way, it represents one.

The Del Dumi Intertribal Drum program’s goal is to promote sobriety, respect, cultural awareness and pride in area youth — the lifeblood of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s future.
The drum program, for ages 13 to 18, is part of the tribe’s Yaghanen Youth Programs (meaning “good place, a safe place for the heart”). The youth program also includes the Jabila’ina Dance Group and Ggugguyni Native Youth Olympics Team, all of which are open to all youths, whether or not they’re Native or tribe members. The drummers, dancers and NYO athletes gave a demonstration of their activities at the Pamyua concert Saturday in Kenai.

Michael Bernard, Yaghanen programs director for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, said the youth programs began in the 1990s to give kids healthy activities to be involved in after a tribal youth committed suicide.

“The council decided we didn’t want this to happen again. We needed to come up with some things for our youths to do so they’re not going out drinking and doing drugs and alcohol and getting in trouble,” Bernard said.

The gravity of the group’s mission, combined with the steady thumps that reverberate in the windowpanes of the 100-plus-year-old log structure, sets a serious mood when walking into drum practice Thursdays. It’s immediately shattered by the howls of laughter that come whooshing out the log door with the warm air.

The group, gathered around a large hide-covered wooden drum, has disintegrated into laughter so incoherent it’s hard to tell what set them off. It could have been a drummer owning up to a missed beat or a premature start to a solo, and everyone else joining in to dispel any embarrassment.

“We laugh a lot but we don’t laugh at anybody,” said Doug Gates, a tribal advocate. “We won’t laugh at you, we’ll laugh with you.”

Or it might have been someone getting creative with lyrics. When the group practices Christmas standards around the holidays, for instance, “French hens” often becomes “French toast” in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Or maybe it was Bernard attempting to sing falsetto — not a natural range for someone built like a football player.

Whatever the case, a brief break was in order for everyone to collect themselves and start again.

“We’ll get into this laughing fest where we can’t hardly play anymore,” Gates said.
But they can and do, because even in the drum group’s goofiest moments, there’s a sense of seriousness in what they do.

It plays out in myriad ways, from the respect in how they treat each other — they’ll laugh with you, never at you — to the traditions governing how the drum is played.

Songs have a specific format. Everyone drums on the same beat, and the leader —on Thursday it was 17-year-old Chris Anderson — starts the singing with a solo. There’s a chorus, and the leader signals with a sweep of his hand that the next solo is up for grabs. If someone wants it, they indicate so and Anderson acknowledges it, or he designates someone to sing. There are hand signals for speeding up and slowing down, and a motion to get everyone drumming on the same beat.

The drum itself has rules associated with it. It’s made from a cottonwood stump with hide stretched over it and special items sealed inside — an eagle feather and three agates, three being a lucky number and agates being lucky stones, Gates said. It was constructed in the early 1990s, Bernard said, when tribal elder Peter Kalifornsky was alive. Kalifornsky named the drum Del Dumi, because that was the sound he heard in his head when the drum played, Bernard said.

When drummers prepare to play, hide-covered drumsticks are always passed to the left. At the end of a performance, everyone places his or her right hand on the drum for a moment of silence. If dancers are performing, as well, they ring the drummers and place a hand on the shoulder in front of them. Then the eldest person at the drum says a prayer, offers a few words of thanks or in some other way commemorates the moment. When drummers pick up their chairs to leave, one chair is always left behind until the drum is removed.

Interior Alaska Natives, not the Kenaitzes, traditionally used large drums like Del Dumi. The Cook Inlet-area Dena’ina used more portable percussion devices, like handheld hide drums, wooden plank drums or birch sticks beat together, Gates said. The large communal drum was adopted into Kenaitze programs in the early 1990s as a way to promote sobriety from substance and alcohol abuse, said Maggie Jones, a tribal advocate.
“It’s to keep you focused. It really draws you in and you think about going out and being strong,” she said.

Anderson joined the drum group after moving to the peninsula from Palmer in 2004 and getting involved in the tribe’s NYO program. He started singing solos, realized he was good at it and became a drum leader.

“I love everything about it. There’s nothing to really point to, just everything — I like being here, the drumming, songs, the fun and the seriousness when we do an event,” Anderson said.

Jack Williams, 14, said he likes the drum group for the same reasons as Anderson. He joined a little before Anderson did, when his mother suggested he give it a try.
“I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it out.’ I think it worked out pretty good, actually,” he said.
Some songs are just for fun, like Christmas carols or Wilson Pickett’s “Land of A Thousand Dances,” where drummers fling themselves around in chair-bound circles at the end of each chorus: “Na, na na na na … .”

