The Alaska Folk Festival’s Guest Artists, Pharis and Jason Romero, arrive in Juneau today. They’re from Horsefly — a rural town in British Columbia, and split their time between parenting, making custom banjos and playing music. Sometimes with two guitars, often with a banjo, they’re known for their tight harmony singing.
Listen to this introduction that features their voices and music:
The Romeros will be joined by fiddle player Josh Rabie and will premiere 8:30 p.m. tonight on the main stage at Centennial Hall. They’ll also teach workshops on singing and banjo playing, and play a dance at 9:20 p.m. Saturday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
Patrick Troll of the Amish Robots performs Friday at The KXLL Showcase happening at the Hangar Ballroom at 8:00. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Sergei Morosan plays Friday night at the Alaskan with the North Country Cajun Club. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
(Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Caleb and Reeb of the Foghorn String Band perform Thursday at the Rendezvous during the 2018 Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
It’s not hard to find something to do during the Alaska Folk Festival. Once again, your friends at KTOO tried to make it easy and list the downtown evening venue schedules all in one place. As these things go, we’ll be updating the schedule daily with changes, new events and start times as we learn more.
Taylor Vidic is hosting the “Hump Day Listening Room” at the Gold Town Nickelodeon Wednesday night of Folk Fest. Cameron Brockett and Taylor Vidic of The Quaintrelles perform their song “Rolling Stone” live at the Alaskan Hotel during the 2017 Alaska Folk Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Wednesday
Alaskan Hotel and Bar – Open Mic sign up at 9:00 p.m.
The Bowties perform Thursday night at the Red Dog Saloon at 9:30. Billy Moore and Yoseff Tucker perform a Red Carpet Concert at the Alaskan Hotel during the 2016 Alaska Folk Festival. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Thursday
Alaskan Hotel and Bar – Open Mic sign up at 9:00 p.m.
Red Dog Saloon – Alaska Bluegrass and The Bow Ties at 9:30 p.m.
Back in Juneau after moving to Wisconsin, guitarist Dara Rilatos performs at the Rendezvous Wednesday night and hosts Bad Babes and Bandanas at Rockwell Friday night. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
Friday –The KXLL Showcase featuring: Amish Robots EP Release, Indian Agent, Avery Stewart, Christy NaMee Eriksen, QUEENS, Taylor Vidic & Cody Russell at 8:00 p.m.
The multimedia theatrical presentation features five people with histories in the Juneau’s Indian Village and Willoughby District.
“Aan Yátx’u Sáani: Noble People of the Land” opens tonight at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. The cast is Walter A. Soboleff Jr., left, Ernestine Saankalaxt’ Hayes, Khinkaduneek Paul Marks, Lillian Petershoare and Marcelo Quinto. (Photo courtesy Ryan Conarro)
Lillian Petershoare is one of them.
“Instead of having five individuals, individually come and tell their story exclusively by themselves, it’s like a Chilkat blanket, where each person’s story is woven in with the other individual stories,” Petershoare said. “The other individuals actually support you and help you in the delivery or your lines. It’s really kind of a collective experience and that makes it very dynamic.”
The other storytellers are Ernestine Saankalaxt’ Hayes, Khinkaduneek Paul Marks, Marcelo Quinto, Walter A. Soboleff Jr. They’re all Tlingit.
“There’s a lot about growing up in the village. There’s experiences from elementary school,” Petershoare said. “There’s experiences at Juneau-Douglas High School at the time that ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) passed. There’s reference to my college years. There’s reference to coming home, readjusting to being back in Juneau again. There’s references to my employment with the U.S. Forest Service.”
The production team, which includes theater artist Ryan Conarro and Tlingit theater artist Frank Henry Kaash Katasse, interviewed more than 20 people before choosing the five storytellers.
Then, they creatively scripted the stories.
The writers added elements like repetition and echoes.
Project co-writer and co-director Ryan Conarro at his art opening “This Hour Forward” at the JACC in 2013. (Photo by Scott Burton/KTOO)
Visual artist Abel Ryan drew formline designs on a screen hanging behind the storytellers. Greg Mitchell, on projections and lighting design, fills the screen with historical photos, animations and videos.
Katasse said the participants went through historical traumas and serious struggles, but everyone is positive and hopeful.
Humor plays a big part, too.
“This is a super important part about Native theater that I’ve noticed as well,” Katasse said. “We have to make sure the audience knows they have permission to laugh, and we establish that right off the bat throughout this show. Because it not just the writing, everyone in this show is really funny.”
Petershoare noticed another theme.
“People had happy childhoods,” she said. “I think that is something that is delightful for the community to know.”
“That was emphasized with every single person we interviewed,” Katasse said. “They were like this stuff happened. It was Jim Crow era of Juneau and this and that. But it was fun. Like we went sledding, and we did this, and we played in puddles, and we built rafts. And you’re like, this is the important part that we’d really like to emphasize.”
Despite Sealaska Heritage’s objections, the company’s owner, Brant Secunda, continues to advertise for the June retreat.
Part of the advertising includes a video on his website titled “Alaska: A Living Dream.”
