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- By Jennifer Wybieracki
NUIQSUT, Alaska — On a summer evening last August, the gravel roads led residents toward Nuiqsut’s Trapper School for an Iñupiat ceremonial dance. The village of just over 500 welcomed congressmen from across Alaska, a week before the state’s primary election.
Wooden bleachers in the school’s new gymnasium, paid for with oil money, were crowded with excited locals sitting behind the state congressmen filling in the first two rows.
Performers sat in the center of the gym, with the men in the front row wearing green regalia, and women, wearing pink, filed into the second and third rows. Each dance told a unique story. One performed by the village’s young boys was about fighting your enemy. Each pair of boys mimicked punches and jabs to the beat of drums, but by the end of the dance, they shook hands, stronger as a pair.
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