For another year the Adäka Cultural Festival is providing a venue to celebrate the North’s Indigenous traditions through art, music, stories and more. The 2023 festival began on June 29 and runs through the evening of July 5.
One of the big draws of the festival’s opening days was the artist studio tent and the hide camp that allowed festival attendees to get a look at a variety of traditional crafts and artworks.
Among the craft workshops offered were beading, hide tufting, plant salve making and moccasin making.
Attendees could also watch the carving of a 3o-foot long red cedar canoe as artisans of the Bringing Back the Light program were working on the festival grounds.
There were also stage performances at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre. Some were musical and filed with dance but there was also quieter cultural programming on stage including stories shared by speakers of various languages.
The festival, which was first held in 2011,has been an enduring celebration of Yukon First Nations and other Indigenous cultures. A theme highlighted by festival organizers this year is the celebration of unity between the Northern Dene Nations and Yukon First Nations.
The closing performance of the festival, a dance show called “confluence” set to speak to the resilience of Indigenous women will be held on the Yukon Arts Centre main stage at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 5.
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