Traditional Unangan Dance
	Laresa Syverson teaching traditional Unangan dance at Camp Qungaayux
	The traditional Unangan dances have been, very unfortunately, forgotten.   Many Unangan attribute this to the evacuation of the Natives during World War II.   Their lives drastically changed during the evacuation, and they were not afforded the luxuries of recreation.   Luckily, however there have been different groups of Unangan throughout the Aleutians who have been anxious to revive the tradition.   It had been over 200 years since there was traditional dancing, but in the spring of 1994 an Aleut dancing group was formed in St. Paul, by Rev. Fr. Michael Lestenkof, Mary Bourdukosky, Edna Floyd, and Aquilina Debbie Lestenkof.  The traditional dances had been lost so they created their own dances, which related to the Earth, games, events, and also a Russian peek-a-boo game, which was transformed into a dance since the Russians had a great influence on the Unangan during the 1700 and 1800’s.   After much discussion it was decided that the group’s name would be Ataqan Akun, which means “We Are One”.   The original dance group consisted of 22 students.   Their first performance was for the Community of St. Paul before flying into Anchorage to perform at the Alaska Federation of Natives Conference, Bilingual Conference, and Aleut Corporation Conference and at several schools in Anchorage in 1994.   They have been performing on island since 1994.
	Laresa Syverson	On Unalaska Island, Laresa Syverson has revived the dance by coming up with innovative new dances consisting of the traditional moves.   She started choreographing her original dances to traditional moves to bring the language and history of storytelling through dancing to the children of Unalaska.   The dances have songs told in the Native Unangan tongue, and each tells a story.   One, titled the Raven Dance, tells about raven behavioral observations.   Another, The Octopus, is based on the story Kanuygaaxtux, which you can find in Aleut Tales and Narratives, collected 1909-1910 by Waldemar Jochelson.   This particular dance tells of a young man’s encounter with an octopus while hunting sea otters. The focus of the dance program is bringing the language into daily use by youngsters.   Each song is born in the Eastern dialect of Unangum Tunuu and the children must learn the correct pronunciation, the correct translations, and through this process, they learn new words, sentence structure, or syntax, and become familiar with the sound system of the language.   The bonus is dancing.
	Laresa formed a dance troupe in Unalaska, called Nawan Alaxsxan Axanan, or, The Unalaska Island Dancers, which perform both locally and around the state.   Laresa is the Unangam dance instructor for the Camp Qungaayux program, as well as the Qawalangin Dance Program.   She received her Associates degree in two-dimensional art from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and is a student of Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language.   Ms. Syverson is the dance instructor for the Unalaska Dancers, a program sponsored, in part, by the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska.