After years of playing music in and around Bethel, Ralph Sara finally got a chance tp perform before a national audience.

The Bethel musician, locally known from the group the Funky Eskimos, travelled to Albuquerque, New Mexico in mid November with his newest group, Medicine Dream, to perform at the Native American Music Awards. They were the only Alaskan band to be invited. "It was really cool," said Sara. "We did one song at the awards show on Veteran's Day." The performance was televised nationally and featured on a special webcast.

The group was nominated for three NAMA awards for Best Debut Album (Mawio'mi), Best Pop Album and for Best Songwriter to group leader Paul Pike. Sara joined the group last year when the former Medicine Dream bass player quit. One of the band members had one of the Funky Eskimo CDs Stealing Our Souls and tracked him down and offered him the job.

"We are doing this all for sobriety," Sara said. "We are trying to get the word out about sobriety and the good things in life."

The group is so serious on their stand for sobriety and against alcohol and drugs that they refuse to perform in bars. In fact, they said that when performing at the Alaska State Fair, they shut down the beer tent.

The rest of the group members (Paul Pike, Buz Daney, George Newton, Cea Anderson, Chuck Henman, John Field) come from a mixed variety of different indigenous and ethnic cultures. Sara is Yup'ik and Sami (Laplander) and others are Aleut, Inupiaq, Tlingit, Lakota, Choctaw, Apache, Navajo, Mi'kmaq (Canada), Mexican, German, and Scandinavian.

While most of the band members work and go to school in Anchorage, Sara prefers to live in Bethel where he performs in several local bands, but Medicine dream is his main gig. "I plan to keep on as long as this band is together," Sara said. "Hopefully we will tour and make it to some more Native American music awards. I want to make my mark as an Eskimo and a Sami."

The groups debut album Mawio'mi will be followed by another recording scheduled in March.

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