Traveling Across Canada and Visiting a Residential School Helps Three BYU Living Legends Dancers Connect With God and Their Culture
Why are you the person that you are today?
What influences do your family, culture or even past experiences have in defining the person that you are becoming — or the person that you have already become?
In Living Legend’s most recent tour, performers both asked and answered these questions. BYU’s Living Legends pays tribute to ancient cultures of the Americas and the South Pacific with music and dance performed by talented descendants of these cultures. The performers use these cultural connections and the music to connect with both God and each other. This year, the troupe travelled across Idaho, Montana and Canada performing “Seasons” — a celebration of their cultural heritage.
Colleen Barnes, second-year performer in the Latin American section, hopes that anyone who witnesses “Seasons” can come away with a message of hope and love for one another. “I hope that all the kids like me, who were almost scared of their heritage because it made them ‘different,’ can realize that those differences are empowering,” Barnes said. “All cultures are beautiful, and embracing each other's differences and loving other people's culture make us stronger as a society.”
On this tour, Barnes was able to return to her hometown of Lethbridge, Alberta and perform for her friends and family — including her grandparents that travelled all the way from Peru to watch her dance. Barnes shared her appreciation to Living Legends for bringing her closer with her Peruvian heritage and teaching her “the necessity of diversity and culture.” Barnes shared that she could feel her family members who have passed on watching and cheering her on during the show: “It felt like the biggest family reunion of my life. I was beaming the entire night with gratitude.”
Fellow second-year performer, Celeste Escárzaga, said that this tour filled her with an appreciation for her life and a sense of belonging.
Before joining Living Legends, Escárzaga was struggling to find purpose after the death of her mother — she was not even a BYU student at the time, but she made her way and auditioned for the performing group. “I come from a Mexican indigenous background where there are immigrants and poverty,” she said. “I could feel God and both my parents on the other side of the veil providing the way for me.”
God made it abundantly clear that he was watching over Escárzaga during this tour. After performing for a stake in Canada, Escárzaga met a woman from her hometown of Chihuahua, Mexico. The two bonded over their shared experiences growing up before realizing that this woman was close friends with Escárzaga’s late mother — they were friends in Young Women’s and even attended college together. “Sometimes on tour, you feel lonely or homesick,” Escárzaga shared. “Meeting my mom’s friend came at the perfect time, and it came because God is in charge; He is the one that connects us all.”
While in Canada, Living Legends performers had the opportunity to connect with members of the Blood Tribe (Kainai Nation). Performers had the honor of visiting the former St. Paul’s Indian residential School in Lethbridge on the Kainai Reserve. “When we arrived, I could feel that I was on sacred ground,” Barnes said. “We sang a few songs and did the Haka — it felt like we were performing for the spirits of the school and for all the children who had died there.”
Being at the residential school was a powerful spiritual experience for the performers, and especially for Kiki Adolpho who is both a member of Living Legends and of the Blood Tribe. “This was my tribe that we were dancing for,” Adolpho shared. “I felt very connected with the spirit, my ancestors and with God when performing.”
Dancers also met Ramona Bighead, another member of the Blood Tribe. Ramona shared powerful stories of resilience from those who endured hardships at the residential school — including herself. “Every horror story that you have heard about Indian residential schools, they are all true,” she tells Living Legends in a video on their Instagram page. Ramona is a fourth-generation residential school survivor, and her children are the first generation in her family that did not attend a residential school.
“Ramona’s story was very impactful for not only me, but for the whole group. It showed that this did not only happen to my people hundreds of years ago — this is part of our history today,” Adolpho explained.
Each of these performers were impacted emotionally by this tour. By learning about and sharing their own culture, or even experiencing a culture outside of their own, they learned to love God’s children better than they could before.
“I never realized that embracing my culture would help me understand my relationship with God better,” Barnes shared, “or that my testimony can grow by embracing other cultures.”