In the video, Secunda, wearing his signature dark felted cowbow hat, leads his clients through Juneau: They’re sitting on a beach with the Chilkat mountains in the distance, hiking on fern-edged trails and visiting Nugget Falls at the Mendenhall Glacier.
In another video on his website titled “Shamanic Journeying,” under the Shamanism TV tab, Secunda explains part of his belief.
“By going on a shamanic journey, into the nierika, you find your life and you find your connection to a hidden universe, or what we might say, the sky world. Or we might say, you feel a connection to Mother Earth, and all that lives on Mother Earth.”
While he is originally from New Jersey, Secunda journeyed to Mexico, Carlos Castaneda-like, when he was 18 and met a man named Don José Matsuwa. Secunda said a 12-year apprenticeship followed.
“My apprenticeship involved working with him, living with him, laughing with him, but it also involved going on many many pilgrimages,” Secunda said in another video titled “Shamanic Apprenticeship.”
According to advertisements, the nine-day retreat will be the 24th annual one in Alaska, but it just hit Sealaska Heritage Institute’s radar a few weeks ago.
Since then, SHI President Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl sent Dance of the Deer two letters: one asking them not to come here, and another to end their commercial exploitation of shamanism.
“We are not averse to people wanting to seek religious enlightenment or teachings — we absolutely support that. But we do not believe in the exploitation of our spiritual beliefs and our practices,” said Worl, who is incredulous that she had not heard about him from his past visits to Juneau.
Sealaska Heritage Institute President Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl says Dance of the Deer Foundation is exploiting indigenous people’s spiritual beliefs and practices. (Photo by Scott Burton/KTOO)
In addition to animism — the belief that all objects, places and creatures have spirits — shamanism is also part of Tlingit culture.
“In our culture our shamans go on a spiritual quest, they acquire spirits, those spirits then help the shaman protect the welfare of their clan,” Worl said. “And each clan has their own shaman.”
Charging for shamanistic practices is where Worl said the exploitation comes in.
Dance of the Deer is charging up to $3,865 for the retreat, depending on lodging and an optional whale watching trip.
In a recent letter responding to SHI, signed by Dance of the Deer’s management team, they cite Juneau’s cost of living as an explanation for the high costs, and add that they’ve made very little profit on this program, and some years it loses money.
Their website says proceeds from all their activities go to Secunda’s mentor’s people — the Huichols.
Dance of the Deer Foundation would not provide documentation to verify these claims or make Secunda — or anyone with the organization — available for interview.
We couldn’t find public tax documents showing that Dance of the Deer Foundation is a foundation, in the sense of an IRS-recognized tax-exempt charity.
A filing with the Santa Cruz County Clerk identifies “Dance of the Deer Foundation” as a business alias for Secunda, meaning he is the sole owner.
Cilau Valadez is a Wixárika yarn painter. He identifies as Wixárika, the indigenous name for his people rather than the colonial name, Huichol. He says Wixárika people should be representing their culture, not a non-indigenous person like Secunda who dresses up like them. (Photo courtesy International Folk Alliance)
“We don’t need someone like him to speak on behalf of ourselves. We have a voice. We’re a people. We can speak for ourselves,” said Cilau Valadez, a Wixárika yarn painter from the region in Mexico where Secunda said he learned about shamanism. He uses the indigenous name of his people, Wixárika, rather than the colonial name, Huichol.
“I know a lot of the people might have the right intentions to go to these ceremonies. We need people that are conscious about these knowledge, and we need people to learn this knowledge,” said Valadez from his art studio in Sayulita, Mexico. “But I think it has to be on a proper way where the people, which is us, that are direct descendants of this tradition, should have a voice, and not just someone who is dressed up like us, trying to represent us.”
In addition to a non-indigenous person appropriating his culture, he agrees with Rosita Worl about profit.
“When you combine money in between healing, it might pollute the whole situation,” Valadez said. “Because you can never sell ceremonies.”
In other parts of Secunda’s promotional video for Juneau, we see aerial views of mountains, humpback whale flukes diving, eagles flying, the moon behind the Chilkats, lupine, skunk cabbage, a candle burning on a mossy mound near a stream, and Secunda and his clients in a skiff leaving Adlersheim Lodge at 33 mile, the retreat’s home base.
Worl does not like the idea of Secunda profiting from shamanism, but she is concerned about the lodge losing business.
“If there is that economic impact, what can we do to alleviate that,” Worl said. “We don’t want to hurt our own people here, and this is our town, and Juneau is our community, and we want to protect our community.”
But if Secunda does come?
“I suspect there will be people who will want to picket, or whatever you want to call that, demonstrate outside of that place,” Worl said. “I don’t think that I would do that. I can’t anymore, I’ve got a bum knee.”
In the meantime, SHI is working on a plan to bring Valadez up to Juneau to teach about his Wixárika culture.
In addition to locations in the Bahamas, Patagonia, New Zealand, Greece and Italy, Secunda continues to advertise his June retreat in Juneau, and has not responded to SHI’s latest letter.
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