Tiny Barril waited seven years for the song to come to him.<\/p>\n
In 2010, Barril — a Tlingit dance leader who lives in the Seattle area — was telling his auntie that he wanted to write a song and knew what he wanted to say. He just didn’t know how to say it.<\/p>\n
“Tiny, don’t think about it too hard,” she told him. “One day, you’re going to be by yourself and it’s going to come to you. You’re just going to go pick up the drum and the song is going to come to you.”<\/p>\n
Just before Christmas in 2017, Barril was sitting in his living room when he picked up the drum near his family’s Christmas tree. It had finally come to him, like he said, like a Christmas present from his auntie. Continuing to give the gifts of song and dance to younger people, Barril said, is one reason he’s been coming to Celebration since 1990.<\/p>\n
Barril sang that song Thursday as the members of his dance group Kutéeyaa danced off the stage in their finale. The song is called “T’ak<\/span>deintaan Exit Song” for now, named after Barril’s Tlingit clan in the Raven moiety.<\/p>\n Dances began at 9 a.m. Thursday and continued for more than 12 hours at Centennial Hall and Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. Groups from around the state and region took the stages for half an hour at a time. Most groups are from Southeast Alaska, but some came from out of state to participate.<\/p>\n Kutéeyaa was one of them. Kutéeyaa means “totem,” Barril explained, and they chose that for their group name because multiple clans are represented in the group. Multiple age groups are also present in the group, with one of the main dancers Thursday being a young man. Barril said being able to share the music with members of the younger generation is a major reason for continuing to perform at Celebration.<\/p>\n “It’s about our homes, it’s about our ancestors who have left us,” Barril said. “They’ve given us a treasure that we need to pass on to the younger people.”<\/p>\n Getting younger people involved was a theme when dance leaders spoke Thursday, both on stage and in interviews.<\/p>\n The Selkirk Spirit Dancers, from Pelly Crossing in Yukon, Canada, included a couple dozen children. The creation of the group, named for the Selkirk First Nation tribal government in Yukon, stemmed from a child’s question.<\/p>\n When she was 12 years old, Carmen Baker moved to Pelly Crossing with her family. Her family is Northern Tutchone (her sister April said they are part Tlingit as well), but Carmen saw when she arrived that none of the people were singing their traditional songs.<\/p>\n “What I noticed was the language and the songs and the teachings were sleeping,” Baker said, “so I asked them, ‘How come they don’t dance and they don’t drum?’ She told me, ‘The story is because of residential school.’”<\/p>\n