Nicole Johnson was 24 when she kicked a sealskin ball suspended from a frame and set a women's world record. Her foot reached 6 feet 6 inches in the air at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics in July 1989, a feat that sent crowds roaring. Now 57, she's returning to compete again this July, trading the two-foot high kick for dene stick pull, where competitors grip a greased stick and wrestle for control against an opponent.
The WEIO, held annually in Fairbanks, Alaska, is where hundreds of Indigenous athletes gather to compete in traditional games that have roots across Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, and Canada. Johnson serves as head official for the event, which runs this year from July 15 to 18. She's been a fixture there most of her adult life and plans to stay involved for decades to come.
"I am going to be doing Arctic sports until I'm in my walker or wheelchair or until I can't do it any more," Johnson said. "And when I can't do it, I'm still gonna be sitting on the sidelines cheering everybody on, offering my coaching advice."
These games were not invented for sport. The two-foot high kick originated as a communication method. When hunters killed a whale far from their villages, they would leap into the air, both feet together, signaling to those who couldn't hear their shouts that the catch had been made. The knuckle hop, where athletes start in a push-up position and hop forward on their knuckles and toes, mimics the way hunters once stalked seals by wearing their hides. The kneel jump, a test of explosive power from a kneeling position, taught ice fishers how to spring to their feet if the ice cracked beneath them.
For centuries, these games built the survival skills and physical endurance that Arctic life demanded. In modern times, they survive as cultural practice. Competitors range from age 12 to their 70s. The top three in each event earn medals, though participants say they come for the community, not the hardware. Last year, WEIO drew nearly 3,000 spectators.
That cultural continuity did not happen by accident. It was fought for and nearly lost.
When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, federal policy shifted toward forced assimilation. After the Organic Act of 1884 established American governance in Alaska, Christian missionary schools became the primary tool for erasure. Children were separated from their families, forbidden from speaking their native languages, and punished for it. Traditional hunting and fishing methods were banned. The games, which trained young people in those very methods, became something to hide.
Rosita Worl, a Tlingit anthropologist and president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, was six years old in the 1940s when missionaries removed her from her home and brought her to a Presbyterian boarding school. She experienced physical abuse over several years. "The games were basic training for hunting and fishing," she said. "If you want to eliminate hunting and fishing, then you get rid of the training."
Indigenous communities practiced in secret. "We had to practice our ceremonies away from where there were white people," Rosita said. When non-Indigenous people appeared while they were playing their traditional games or speaking their language, "we'd stop what we're doing and run around and act like we're playing."
The suppression began to crack in the 1960s, as Alaska Native activists pushed back. In 1961, the first WEIO was organized in Fairbanks specifically to ensure the games passed to the next generation. The real shift came in 1971, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act transferred 44 million acres to Indigenous title and expanded Native political power. "At that time you really see the emergence of Native culture coming out into the open," Rosita said. By the 1970s, schools and community centers had begun teaching Arctic sports openly.
Today, athletes like Amber Vaska, the WEIO board president, learn the games through school programs and family instruction. Vaska, who is Yup'ik from southern Alaska, was 10 when her school introduced her to the sports. Now 37, she's training for this year's competition with weightlifting, plyometrics, and running. For her, the games are a way to connect with heritage that might otherwise feel distant. "I don't do a lot of sewing, and I haven't learned my language, but I have learned the game," she said. "It's my way that I can share and celebrate our culture and to continue it into the future to the next generation."
Kyle Worl, a Tlingit, Yup'ik, and Deg Hit'an Athabascan wellness administrator and coach who is Rosita's grandson, has taken that responsibility further. As a high school student, he demonstrated the games at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. A teacher told another athlete that Arctic sports weren't legitimate. "That lit a fire in me early on," Kyle said. "I was like: 'I must show the world, I must show people that I'm a real athlete, this is a real sport.' I wanted to be the best athlete I could be, so that no one would question me."
He's been competing in WEIO since 2011, and for nearly a decade he's run youth programs bringing Indigenous athletes from across Alaska to the games. His training for knuckle hop includes practicing with gloves to protect his hands. He competes globally, and has invited Indigenous communities from Mexico and New Zealand to participate in Arctic sports events. As a board member of the North American Indigenous Games, a multisport event for Native youth in Canada, he's helped add Arctic sports to the 2028 competitions.
His larger vision is bolder still: he wants to bring these games to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. He sees it as a platform to build awareness of Arctic Indigenous life at a moment when the region faces unprecedented climate pressures. "I don't want our culture to be a relic of the past in museums," Kyle said. "It's something alive, and it can live beyond its original context. Our own Indigenous sport, language and culture, are part of the fabric of what makes us human and diverse. It's important that our culture, our voices are recognized on that world stage as well."
Author James Rodriguez: "These games survived despite generations of deliberate erasure, and now they're not just surviving, they're expanding globally on terms set by the athletes themselves."
Comments