We Regret To Inform Everyone…

… But Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer will not be making an appearance for Christmas this year. Or ever again. He was reported to have been making a good will tour of Alaska and had the misfortune of stopping by the village of Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island. There, he was invited to be seated in a place of honor at a banquet. Unfortunately, he did not quite understand the language as well as he could have. The word used was not "seated".

It was "served".

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The Reindeer Messenger Festival is among the newest events in the Cup'ig Eskimo village of Mekoryuk — and one based on an ancient tradition resurrected by residents after decades of suppression.

The festival, called Qusngim Kevga, opens with a roundup of reindeer from a herd introduced in the 1920s to Nunivak Island, 40 miles off the western coast of Alaska in the Bering Sea.

Held every other year, the festival also features reindeer meat raffles and banquets shared with visitors from other villages. It's a time to relish the bounty brought by hunting and gathering subsistence foods in the harsh environment of the island, where constant winds carve the snow like sand dunes.

But most of all the three-day event, which kicks off Thursday (Dec. 7), celebrates the revival of long banished native dancing and festivals in the community of 200.

"It would be hard to create something like this without having foundations in the past," said Howard Amos, a member of the Mekoryuk tribal council and co-creator of the village's first dance group in more than six decades.

The Mekoryuk dancers, in fact, made their debut at the inaugural reindeer festival in 2002, performing with headdresses and large flat drums after appearances by seasoned dance groups from the Yupik Eskimo villages of Tununak and Toksook Bay. It was the first time that people had danced publicly in Mekoryuk since 1936, when the tradition was banned as heathen by missionaries establishing the Evangelical Covenant Church there.

Simeon John, 48, a drummer with the Toksook Bay dancers, remembers the crowd's emotional response to the Mekoryuk performance.

"It was a historic event," he said. "Something that came back after 60-something years was very good to see. It's part of our identity. When we're stripped of it, we're not whole and by them getting it back, it's like something missing has come back."

We are saddened to have to bring this unfortunate news to the world so close to the Christmas season. However, we did purchase a raffle ticket and hope to at least see some good steaks.

(Information on Mekoryuk and Nunivak Island can be found here.)