The celebrants come from the scattered villages and towns that dot the coastal islands of SE Alaska. The Tlingits, who seem to be the principal tribe locally, (of the 20,000 SE Alaska Indians on the tribal rolls, the internet tells me, 16,000+ are Tlingits, 3000 Haida,and c. 1200 Tsimsians) are bound together by a web of relationships of (at least) clan, blood & marriage kinship, and location. Everyone is either an eagle or a raven. Within those groups are clans, and within those clans, houses. So while we are standing in line waiting for the fry-bread to be done, the man behind us introduces himself to the woman in front of us. He starts with his name and clan affiliation (if I followed the English translation he gave me) to which she responds and is in some way linked. Then he discusses his ancestors back a few generations, and where they have lived, as does she. They work out where they are located relative to each other in this web, and now they are not strangers.
There are hints of some similar arrangements in our past. Certainly there are regional affiliations among us: New England, New York City, Dixie, the West. Strangers meeting on the road hear a familiar accent, and strike up a conversation based on region. You can get it to state, but its harder to do county – although upon hearing that the 2nd mate on the MV Columbia was from Eureka I resolved to search him out (but didn’t). We are too many, and too mobile, to get down to recognizing names but people will ask if you know their relatives or friends in your area – even if your area is New York City. Back home this is sketchy, among the Tlingit, limited in number and geographic range, it seems to be second nature.
And then there is the song, Are You From Dixie?, a very successful song in the late 30s and 40s when so many southerners had to leave to find work in the North, first because of the depression, then the booming war industries of WWII. Give it a listen if you can find it on-line. Dixie is, as the song says, "anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line" which the reader will recall is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland.