​As Nicole Johnson prepared to compete in the Alaska sports arena, she pictured herself launching into the air and striking the ball with both feet at once. The Iñupiaq athlete was taking part in the Arctic game of two-foot high kick, a tradition long practiced by her northern Alaska Native community. When she kicked the seal-skin ball, which hung from a kickstand, the crowd roared with cheers. On that July day in 1989 at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics (WEIO), Johnson set the women’s world record in the event by hitting the target at 6 feet 6 inches.
For this year’s WEIO, at age 57, she will compete in the dene stick pull, a competition where she and another participant grip the center of a grease-coated stick and wrest it away from their opponent. WEIO is an annual multiday sporting festival held in Fairbanks, Alaska, this year from July 15 to 18, drawing hundreds of Indigenous athletes who compete in traditional games that originated in Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, and Canada. The two-foot high kick is just one example of Arctic sports, rooted in long-distance communication methods developed by Johnson’s ancestors. Historically, messengers who were too far away to be heard would kick both feet into the air to signal to villages that hunters had successfully caught a whale.
Johnson, who sits on the WEIO board of governors and serves as head official for the organization’s events, has competed at WEIO for most of her life. “I am going to be doing [Arctic sports] until I’m in my walker or wheelchair or until I can’t do it any more,” she said. “And when I can’t do it, I’m still going to be sitting on the sidelines cheering everybody on and offering my coaching advice.” Traditional Alaska Native games, or Arctic sports, have been practiced for hundreds of years and were originally developed to build the endurance, strength, and survival skills needed for life in the tundra. Although today those techniques are rarely used for daily survival, Alaska Natives continue to carry on the tradition by participating in the annual WEIO, which also features regalia contests, traditional dancing, and arts and crafts.
Athletes who compete at WEIO must be Indigenous and at least 12 years old, with many competing well into their 70s. The top three finishers in each event receive medals, but many participants emphasize that the true reward is camaraderie. Last year, WEIO sold nearly 3,000 tickets, underscoring the festival’s role as a celebration of a traditional culture that endured years of suppression. Indigenous communities discretely practiced Arctic games during the colonization era and the missionary influence of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In recent decades, Arctic games have experienced a revival through annual competitions, as well as coaching programs in schools and community centers.
Kyle Worl, a wellness administrator and coach of Tlingit, Yup’ik, and Deg Hit’an Athabascan heritage, is dedicated to passing down the tradition to younger generations and ensuring the continuation of these enduring Arctic sports.