Uksuum Cauyai: The Drums of Winter

Uksuum Cauyai: Drums of Winter, also referred to only as Drums of Winter (1977), is an ethnographic documentary on the culture of the Yup’ik people, focusing primarily on dance, music, and potlatch traditions in the community of Emmonak, on the shore of the Bering Sea. The film was produced through a “community-collaborative process” in which the subjects of the documentary had significant input as to the film’s content and presentation. As a result, the film features conversations with individual Yup’ik in place of “the voice-over commentary by an unseen narrator that destroys the cinematic integrity of so many so-called ethnographic films”.