Anna Kûitse Thastum

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Anna Kûitse Thastum [ ˈana ˈkuːit͡sːi ˈtastom ] (born February 10, 1942 in Kulusuk ; † July 13, 2012 ) was a Greenlandic drum dancer .

Life

Anna Kûitse was one of three daughters and fourteen children of Vilhelm Kûitse (1897–1966) and his second wife Milka "Miilikka" Tûkula (1909–?). Her grandparents were Kûitse, baptized Sejer (1876–?) And Kajãtilik, baptized Theodosia (1872–?) And Tûkula, baptized Kora (1882–?) And Tusiagteĸ, baptized Drusilla (1889–?). Her brother was the drum dancer Anda Kûitse (1951–2019).

Anna Kûitse was a tunumeer and came from a family of drum dancers. Both of her parents were active as such and were descended from shamans. This is how Anna and her siblings came into contact with the drum dance. She cared for her father and after his death married an American telegraph operator working in Kulusuk and moved with him to the United States in 1967 , which is why she learned English, which was very unusual at the time. In 1984 she returned to Kulusuk. In 1985 she married the Dane Arvid Thastum and moved with him to Copenhagen . In 1989 they moved back to Anna's birthplace.

She started singing and when Kulusuk Airport was modernized in 1994 and her brother Anda performed at the opening ceremony, he asked her to dance the drum, but Anna refused because her father had forbidden her to drum dance as a child. Finally she was convinced and from then on performed internationally as a drum dancer. She taught the drum dance even to younger people and thus contributed to the continuation of this tradition. In 2008 she received the Greenland Culture Prize for her commitment . She later campaigned for the drum dance to be declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO . The relationship between her and her husband Arvid in the middle of Kulusuk's USA-related story is the subject of Ivalo Frank's 2010 film Echoes . Anna Kûitse Thastum died in 2012 at the age of 70 after a long illness.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eqqaaniut at sermersooq.gl (archived)
  2. ↑ a b c Guðrún Eyjólfsdóttir: Listin að lifa: List og minjagripagerð í Kulusuk þorpi á Austur Grænlandi. Master's thesis at the Háskóli Íslands .
  3. ↑ Church registers Ammassalik 1890–1921 (various places)
  4. ↑ a b c Anna Kûitse Thastum er død in Sermitsiaq
  5. ↑ Trommedans shall be safe in the culture in the Kristeligt Dagblad
  6. ↑ Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie, Anna Wester steel Stenport: Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary ethos . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2019, ISBN 978-0-253-04032-9 , pp. 381 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Thastum, Anna Kûitse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kûitse, Anna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greenland drum dancer
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Kulusuk
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 2012