photo by: Elvyn Jones

Haskell University junior Grace Denning dances and beats a drum as freshman Andy Piscoya looks during a dance they and other members of the school's Alaskan Club performed Saturday, Sept. 10, at the 28th annual Haskell Indian Art Market. The club will perform again at noon Sunday as the art market returns from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to Haskell.

Her performance Saturday at the 28th annual Haskell Indian Art Market had special meaning for Grace Denning.

“I haven’t been back to Alaska since I came here in 2013,” the Haskell junior in business science said. “I get homesick. Dancing is the closest I get to my family and home.”

The annual art market’s twin goals are to provide an economic opportunity for Native American artists who fill the booths on the Haskell campus and the promotion of cross-cultural understanding and exchange, said Stephen LaCour, co-chairman of the art market. The event would continue from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, he said.

The Alaskan Club was on hand to educate and entertain Saturday, performing for about 30 minutes within a circle of booths offering Native American art in the Haskell Powwow Grounds. The group will perform again at noon Sunday in the same place.

Denning said she hoped the Lawrence audience shared the joy she felt in her performance as she eased her longings for home. Dance is a big part of her Tlingit culture and those of other Alaskan tribes, said Denning, of Ketchikan, Alaska, who has been dancing for six years. The Tlingit are native to the Alaskan panhandle where it rains an average of 13 feet annually. She said her people would have celebratory dances during the cold season after the summer harvest, often indoors.

As might be expected, Denning is not a big fan of Kansas summers and welcomed Saturday’s cooler temperatures as she performed in traditional attire that included a wool blanket and deerskin apron.

“It’s the coolest art market since I’ve been here,” she said.

As she danced the club’s last song, Denning help beat out a rhythm on a deerskin drum she made herself, which was decorated with symbols a friend painted of her clan and subgroup.

“I’ve been drumming as long as I’ve been dancing,” she said. “Down here (on the Plains), women weren’t even allowed to touch the drums. For me, my job is to drum.”

Haskell freshman Andy Piscoya, a member of the Inupiaq People of northern Alaska, said he started dancing with his older brothers and sisters while growing up 150 miles from the Arctic Circle.The Inupiaq tell stories through the dance of important occasions. Those can include near contemporary events, such as the first airplane ride a tribe member ever took, he said.

Fellow Inupiaq Vivian Pomeroy said it was a thrill to share the traditions of a people many might not know exist. ?”I’m in two dance groups back home,” the Haskell junior said. “It’s really fun teaching people about our traditions.”