Paper short abstract:

We describe how tradition moves from background to artistic figure among two indigenous Arctic peoples. Similarities among Koryak and Eskimo traditional indicate a common modernity on both sides of the Bering. The contrasts seem to have more to do with local priorities than differences between ‘post-Soviet’ Russian and ‘capitalist’ America.

Paper long abstract:

Dancing among indigenous peoples of the arctic presents an ideal case for examining transformations of value across different contexts and value systems. This paper compares the values of dancing and associated activities among indigenous Kamchatkans in the Russian Federation and indigenous Alaskans in the United States. Koryak (Kamchatka) or Eskimo (Alaska) dancing is usually labelled 'traditional', and foregrounds analytical problems of understanding the operation of creativity, tradition, agency, structure, individual and group in everyday life. While anthropologists have rejected the opposition of tradition and modernity, it remains a powerful dichotomy for 'natives' on both sides of the Bering Strait. The movement of dances in different contexts highlight the processes of value creation and circulation, and the creation of property, which is about making that socially created value stick or inhere in objects which continue to circulate under different parameters. Dances are often at the centre of the commodification of tradition for tourist consumption of exotic others or appropriation by a state that wants to parade a harmonious pluralism of differentiated groups. We define tradition as the background of practices upon which people innovate new figures. 'Ethnic' dances have become iconic performances of 'culture' in a figure-ground reversal that makes 'traditional' arts figures against the ground of 'modernity'. This paper describes the character of these transformations, noting a similar operations of modernity on both sides of the Bering, but with some interesting contrasts that seem to have more to do with local priorities than differences between 'post-Soviet' Russian and 'capitalist' America.