Thirty-two years later, the legacy of Miss Cama’i lives on.

The contestants in the 2025 Miss Cama’i Pageant stand onstage.

Each year, the Cama’i Dance Festival recognizes the accomplishments of young Alaska Native women in the Miss Cama’i Pageant. The pageant, originally founded in 1994, crowns a young woman to serve as a cultural ambassador whose mission is to build leadership and increase community involvement among people of the Y-K Delta and beyond. Over the years, the legacy of the Miss Cama’i pageant has grown alongside the long line of women who have worn the crown and passed it on, including Kelsey Ciugun Wallace, who, though never officially crowned Miss Cama’i, played a key role in leading the pageant in the 2010s.

In 2011, Wallace was crowned Bethel’s Miss Kuskokwim, a pageant that took place at Bethel’s Fourth of July celebration in front of the old bowling alley. From there, she went on to compete in and win the Miss WEIO (World Eskimo Indian Olympics) Pageant just a few weeks later. Upon her return to Bethel, Wallace was inspired to restructure the Miss Cama’i pageant. She and her father John worked to organize and coordinate the pageant with the support of numerous local organizations and volunteers. 

Wallace cites the Miss WEIO pageant as an important source of inspiration for the current structure of Miss Cama’i: “We tried to model a couple of key elements from Miss WEIO’s competition. The little orientation and the interview, and then we added on the photo shoot.” 

For Wallace, the Miss Cama’i pageant meant creating opportunities for young women to be role models in their communities. 

“Being able to see someone who, you know, puts their best foot forward and who wants to be healthy and wants to be a good person in our community,” is what it’s all about, says Wallace. “I think that is really healthy for our communities.”

Where traditional beauty pageants judge contestants on things like swimsuits or hairstyles, Wallace says, the Miss Cama’i pageant’s status as a cultural pageant makes it stand out. 

“When it comes to cultural pageants like Miss Cama’i, you have a chance to share about your culture and who you are in your place and your culture, and that is where it becomes so special,” she said. “It’s not a beauty pageant, it’s really a cultural pageant where these women are able to bring forward the beauty and the strength and the support of community”

 Tatiana Taanka Korthuis crowns Joeli Angukarnaq Carlson as 2025’s Miss Cama’i.

Now, thirty-two years after the original pageant, the legacy of Miss Cama’i continues to grow. Among the ranks of those who have worn the crown are Tatiana Taanka Korthuis and Joeli Angukarnaq Carlson, the two most recent Y-K Delta women to be crowned Miss Cama’i in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Both also continued on to be crowned Miss WEIO in the months succeeding the festival, an accomplishment held by several Miss Cama’i winners over the years. 

Korthuis and Carlson, who both attended Bethel’s Yup’ik immersion school Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, have fond memories of dancing at and attending the Cama’i Dance Festival as children. 

“Each year I remember being so excited about watching Miss Cama’i,” Korthuis reminisced. “As a little girl, I’d be rooting for her. As I’ve gotten older, I was kind of like ‘Okay, she knows what she’s doing!’ So I’d look up to these women who were up there running for Miss Cama’i. From a young age, I knew without knowing that I wanted to run for Miss Cama’i one day.”

Carlson, who is from Kwethluk and Bethel, remembers watching the pageants, too, but never imagined that she herself would be onstage wearing the crown one day. When the day came for her to compete for the title of Miss Cama’i, Carlson’s focus was on increasing representation of those with mixed heritage like herself.

“I feel like our generation is one of the first generations that's mixed and, you know, they don't really see that representation of us,” she said. “I didn't really see anything like that growing up.”

Onstage, Carlson’s platform of walking gracefully in both the Western and Native worlds resonated with the many people whose lived experience reflects both Native and non-Native roots. She recalls feeling shy at her first public appearance as Miss Cama’i during 2025’s Breakup Bash in Bethel.

“It was really cold out, and windy, so I had my qaspeq on, and then I had a hat on, and I had my coat over the sash,” Carlson said. She remembers being approached by a woman whose name she didn’t know, but who told her she had once been Miss Cama’i, too. “She fixed my sash and everything. She was like, ‘I was Miss Cama’i. You have to show your sash proudly and not be so shy.’”

In this simple act of encouragement, Carlson was reminded of the legacy that she is now a part of in bearing the Miss Cama’i title. She’s excited to continue carrying it on, to tell her story, and to represent the people of the Y-K Delta. 

For both Korthuis and Carlson, the experience of being Miss Cama’i has opened doors and forged new connections.

“I've had the opportunity to travel, to connect with people from different backgrounds and really represent my story and represent our communities,” Korthuis said. “I think that was my favorite part, was meeting new people, and being able to connect with them about who we are, especially as Indigenous people.”

As preparations for this year’s Cama’i Dance Festival are underway, and with them the preparations for a new Miss Cama’i to be crowned, Korthuis and Carlson want to encourage everyone who has even the slightest desire to apply for the pageant to do it. Their advice? Be yourself, and know that you are the one who knows your story best.

Applications for this year’s Miss Cama’i pageant are now open! Visit swaagak.org/miss-camai for more information and to access the application.