“That makes me seasick,” Jones said.

Other songs have more traditional meanings, although it usually isn’t conveyed in the lyrics. The words that are sung usually aren’t even words, they’re vocables, Jones said. The song’s meaning comes from how and when it was used.

“This is one where we build it and build it and build it; it’s really powerful,” Bernard said of the “Badger Song.” “Think about why they’re doing this. It’s not just for something to do. Picture it; they’re getting people riled up. They’re like, ‘Come on, let’s do it.’ So at the beginning it’s like, ‘We’ve got something to go do,’ and by the end it’s like, ‘Let’s do it!’”

Del Dumi’s finale is “Red Earth,” an honor song. No matter what humor precedes it, “Red Earth” is played with complete seriousness. “We do some fun things that are really silly and goofy, and we do some really serious things. It’s kind of a mix of everything,” Bernard said. “It takes a special person to realize the drum is a serious thing, but it’s also a place to ha
ve fun with other people who like the same things.”

For Bernard, as a youth counselor, that’s the most impressive part of the drum group.

“They can have fun then turn right around and be completely serious. That says a lot about their character,” he said.

Beat of their own drum — Kenaitze youth group develops tradition of laughter

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

The drumming can be heard from the parking lot outside Fort Kenay in Old Town Kenai: a rhythmic pulsing that sounds like a heartbeat. In a way, it represents one.

The Del Dumi Intertribal Drum program’s goal is to promote sobriety, respect, cultural awareness and pride in area youth — the lifeblood of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s future.
The drum program, for ages 13 to 18, is part of the tribe’s Yaghanen Youth Programs (meaning “good place, a safe place for the heart”). The youth program also includes the Jabila’ina Dance Group and Ggugguyni Native Youth Olympics Team, all of which are open to all youths, whether or not they’re Native or tribe members. The drummers, dancers and NYO athletes gave a demonstration of their activities at the Pamyua concert Saturday in Kenai.

Michael Bernard, Yaghanen programs director for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, said the youth programs began in the 1990s to give kids healthy activities to be involved in after a tribal youth committed suicide.

“The council decided we didn’t want this to happen again. We needed to come up with some things for our youths to do so they’re not going out drinking and doing drugs and alcohol and getting in trouble,” Bernard said.

The gravity of the group’s mission, combined with the steady thumps that reverberate in the windowpanes of the 100-plus-year-old log structure, sets a serious mood when walking into drum practice Thursdays. It’s immediately shattered by the howls of laughter that come whooshing out the log door with the warm air.

The group, gathered around a large hide-covered wooden drum, has disintegrated into laughter so incoherent it’s hard to tell what set them off. It could have been a drummer owning up to a missed beat or a premature start to a solo, and everyone else joining in to dispel any embarrassment.

“We laugh a lot but we don’t laugh at anybody,” said Doug Gates, a tribal advocate. “We won’t laugh at you, we’ll laugh with you.”

Or it might have been someone getting creative with lyrics. When the group practices Christmas standards around the holidays, for instance, “French hens” often becomes “French toast” in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Or maybe it was Bernard attempting to sing falsetto — not a natural range for someone built like a football player.

Whatever the case, a brief break was in order for everyone to collect themselves and start again.

“We’ll get into this laughing fest where we can’t hardly play anymore,” Gates said.
But they can and do, because even in the drum group’s goofiest moments, there’s a sense of seriousness in what they do.

It plays out in myriad ways, from the respect in how they treat each other — they’ll laugh with you, never at you — to the traditions governing how the drum is played.

Songs have a specific format. Everyone drums on the same beat, and the leader —on Thursday it was 17-year-old Chris Anderson — starts the singing with a solo. There’s a chorus, and the leader signals with a sweep of his hand that the next solo is up for grabs. If someone wants it, they indicate so and Anderson acknowledges it, or he designates someone to sing. There are hand signals for speeding up and slowing down, and a motion to get everyone drumming on the same beat.

The drum itself has rules associated with it. It’s made from a cottonwood stump with hide stretched over it and special items sealed inside — an eagle feather and three agates, three being a lucky number and agates being lucky stones, Gates said. It was constructed in the early 1990s, Bernard said, when tribal elder Peter Kalifornsky was alive. Kalifornsky named the drum Del Dumi, because that was the sound he heard in his head when the drum played, Bernard said.

When drummers prepare to play, hide-covered drumsticks are always passed to the left. At the end of a performance, everyone places his or her right hand on the drum for a moment of silence. If dancers are performing, as well, they ring the drummers and place a hand on the shoulder in front of them. Then the eldest person at the drum says a prayer, offers a few words of thanks or in some other way commemorates the moment. When drummers pick up their chairs to leave, one chair is always left behind until the drum is removed.

Interior Alaska Natives, not the Kenaitzes, traditionally used large drums like Del Dumi. The Cook Inlet-area Dena’ina used more portable percussion devices, like handheld hide drums, wooden plank drums or birch sticks beat together, Gates said. The large communal drum was adopted into Kenaitze programs in the early 1990s as a way to promote sobriety from substance and alcohol abuse, said Maggie Jones, a tribal advocate.
“It’s to keep you focused. It really draws you in and you think about going out and being strong,” she said.

Anderson joined the drum group after moving to the peninsula from Palmer in 2004 and getting involved in the tribe’s NYO program. He started singing solos, realized he was good at it and became a drum leader.

“I love everything about it. There’s nothing to really point to, just everything — I like being here, the drumming, songs, the fun and the seriousness when we do an event,” Anderson said.

Jack Williams, 14, said he likes the drum group for the same reasons as Anderson. He joined a little before Anderson did, when his mother suggested he give it a try.
“I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it out.’ I think it worked out pretty good, actually,” he said.
Some songs are just for fun, like Christmas carols or Wilson Pickett’s “Land of A Thousand Dances,” where drummers fling themselves around in chair-bound circles at the end of each chorus: “Na, na na na na … .”

“That makes me seasick,” Jones said.

Other songs have more traditional meanings, although it usually isn’t conveyed in the lyrics. The words that are sung usually aren’t even words, they’re vocables, Jones said. The song’s meaning comes from how and when it was used.

“This is one where we build it and build it and build it; it’s really powerful,” Bernard said of the “Badger Song.” “Think about why they’re doing this. It’s not just for something to do. Picture it; they’re getting people riled up. They’re like, ‘Come on, let’s do it.’ So at the beginning it’s like, ‘We’ve got something to go do,’ and by the end it’s like, ‘Let’s do it!’”

Del Dumi’s finale is “Red Earth,” an honor song. No matter what humor precedes it, “Red Earth” is played with complete seriousness. “We do some fun things that are really silly and goofy, and we do some really serious things. It’s kind of a mix of everything,” Bernard said. “It takes a special person to realize the drum is a serious thing, but it’s also a place to have fun with other people who like the same things.”

For Bernard, as a youth counselor, that’s the most impressive part of the drum group.

“They can have fun then turn right around and be completely serious. That says a lot about their character,” he said.

Beat of their own drum — Kenaitze youth group develops tradition of laughter

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

The drumming can be heard from the parking lot outside Fort Kenay in Old Town Kenai: a rhythmic pulsing that sounds like a heartbeat. In a way, it represents one.

The Del Dumi Intertribal Drum program’s goal is to promote sobriety, respect, cultural awareness and pride in area youth — the lifeblood of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s future.
The drum program, for ages 13 to 18, is part of the tribe’s Yaghanen Youth Programs (meaning “good place, a safe place for the heart”). The youth program also includes the Jabila’ina Dance Group and Ggugguyni Native Youth Olympics Team, all of which are open to all youths, whether or not they’re Native or tribe members. The drummers, dancers and NYO athletes gave a demonstration of their activities at the Pamyua concert Saturday in Kenai.

Michael Bernard, Yaghanen programs director for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, said the youth programs began in the 1990s to give kids healthy activities to be involved in after a tribal youth committed suicide.

“The council decided we didn’t want this to happen again. We needed to come up with some things for our youths to do so they’re not going out drinking and doing drugs and alcohol and getting in trouble,” Bernard said.

The gravity of the group’s mission, combined with the steady thumps that reverberate in the windowpanes of the 100-plus-year-old log structure, sets a serious mood when walking into drum practice Thursdays. It’s immediately shattered by the howls of laughter that come whooshing out the log door with the warm air.

The group, gathered around a large hide-covered wooden drum, has disintegrated into laughter so incoherent it’s hard to tell what set them off. It could have been a drummer owning up to a missed beat or a premature start to a solo, and everyone else joining in to dispel any embarrassment.

