Alaska Native Ways of Knowing and the Sustenance of Musical Communities in an Ailing Petrostate

Abstract

Alaskans are experiencing rapid economic, cultural, and ecological change as a result of declining oil revenue and anthropogenic climate change. This chapter compares the relative resilience of the Fairbanks Festival of Native Arts, an annual indigenous arts celebration, and the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra, a Western art music ensemble housed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Festival of Native Arts has thrived since the 1970s by sustaining Alaska Native traditions while embracing new performance ideas, a resilience strategy with deep cultural roots based in indigenous knowledge. In contrast, the Western art music ensemble's high level of specialization, cost, declining audience, and colonial legacy call its future into question, particularly when viewed from the perspective of cultural equity and the distribution of limited resources.