It was a busy week for culture in Skagway with drag performers and award-winning authors.
Skagway held two major events last week, the kickoff to Pride and North Words Writers Symposium.
While Pride is a month-long event celebrating the LGBTQ community, the biggest event is the drag show at Seven Pastures, where Skagway drag kings and queens perform. They were followed by Gigi Monroe’s Juneau Drag troop.
Local performer Spruce, now a member of Juneau Drag, lip synched to an original sound mix, and the crowd went crazy at the June 1 show. Drag King Hank Van Dickerson from Anchorage made a special appearance and someone in a convincing Big Foot costume wandered through the crowd as brightly clad children and adults danced.
The Pride events continue with Rainbow Roll at the Recreation Center on June 14, Drag Story Time at the library on June 15 and The Gays of ‘98 Show at the Eagles Theater on June 28. Lucy’s Bakery will sell rainbow cupcakes all month, with a portion of proceeds donated to Pride.
Skagway has held an official Pride celebration since 2019. Mayor Sam Bass signed a declaration at the May 16 assembly meeting, affirming support for all individuals. Assembly member Deb Potter thanked him.
“I’m very, very proud to be a part of a community that is tolerant and welcoming of all different types of people,” Potter says.
A little more subdued, but colorful in its own way, was Skagway’s annual four-day writer’s workshop, North Words Writers Symposium. Writers from across the state, and several participants from Canada and the Lower 48, met from May 29 to June 1.
This is a portion of organizing faculty member Jeff Brady’s poem, “The River of Taking.” The piece is about Dyea Valley, where Brady lives. It incorporates Lingít words. Brady, who is not Lingít, credits Professor X̱’unei Lance Twitchell for helping with pronunciation.
“Láx’ (blue heron) rises, taking flight from gravel bar at river’s mouth. Talk to me, in your old language, which, only now, I seek to learn: Deiyáa, Taiya, Dyea, Dyee, Héen—trail river, pack river. Late, you say, too late to give back. Your source, deep snow, on the high pass, runs clear in spring through canyon walls; then glacier-fed, grey, slinging silt, uprooting spruce, slamming boulders. Unseen dangers for those who cross. And then you rise and take whomever stumbles in: son, daughter, medicine man, soldier, guide, packer, cheechako.”
The symposium’s keynote presenter was Jamie Ford, bestselling author of the novel, “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.” He draws on his Chinese American heritage for his writing. Ford favors bright red sneakers and resides in Montana.
Along with a panel of Alaska authors, Ford discussed researching novels, dealing with trauma and writing across cultures. One of those panelists was Lily Tuzroyluke, an Alaska Native.
Sponsored at the symposium by the Skagway Traditional Council, Tuzroyluke has come full circle. Twenty years ago, she worked for the council.
Tuzroyluke is currently writing a book about residential schools. She read an excerpt at the May 30 Faculty Reading.
“And like the battalions of old they arrived on horses and carved wooden canoes and birch canoes, by foot,” she says. “Arriving by the thousands, millions, billions. Covering their land with their angry shrills, cries, mimicry of eagle and seagulls howling like wolves. Trumpeting on conch shells, drumming on hand drums. Holding up their ancient weapons of flint, bone, shells, human hair, sinew of whales and mammoth tusks. Ready to fight, ready to die.”
Tuzroyluke’s first novel, “Sivulliq,” takes place in the late 1800s as an indigenous mother races to rescue her daughter from a whaling ship.
Books written by North Words authors can be found at the library and Skaguay News Depot.
The municipality gave $5,000 in community grant funding to the Pride Planning Committee and $25,000 to North Words Writers Symposium in 2024.
Spruce sound recording courtesy of Charity Pomeroy.