“We laugh a lot but we don’t laugh at anybody,” said Doug Gates, a tribal advocate. “We won’t laugh at you, we’ll laugh with you.”

Or it might have been someone getting creative with lyrics. When the group practices Christmas standards around the holidays, for instance, “French hens” often becomes “French toast” in “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Or maybe it was Bernard attempting to sing falsetto — not a natural range for someone built like a football player.

Whatever the case, a brief break was in order for everyone to collect themselves and start again.

“We’ll get into this laughing fest where we can’t hardly play anymore,” Gates said.
But they can and do, because even in the drum group’s goofiest moments, there’s a sense of seriousness in what they do.

It plays out in myriad ways, from the respect in how they treat each other — they’ll laugh with you, never at you — to the traditions governing how the drum is played.

Songs have a specific format. Everyone drums on the same beat, and the leader —on Thursday it was 17-year-old Chris Anderson — starts the singing with a solo. There’s a chorus, and the leader signals with a sweep of his hand that the next solo is up for grabs. If someone wants it, they indicate so and Anderson acknowledges it, or he designates someone to sing. There are hand signals for speeding up and slowing down, and a motion to get everyone drumming on the same beat.

The drum itself has rules associated with it. It’s made from a cottonwood stump with hide stretched over it and special items sealed inside — an eagle feather and three agates, three being a lucky number and agates being lucky stones, Gates said. It was constructed in the early 1990s, Bernard said, when tribal elder Peter Kalifornsky was alive. Kalifornsky named the drum Del Dumi, because that was the sound he heard in his head when the drum played, Bernard said.

When drummers prepare to play, hide-covered drumsticks are always passed to the left. At the end of a performance, everyone places his or her right hand on the drum for a moment of silence. If dancers are performing, as well, they ring the drummers and place a hand on the shoulder in front of them. Then the eldest person at the drum says a prayer, offers a few words of thanks or in some other way commemorates the moment. When drummers pick up their chairs to leave, one chair is always left behind until the drum is removed.

Interior Alaska Natives, not the Kenaitzes, traditionally used large drums like Del Dumi. The Cook Inlet-area Dena’ina used more portable percussion devices, like handheld hide drums, wooden plank drums or birch sticks beat together, Gates said. The large communal drum was adopted into Kenaitze programs in the early 1990s as a way to promote sobriety from substance and alcohol abuse, said Maggie Jones, a tribal advocate.
“It’s to keep you focused. It really draws you in and you think about going out and being strong,” she said.

Anderson joined the drum group after moving to the peninsula from Palmer in 2004 and getting involved in the tribe’s NYO program. He started singing solos, realized he was good at it and became a drum leader.

“I love everything about it. There’s nothing to really point to, just everything — I like being here, the drumming, songs, the fun and the seriousness when we do an event,” Anderson said.

Jack Williams, 14, said he likes the drum group for the same reasons as Anderson. He joined a little before Anderson did, when his mother suggested he give it a try.
“I said, ‘OK, I’ll try it out.’ I think it worked out pretty good, actually,” he said.
Some songs are just for fun, like Christmas carols or Wilson Pickett’s “Land of A Thousand Dances,” where drummers fling themselves around in chair-bound circles at the end of each chorus: “Na, na na na na … .”

“That makes me seasick,” Jones said.

Other songs have more traditional meanings, although it usually isn’t conveyed in the lyrics. The words that are sung usually aren’t even words, they’re vocables, Jones said. The song’s meaning comes from how and when it was used.

“This is one where we build it and build it and build it; it’s really powerful,” Bernard said of the “Badger Song.” “Think about why they’re doing this. It’s not just for something to do. Picture it; they’re getting people riled up. They’re like, ‘Come on, let’s do it.’ So at the beginning it’s like, ‘We’ve got something to go do,’ and by the end it’s like, ‘Let’s do it!’”

Del Dumi’s finale is “Red Earth,” an honor song. No matter what humor precedes it, “Red Earth” is played with complete seriousness. “We do some fun things that are really silly and goofy, and we do some really serious things. It’s kind of a mix of everything,” Bernard said. “It takes a special person to realize the drum is a serious thing, but it’s also a place to ha
ve fun with other people who like the same things.”

For Bernard, as a youth counselor, that’s the most impressive part of the drum group.

“They can have fun then turn right around and be completely serious. That says a lot about their character,” he said.