The spiritual and religious nature of dance perhaps shows its importance in the lives of Native peoples the most. For many groups, dancing was a crucial part of spiritual ritual and celebrations. For the Yup’ik people of Alaska, the pre-Christian significance of dances led to dance being first banned by the Catholic church, and then welcomed into it as a result of Vatican II. During a midwinter ceremony, masked dances in which the participants asked the spirits of the animals to return next year were known as “agayuliluteng, a term that later came to mean prayer”.

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