Punctuation on health — Unique teaching tool underscores importance of colon cancer screening

Photos courtesy of M. Scott Moon/Kenaitzie Indian Tribe. Deb Nyquist, wellness director at the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai, and Fridrick Gudmundsson, youth services clinician, talk about the Nolan the Colon display at the center March 9.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Let’s just get the puns out of the way: The Southcentral Foundation and Dena’ina Health Center wasted no time eliminating misinformation about colorectal cancer on March 9, leaving curious visitors flush with information to digest.

OK, enough with the crappy jokes. But when you’re traveling with a giant inflatable colon, a silly sense of humor is required.

“Oh yeah, you have to. For the most part people laugh. First, they don’t know what it is. If they have kids it’s like, ‘Oh, a bouncy house.’ And then they come over and they’re like, ‘Oh,’” said Cherise Cummings, health educator with the Southcental Foundation.

Cummings brought the unusual teaching tool to the Kenaitze Tribe’s Kenai health facility March 9, as March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. The 12-foot, inflatable, anatomical replica illustrates a healthy colon and the development of colorectal cancer, and gives information on how to prevent the disease. The pinkish, tunnel-shaped novelty comes complete with polyps, and a name.

“This is Nolan the Colon and it’s just a great visual to get people to open up and talk about getting screened for colon cancer,” Cummings said.

Nolan gets a workout during the winter, with health educators taking him on the road to communities served by the Southcentral Foundation, an Alaska Native health care organization established by Cook Inlet Region, Inc. He also makes appearances at various high-profile community events in Anchorage, along with Cummings and her associates dressed in bulbous, red, Nolan-related costumes.

“I do have a polyp costume, so I’m a polyp princess. I do show up at events. So I ran with the reindeer last week, on Saturday, along with Doc Polyp and another polyp princess,” she said. “… There’s a group of them that were actually in the Fur Rondy parade with Nolan the Colon, waving. We just really talk about screening. Screening is so important because there aren’t always signs and symptoms, and that’s the scary part.”

Health center is well of care, renewal — Wellness facility represents sea change for Kenaitze Tribe

Photos by Patrice Kohl, for the Redoubt Reporter. A “Łuq’a Nagh Ghilghuzht” sculpture by Joel Isaak depicts traditional Dena’ina life at fish camp outside the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s new Dena’ina Wellness Center in Old Town Kenai.

Clarification: It was incorrectly reported that the Dena’ina Wellness Center is currently seeing all veterans and is considering expanding medical services to the public. Currently, only Alaska Native and American Indian veterans receive VA services through the Dena’ina Wellness Center. As a community mental health center, behavioral health services are open to the public. Other services are available to Indian Health Service beneficiaries.

Through the joint venture award, Indian Health Service funding supports operation and maintenance for a minimum of 20 years. The state of Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development Division of Community and Regional Affairs provided $20 million to the project.

 

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

For the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, a new building in Old Town Kenai is an indication that the tide has turned.

A gradual erosion of culture, connection and community has reversed, and what was washed away, grain by grain, as if by the lapping pull of receding waves, is rushing back in, not only replacing what’s been lost, but reaching a new high-water mark.

That mark is a substantial one, both in its 52,000-square-foot physical form — the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai — and in what it represents for the tribe.

“The Dena’ina word for it is ‘naqantughedul.’ For the tribe it means the tide is going out and it’s turning and going back in,” said Jaylene Peterson-Nyren, executive director. “It means the culture, the people, the land and just the lifestyle has been going away for many, many years, and it has taken a turn with this facility. It’s coming back.”

The building isn’t just a health clinic, nor was the motivation to construct it simply some tipping of an equation of funding and client base and service needs. It grew from a need to come together — to reconnect, strengthen and grow — and to improve health beyond just the physical.

The lobby of the new, 52,000-square-foot Dena’Ina Wellness Center is meant to be an area for gathering and socializing, more than just a medical clinic reception lobby.

