Alaska’s Indigenous teens emulate ancestors’ Arctic survival skills at the Native Youth Olympics

ANKERAGE, Alaska — The athletes who filled a huge gymnasium in Anchorage, Alaska, were ready to compete, cheering, stomping and high-fiving each other as they lined up for the chance to claim the state’s top prize at their events.

But these teens were attending the Native Youth Olympics, a statewide competition that draws hundreds of Alaska Native athletes each year and pays tribute to the skills and techniques their ancestors used to survive in the harsh Arctic climate.

Events in the competition that concludes Saturday include a pulling pole, intended to simulate holding on to a slippery seal as it fights to return to the water, and a modified, four-step broad jump that looks something like a jumped over ice floes on the frozen ocean.

For generations, Alaska Natives played these games to develop the skills they needed to become successful hunters – and survive – in an unforgiving climate.

Now today’s youth play “to help preserve our culture and heritage, and to teach our youth how difficult life used to be and to share our culture with everyone around us who wants to know more about our people,” says Nicole Johnson, the chief official for the event and one of Alaska’s most decorated native athletes.

Johnson himself has won more than 100 medals in indigenous Olympic competitions and for 29 years held the world record in the two-metre high kick, an event in which athletes jump with both feet, kick a ball while keeping both feet level, and then both feet land. feet. Her record of 1.80 meters and 18.5 centimeters was broken in 2014.

For the “seal hop,” a popular event on Saturday, athletes get into a push-up or plank position and shuffle across the floor on their knuckles — the same stealthy crawl their ancestors used during a hunt to sneak up on unsuspecting seals that are hiding a took a nap on the ice.

“And when they got close enough to the seal, they would take their harpoon and get the seal,” said Johnson, an Inupiaq originally from Nome.

Colton Paul had the crowd clapping and stomping. Last year, he set a world record in the scissors broad jump with a mark of 38 feet, 7 inches while competing for Mount Edgecumbe High School, a boarding school in Sitka. The jump requires strength and balance, and involves four specific stylized jumps that mimic hopping over floating chunks of ice to navigate a frozen river or ocean.

The Yupik athlete from the western Alaska village of Kipnuk can no longer compete because he has graduated, but he did perform in front of the crowd on Friday, jumping 38 feet, 9 inches.

He said Native Youth Olympics is the only sport he is passionate about.

“Exercise has really given me a sense of ‘My ancestors did this’ and I’m doing what they did to survive,” says Paul, who is now 19. “It’s just something fun to do.”

Awaluk Nichols participated in the Native Youth Olympics for most of her childhood. The events give her an opportunity to explore her Inupiaq heritage, something she says is slowly eroding from Nome, a coastal community in the Bering Sea.

“It helps me a lot to just connect with my friends and my culture, and it just means a lot to me that we still have that,” said the high school student, who listed her best event as the one-foot high kick.

Some events are as much a mental test as a physical one. In a competition called wrist-carrying, two teammates hold a stick at each end while a third person hangs from the dowel by the wrist, legs curled like a sloth, as their teammates run around an oval track.

The goal is to see who can hang on the stick the longest without falling or hitting the ground. The event builds strength, endurance and teamwork, mimicking the qualities people in the north needed when they lived a nomadic lifestyle and had to carry heavy loads, organizers said.

Nichols said her family and some others still participate in some native traditions, such as hunting and living off the land like their ancestors, but competing in the youth games “really makes you feel connected to them,” she said.

“Just knowing that I’m part of what used to be makes me happy,” she said.