{"id":4725,"date":"2016-02-17T23:09:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T07:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaskas-bieber-yupik-eskimo-singer-gains-online-following\/"},"modified":"2016-02-17T23:09:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T07:09:30","slug":"alaskas-bieber-yupik-eskimo-singer-gains-online-following","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaskas-bieber-yupik-eskimo-singer-gains-online-following\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska&#8217;s Bieber: Yup&#8217;ik Eskimo singer gains online following"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>JUNEAU \u2014<\/strong> He could be considered the Justin Bieber of Alaska.<\/p>\n<p>Teen Internet sensation Byron Nicholai is a Yup\u2019ik Eskimo from Toksook Bay, a tiny island just off Alaska\u2019s mainland in the Bering Sea.<\/p>\n<p>The 17-year-old high school senior performs songs that blend traditional Yup\u2019ik and English. He has more than 22,000 followers on the Facebook page \u201cI Sing. You Dance,\u201d where he posts videos of himself singing and drumming.<\/p>\n<p>Last weekend, Nicholai performed at the University of Alaska Southeast campus in Juneau as part of a program that prepares indigenous teachers for Alaska\u2019s schools.<\/p>\n<p>He told the audience his drumming allows him to share the culture of his village, which has about 600 residents.<\/p>\n<p>Among the songs he performed was one poking fun at dating in rural, sparsely populated Alaska villages. He called it the \u201cCousin Song.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JUNEAU \u2014 He could be considered the Justin Bieber of Alaska. Teen Internet sensation Byron Nicholai is a Yup\u2019ik Eskimo from Toksook Bay, a tiny island just off Alaska\u2019s mainland in the Bering Sea. The 17-year-old high school senior performs songs that blend traditional Yup\u2019ik and English. He has more than 22,000 followers on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":4726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}