Bethel, Alaska - Arts and Culture

Arts and Culture

Traditional dancers from all over Alaska and beyond participate every March in the Camai Dance Festival. Hundreds of costumed dancers, drummers, and singers perform traditional Yup'ik story dances during the three-day festival, sponsored by the Bethel Council on the Arts. "Camai" (pronounced Cha-Mai) translates as "a warm hello."

The Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center also hosts a bimonthly "Saturday Market" where artisans and crafters from the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta come to sell their crafts. There is a variety at the market, but many of the crafts include traditional Yup'ik qaspeq, story knives, woven baskets, ulu knives and more.

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