'When we get together, we get dangerous': Meet Paulatuk's Moonlight Drummers and Dancers

Michael Green, of Paulatuk, N.W.T., learned how to sing, dance and drum from a videocassette when he was nine years old.

It all started for him when his Inuvialuktun teacher, Liz Kuptana, showed her class a recording of the Mackenzie Delta drummers and dancers at Angik School.

Green asked to borrow the tape. He liked the moves of one dancer in particular.

"I wanted to dance like him, so that video that I borrowed, kept rewinding, rewinding, rewinding, until I got the exact movements of his dance."

Green said a group of Inuvialuit in Paulatuk started out with drums made from cardboard and garbage bags and duct tape. He's been leading the Paulatuk Moonlight Drummers and Dancers ever since.

Twenty-seven years later, the group has evolved. Green said they get together once a week at the youth centre in Paulatuk to make sure they're ready for performances.

"An elder told us when we get together, we get dangerous — and what he's meaning, or what he meant, is that when we gather together to drum dance, we're powerful. "

"All the communities around the ISR [Inuvialuit Settlement Region], when we get drumming in one place, it gets you hyped up."