Welcome to Dancing with the Spirit!
DONATIONS are all TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!
Or send checks to: Dancing with the Spirit, PO Box 1012 Cordova, Alaska 99574
We also have a Dancing with the Spirit Endowment Fund with the Alaska Community Foundation. Learn more/donate to the fund →
Mahsi’, Baasee’, Taikuu, Quyana, Dogedinh, Quyanaa, Gunalcheesh, Haw’aa, AwA’ahdah
and Thank You for your support!
Come to our HONOR THE ELDERS Dancing with the Spirit FUNDRAISER DANCE
March 14th, 2026 6:00pm-10:30pm at the Morris Thompson Center in Fairbanks
featuring the Rev. Dr. Chief Trimble Gilbert’s fiddling!
Dancing with the Spirit connects youth and elders through music. The Rev. Dr. Chief Trimble Gilbert from Arctic Village says “in the old days, we fought tribal wars with arrowheads. It’s a different type of war now – against drugs and alcohol. I believe we can win with music.” Music can bring joy, hope, and love to villages struggling with alcoholism, drugs, and suicide. Music builds confidence, self-esteem, and the closeness of family. Students can spend hours and hours playing guitars and fiddles, singing and dancing. Alaska’s first visitors – explorers, the Hudson Bay Company, missionaries, and whalers – brought fiddles, guitars, banjos, and mandolins. The Native community has taken this music and developed their own style. In almost every village, elders play and sing and would like to pass on through music–their culture, their respect for the land and its animals, and their values.
Dancing With The Spirit is modeled on the Cordova Music Camp where students sing, dance and learn to play fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and bass that has been held in Cordova, Alaska for the past 31 summers. Over the past twenty years, we’ve traveled to 57 villages, most of them numerous times. And during the past two school years, we’ve spent 52 weeks in Native village schools with our Music and Culture Weeks!
Program funding comes from schools, tribal councils, the RurAL CAP Foundation, Tanana Chiefs Conference, Doyon, the St. Matthews Endowment Fund, the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, and individuals like you!
In August 2022 Dancing with the Spirit organized and led a Gwich’in Youth and Elders Trip to the Midway Lake Music Festival in Teetl’it Zheh (Fort McPherson), Canada, with 11 Gwich’in youth in grades 6-10, 6 Gwich’in elders, Native speakers and musicians from the Yukon Flats of Alaska. The Midway Lake Music Festival is a large regional gathering celebrating Gwich’in traditions including music, dance, storytelling and traditional food within a safe and sober environment. The youth performed on stage three times, assisted with the instruction during the youth music camp, made new friends and life-long connections in the Gwich’in community, and practiced speaking and singing in Gwich’in. We are grateful to the village tribal councils, St Matthew’s Episcopal Church Endowment Fund, Southcentral Deanery, and many generous individuals for their support.
March 18, 2024
Courtesy of KTVF NewsCenter Fairbanks
Mickelson has brought her intergenerational traveling music camp to 57 remote Alaskan villages, as well as Hawaii, the Navajo Indian Reservation, Canada’s Northwest Territories and Ontario’s Six Nations Reserve.
Click to learn more…