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NEWS RELEASE

Alaska Native Culture Prominently Featured on Alaska Float in 2009 Rose Parade

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA – Dec. 26, 2008 – Alaska Native culture will be prominently highlighted in the Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau’s tribute to Alaska’s 50th Anniversary of Statehood floral float in the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day 2009.

The colorful organic float, entitled “Celebrating Alaska - Spirit of the Wild,” will prominently feature five Alaska masks, each representing one of Alaska’s major Native cultural groups, as well as two traditional kayaks. Miss WEIO (World Eskimo-Indian Olympics), Kimberly Dullen of Fairbanks, Alaska, and WEIO Record Holder Manuel Tumuluk will ride in the kayaks.

In addition, Stephen Blanchett, of the Native American Music Award winning group Pamyua, has assembled a cast of 10 top Alaska Native artisans to perform songs and dances from the Far North region of Alaska in the style of the Inupiaq/Siberian Yup’ik people alongside the float. The Alaska Native performers include Stephen Blanchett, Benjamin Crew, Phillip Kairaiuak, Lori Bean, Alice Moses, Danielle Shavings, Debra Dommek, David Thomas, Christopher Tom, and Julianne Tumulak. The songs they perform come from the Pamyua CD “Drums of the North.”

Alaska’s north and northwest regions are vast. The land and sea are host to unique groups of people. To the people of the north, the extreme climate is not a barrier, but a natural realm for a variety of mammals, birds and fish, gathered by the people for survival.

The Inupiaq and the St. Lawrence Island Yupik People, or “Real People,” are still hunting and gathering societies. They continue to subsist on the land and sea of north and northwest Alaska. Their lives continue to evolve around the whale, walrus, seal, polar bear, caribou and fish.

The Alaska float will showcase Alaska’s abundant natural beauty, stunning scenery, copius wildlife, rich history, and indigenous cultural traditions to a worldwide audience. The four-hour parade will be broadcast on ABC, NBC, Univision, HGTV, the Travel Channel, and Discovery HD, as well as KWHY and KTLA in greater Los Angeles, Calif. The parade will be seen by more than one million on-site spectators and 40 million television viewers in the United States, and will be televised to 150-plus territories around the globe.

For more information on Alaska’s float in the Tournament of Roses Parade, explore www.Anchorage.net/roses.

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Media Contacts:

Jeanette Anderson Moores
Public Relations
Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau
jmoores@anchorage.net
(907) 276-4118
Explore www.Anchorage.net