The cultural truth in drum dance festival of aboriginal people in Northwest Territories in Canada

Abstract

Dance is one unique art whose cultural truth has been misinterpreted based on individualism, assumption, and scholarly perceptive thinking because of its major functionalities of identity and entertainment, thereby suppressing the core truth of originality and essence. Any dance's originality and essence make it culturally communicative, relevant, and diverse anywhere it is performed. The dance of any community tells its own story of who they are and how they emerged, but whether is generally acceptable by all and sundry becomes the sole purpose of this research using the drum dance of Aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories of Canada as a study. To justify claims or findings in this research, the study adopts the cultural consensus theory by Williams H. Batchelder (which states that people must communally understand and appreciate their culture with one tone before others would accept it). The study concludes that the potency of any dance must be fact-based on communally accepted truth on unaltered originality and essence, and not individualized ideology as mere identifying tools and entertaining amplifiers.