The Wrangell JOM Kaasitlaan Dancers will perform three times at Celebration 2026 in Juneau this week.

The dance group totals close to 60 people — youngsters, elders and in between.

Almost three dozen live in Wrangell, with others who belong to Wrangell clans coming from Anchorage, Ketchikan and Juneau, said Virginia Oliver, who is the song leader and one of the drummers for the dancers.

Tommy Rooney also will drum for the group.

Celebration, one of the largest cultural events in Alaska, features traditional song and dance, a juried art show, a toddler regalia review, Indigenous fashion show, Native artists market, food contests and more.

Organized by Sealaska Heritage Institute and put on every other year, it will run Wednesday through Saturday, June 3-6.

Celebration will be livestreamed on Sealaska Heritage’s YouTube channel.

The lead dance group will be Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim Tsimshian Dancers (Our Own Dance in Our Hearts), a multigenerational group from Anchorage formed in 2005.

The theme of the gathering is “Enduring Strength.”

“This Celebration we can rejoice in the timeless strength of our people as evidenced over the thousands of years we’ve faced adversity with resilience and fortitude,” said Sealaska Heritage President Rosita Ḵaaháni Worl in a prepared statement.

The lead dance group is responsible for leading the Grand Entrance and Grand Exit songs, during which every participating group dances across the stage to mark the beginning and end of Celebration. More than 1,800 dancers from 34 dance groups — including two new groups from Hawaii and New Zealand — will participate this year.

Grand Entrance will begin at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Juneau’s Centennial Hall.

The Wrangell dancers are scheduled for three different sites around downtown Juneau: 2:55 to 3:25 p.m. Thursday, June 4, at Centennial Hall; 4:15 to 4:45 p.m. Friday, June 5, at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall; and 1:15 to 1:45 p.m. Saturday, June 6, at the Sealaska Heritage Arts Campus.

The children’s dance group, which totals about 20 youngsters, is separate from the elders, but they will dance together at each performance, Oliver said.

“We call ourselves the Wolf Troupe,” she said of the elders.

Along with Oliver, Lu Knapp teaches the young dancers and Sandy Churchill also helps with the dancers. All three are going to Juneau.

Most of the group traveled by ferry on Sunday, including parents who took their vehicles to provide transportation around Juneau, though many flew up, avoiding the 30-hour ferry ride that went through Sitka on its way to Juneau.

The Wrangell airport terminal was packed on Sunday for a send-off for the dancers.

“We received a really generous grant from the Walker Foundation,” Oliver said of the Wrangell nonprofit that contributed to help with travel and other expenses. WCA also contributed.

The Wrangell dancers will sleep in a church just a few blocks from the events.

Oliver attended her first Celebration 28 years ago and continues to look forward to the gathering of dance and culture. “The first one I went to in 1998 was with Marge Byrd’s dance group.” 

Byrd, who was the dance group leader and lead drummer for the Shx’at’ Kwaan Dancers since the 1970s, died in 2016. 

The dance-and-culture festival began in 1982 as a way for Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people to gather and celebrate their cultural survival, according to Sealaska Heritage.

What started as hundreds of people gathering in Juneau “sparked a renaissance of Native culture that prompted people largely unfamiliar with their heritage to learn their ancestral songs and dances and to make regalia for future Celebrations.” 

Now thousands of people are drawn to Juneau for the event, “the largest gathering of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people in the world.”

“We have survived environmental and climate changes, the loss of our lands, public policies that nearly wiped out our cultures and epidemics that diminished our populations,” Worl said. “We have been tested, and almost erased. Yet we are still here.” 

The 2026 Celebration will feature several new events, including earring-making classes; a Tlingit culture, language and literacy book launch; a regalia photo booth; and a project documenting clan crests.

The Celebration 2026 art was designed by Tlingit artist Bill Pfeifer Jr. (Wéidaaká Yóodóohaa), who won with his piece “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House,” inspired by the 2026 theme.