Molly of Denali
Ask Molly: Unangax Dance Group
Clip: Season 1 Episode 23 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
Unangax Native kids from Atka, Alaska talk about their dances, history, and culture.
A group of kids on Atka Island describe and perform an Unangax traditional dance. They explain how they their people used historical texts to revitalize the traditional dances their ancestors created long ago.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Molly of Denali
Ask Molly: Unangax Dance Group
Clip: Season 1 Episode 23 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
A group of kids on Atka Island describe and perform an Unangax traditional dance. They explain how they their people used historical texts to revitalize the traditional dances their ancestors created long ago.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Molly of Denali
Molly of Denali is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
MOLLY: Hey, everyone!
Molly here to answer your questions about life in Alaska.
Clarke in New Hampshire asks, "Can you show me other dances from Atka?"
Sure!
My friends in Atka are practicing now.
ALL: Aang, Molly!
GIRL: We are in Atka, Alaska, down on the Aleutian Islands.
My ancestors have been living here forever, basically.
Today, we are going to practice Unangax dancing.
Tax ii!
GIRLS: Aang.
Aadixt.
(drum tapping) BOY: Is ugix!
(drum pounding) Sanakux!
(drum stops, girls chirping and howling) Our dances relate to our ancestors and to our culture.
If I was to look at how my culture has changed and how it's the same, I'd look in books, history books.
We have a lot of history books here.
We looked at a lot of books to see how our ancestors danced and to see what our ancestors wore.
GIRL: These are Unangax people dancing.
They're holding the drums sideways, like we do sometimes.
We learned that our ancestors wore very similar things that, what we wore today in our dancing.
BOY: This is a traditional Unangax hat.
Our ancestors actually used to use this for hunting.
And this is what we wear when we dance.
(kids singing, drum tapping) GIRL: The dances themselves have changed, but they're very similar to what our ancestors did.
(singing, drum beating) (shout, song ends) ALL: Ukudigaasada, Molly!
Mahsi'choo!
Thanks for asking and see you next time.
Support for PBS provided by: