New Native dance group looks to bring back tradition in Wrangell
- Wrangell Sentinel
- 5 minutes ago
- 2 min read
By Larry Persily
Wrangell Sentinel
Coven Petticrew believes dance can help a community heal after a death in the family, so he is organizing a new Native dance group in Wrangell.
Traditionally, each clan would have its own dance group that would sing, provide comfort and share food with families after a death in the opposite clan, often referred to as the “night watch” or all-night vigil.
“I don’t see that happening anymore,” he said. “When I die, I want the opposites to come sit with my clan.”
The opposites could “sing me into the next world.”
As clans have diminished, the Wrangell Native community dances as one group, Petticrew said, but that can’t provide the same cultural tradition as opposite clans honoring and sharing after a death.
“I’m advocating we go back to a more traditional time.”
The new dance group is called the Ch’x’áasaan Dancers, which means “Waterfall Town,” the name of the area’s first Tlingit Raven village, located at Mill Creek. The creek is on the mainland, running from Virginia Lake to the Back Channel.
The group has been meeting since mid-January twice a week, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at the former Head Start building across the parking lot from Evergreen Elementary School. The Tuesday sessions are dance and Thursdays are for making regalia.
The dance sessions are open to Tlingit Ravens and Haida Eagles, Tsimshian Ravens and Tahltan people, and Unangax̂and Sugpiaq (Aleuts) too, while the regalia-making sessions are open to the entire Wrangell community, Petticrew said.
Tlingit Ravens and Haida Eagles are considered relatives, whereas other clans, such as the Tlingit Wolves and Haida Ravens, are considered their opposites, he explained. Not enemies, just from opposite clans.
“That’s what these new Raven Dancers would represent … that balance and reciprocity in Tlingit culture” of clans sharing.
His hope is that grandchildren and great-grandchildren can look back and appreciate and understand more about their clans and cultural traditions. “The whole reason (of the new dance group) is to bring back balance to the community.”
In addition to bringing back a tradition, the Ch’x’áasaan Dancers are preparing for Celebration 2026, set for June 3-6 in Juneau. The theme for the dance, song, art and culture event — put on every other year by the Sealaska Heritage Institute — is “Enduring Strength.”
Petticrew, an Aleut (Unangax̂) by birth, was born and raised in Wrangell and was adopted at a young age into the Kiks.adi of the Wrangell Tlingit Ravens clan and learned the Tlingit culture.
His mother and grandmother were forcibly evacuated from the Aleutian Islands to Southeast Alaska at the start of World War II.
Petticrew left Wrangell for work as a young adult and then returned home last year to work as senior director of early education for Tlingit and Haida’s Early Education program in Southeast.
• This article originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel.
