<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_344670" style="width: 830px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-344670">Elder Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley and elder-in-training Yuxgitsiy George Holly will lead dawn prayers at the annual Elders and Youth conference in Anchorage this year. Oct. 8, 2025. (Photo by Yvonne Krumrey/KTOO)</figcaption></figure>

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.

Lingít elder Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley and elder-in-training Yuxgitsiy George Holly are leading dawn  prayers at the annual Elders and Youth conference in Anchorage next week. 

The prayers are from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Wednesday, and they involve singing, dancing, sharing thoughts. This year, they plan to lead a talking circle about tribal values across Alaska Native nations afterwards.

Listen: 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Yuxgitsiy George Holly:  These are the words of Seigeige’i Emma Marks, when   she shared about an old way of greeting the morning, greeting each other in the morning. And she expressed that she said, though all those old peoples would say that “Again upon us, a day has broken.”

Maybe I can share with you the Dena’ina word for dawn prayers: Yetałqun duch’idatqeni. 

Dawn is for everybody. The whole earth turns itself towards the sun each morning, and you can hear the animals waking singing, and it is a time for everyone to enjoy. So dawn prayers is for everybody. It’s time for singing, it’s time for language. It’s time for making connections and really centering ourselves in a healing story.

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: We all live by some values. We all have values that we live by. And in this particular case, we’re going to follow dawn prayers with tribal values circle, and we’re going to talk about how much we love holding each other up, how important it is to show reverence and respect for elders and others, and we’re going to spend some time just remembering and renewing our commitment to that way of life.

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: I don’t at all feel like an elder. I’m learning, you know, I’m learning. We all are learning. I mean, that, of course, is the truth. Lori is one of our elders.

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: How old are you? 

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: 55. 

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: He’s a cusp. I’m 80. So I’m claiming, I’m just recently claiming it. Really, it’s hard to be an elder. There’s pressure, there’s expectations, sometimes unrealistic. You maybe haven’t been able to practice your language or your lifestyle — like he mentioned — early in your childhood, and now here we are, you know, just trying to encourage and hold up others who are really focusing now on language and tribal values. And so, yeah, I’m an elder.

But that’s why this elders and youth conference is so important, working together with the young people who are really coming up in the language and the culture and elders who have some history and stories to share. 

What I found so interesting is that our values are such a way of life that when you ask a group of adults or youth, what are the values that they live by, they can’t mention them. They can’t verbalize them.

And so I found that talking circles about tribal values, it’s just like these lights go on, like, “Ah! we hold each other up, we’re reverent, we’re respectful.” It’s just our way of life. We’re all just relatives, we’re all family. We’re all beginning to realize that we have the same needs and wants. Want to be seen and heard and respected and held up and loved so all that kind of disappears in a talking circle because you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. 

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: That’s so beautiful, Laurie. Gosh, yeah, it’s true. It’s all true.