The resemblance is definitely there -- the tail, the raised head, the prancing motion. At least for a moment, before the hoops get tangled and Yüyan has to stop. The young female crew of Mi'kmaq dancers who've been tutoring him dissolves into giggles. His quads burning, Yüyan is happy to return to his camera as Richard takes over, smoothly maneuvering the hoops to create a sequence of animals, culminating in Great Eagle, while his mother and his wife drum and sing.
We are on Lennox Island, a 1,300-acre island off the coast of Prince Edward Island, a reserve and Band government of the Mi'kmaq, who are the largest First Nations Tribe in the Atlantic provinces of Canada. The archaeological record shows that they have lived in these lands for thousands of years -- long before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Today, many Mi'kmaq are reviving cultural practices that were all but wiped out during the colonial period, and sharing them through performance and interaction.
The hoop dance is an example of a pan-Indian practice with deep roots -- hoops represent the circle of life and many tribes have used them in their healing practices.The modern Hoop Dance was brought to mass attention by a Pueblo Indian from New Mexico called Tony White Cloud, who began to incorporate willow hoops in his dances in the 1930s. Today, it is practiced by Indigenous peoples across Canada and the United States.
"I find it really beautiful and deeply emotional," says Yüyan. "All these things they are doing, there is this reclamation of pride and dignity." Yüyan often spends weeks and months at a time living among Indigenous communities, and his work often reflects not only ways of life that have endured for millennia, but the ways in which younger generations are reengaging with cultural practices that were suppressed.
"In the small Native communities I'm a part of, I meet people who are in a place where they're ready to share. There's this Indigenous journey as a reclamation of heritage and as a way of coming back to the world," he explains.
It's a journey Yüyan himself is familiar with. He is of Chinese-American and Siberian Native Nanai/Hèzhé heritage. His Nanai/Hèzhé grandmother was a big part of his upbringing, instilling in him a profoundly Indigenous perspective on the world -- from his spiritual sense of connectedness to nature, to his love of building and piloting kayaks, to his gentle advocacy for Indigenous rights. These are all things that inform his visual storytelling, and are all things he is able to connect with on his travels across Atlantic Canada.