“We wanted to design not just a health clinic, but we wanted to look at wellness from a holistic perspective, and that means not just that you’d have your checkups and you check out well. It means social and economic wellness, it means educational wellness — knowledge. It encompasses relationships across the board with customers who come in to seek services and for staff who are all working together on behalf of our customers,” Peterson-Nyren said.

Fittingly, then, the facility consolidates the tribe’s three health services programs under one roof — medical, dental and behavioral — as well as expands new services to address the wellness of a person as a whole, not just whether they’re running a fever.

“We try to focus on prevention and intervention. We want to encourage people to return. That’s one of the reasons we built the Gathering Space (building entrance room) is we want people to want to be here,” she said.

Along with being a center for holistic wellness, the brand-new facility, with construction starting in August 2012 and the grand opening ceremony June 12, is also a hub of social connection — an area of wellness which the tribe believes also needs care.

It’s designed to facilitate both — new equipment and the latest technology to aid the delivery of quality medical services, and a welcoming, calming, comfortable design to encourage people to come and enjoy the facility. The entry leads into the Gathering Space, with a large, open, airy design and windows stretching floor to the second-story ceiling above. A stage area anchors the wall facing the doors, while a reception desk, curved as if beckoning a visitor further into the building, stands to the right of the stage. To the left of the entrance is a wide staircase giving the feel of floating upward as it parallels the windows looking out over Old Town toward the mouth of the Kenai River and Cook Inlet. Upstairs are balcony railings to allow a bird’s-eye view of the stage and circular Oculus feature below, which will have a commissioned art piece suspended above it.

The whole space can be configured for large gatherings, such as the grand opening of the facility, which was packed to standing room only. Over 1,000 people came through the facility during the two days of tours, presentations and festivities, Peterson-Nyren said.

“I think the response has been tremendous,” she said. “It was amazing to feel that community support, just everyone showed up.”

Food pits for thought — KPC students excavate caches where new dorm would go

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kenai Peninsula College anthropology students watch professor Alan Boraas measure the profile of an excavation pit dug to investigate a Dena’ina food cache, dating to probably around 1,200 A.D., on Nov. 20 at the Kenai River Campus. The pits were discovered in the area planned for a dorm.

Redoubt Reporter

Anthropology students at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus got a lesson Nov. 19 and 20 in how history can become a current event.

Nearly a millennia ago, long before traffic snaked along College Loop Road’s curvy route to the public-access fishing holes and expanding KPC campus along the bank of the Kenai River, the area was used for some of the same reasons it’s used for today.

People pulled salmon from the Kenai River at its tributary Slikok Creek, to freeze and eat all winter long. They learned about ecology and biology, culture and sociology, science and engineering. But they didn’t need fancy fishing platforms or college facilities to do it. For them, fishing, teaching and learning were all a daily part of routine life.

Hundreds upon hundreds of years before College Loop Road, KPC, the state’s university system or even Western inhabitation of what would become the state of Alaska existed, the area’s Athabascan Native population, the Dena’ina, found the area that’s now home to the flourishing Kenai River Campus to be a fertile place to make their home.

A Dena’ina village of about 75 people thrived on the banks of Slikok Creek, where inhabitants had easy access to the bountiful salmon runs in the Kenai River. They spread out for hundreds of yards around their five houses, constructing more than 100 food cache pits in the ground to store the summer’s harvest of fish for food during the winter months.

This winter, KPC is looking at expanding, as well. With the passage of Proposition B in the November election, approving bond funding for various University of Alaska capital projects, plans are progressing to construct a student dormitory at the Kenai River Campus. The building is slated to be located across College Loop Road from the campus, on a lot that’s currently vacant except for a gravel pit and access road.

About 800 years ago, the spot wasn’t vacant, and the college has decided to examine how it was utilized in the past before proceeding with plans for the future.

On Nov. 19 and 20, KPC anthropology professor Alan Boraas led volunteer student crews in an archeological dig to excavate and document food cache pits left by the Slikok Creek Dena’ina villagers. Two of the pits are right where the footprint of the new dorm building is expected to go.

“The state Office of History and Archeology recommended that work be done on this, essentially to gather the information so the dormitory could go forward,” Boraas said.

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.”

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.