The Whale Hunt

Gordon Brower and whaling crew

The story of subsistence whaling on the North Slope of Alaska is a long story that includes traditional culture and knowledge, as well as fighting for cultural survival. Inupiaq people and their cultural predecessors known as the Thule culture have been hunting whales for thousands of years. There is evidence of bowhead hunting by the Saqqaq culture in Greenland four thousand years ago. The Nature article describes harpoon points for hunting warlus in Alaska found from 1000 BCE and states that "Systematic whaling with large umiak boat crews became a central economic feature of the Thule culture that migrated into the Eastern Arctic and Greenland around 1200–1400 AD." This would be similar to the whaling methods that continue to be used by Inupaiq whaling crews on the North Slope of AK. 

In the modern period, commercial whaling dramatically reduced the whale population. According to the website Cultural Survival: 

In 1977, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned the harvest of bowhead whales by Alaska Eskimos because of a report erroneously estimating the Bering Sea stock of bowheads to between 600 and 2,000 whales. The Eskimo hunters were notified of the ban in June 1977, which was the first they had heard of the IWC's concern. The whalers responded quickly and established the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) to fight the ban, organize the whaling communities, and manage the hunt themselves. At a special meeting of the IWC in December 1977, the ban was replaced with a quota for 1978 of 18 whales struck or 12 landed, whichever was reached first (this quota was later raised to 20 struck and 14 landed). This compromise followed much work by the hunters who lobbied the U.S. government to recognize their right to whale.

While I was on the North Slope, I participated marginally in one full whaling season. During the spring whaling season, the whales are hunted from camps out on the sea ice. The whaling crews live out on the sea ice where a lead--a break in the ice--opens up. Once a whale is taken, the body is pulled up onto the ice.  It takes a large number of people to pull the whale up with ropes and block and tackle, and then many to help with the flensing of the whale. The work goes on for many hours and is an example of interdependency that remains a core value in the Inupiaq culture.

In Defending the Sacred, McNally writes about the Makah whale hunt, revived briefly in 1999, (241-246). And so much of what he writes is spot on with what I observed in Barrow, AK. He mentions how the whale was harpooned "with a force aided by ancestral strength" - a theme I know is part of Inupiaq whaling culture as well, felt also in this traditional whaling dance performed by the Barrow Dancers in 2011.  A ceremonial welcoming was held for the whale as it was brought to shore. A feast for the whole community was held and "meat, blubber, and oil were distributed to reservation families who tasted, many for the first time, their Makah soul food" and how the harvesting and sharing of traditional cultural foods unites, heals, and transforms the community.   

In this video by the New York Times "A Sacred Whale Hunt Continues," Edward Itta describes whaling as a sacred activity. You can sense the register of the sacred in the "togetherness" described by whaling captain who says, "It knits the community. You know we help each other. If we get a whale, the whole community eats." The whale is precisely butchered or flensed and the meat and other parts distributed. The baleen is shared with artists and traditional craftspeople. There is a specific section of the meat called the Tavsi or belt from the rear of the whale that is reserved, prepared, and served to the community. In Barrow, when a whaling crew takes a whale, this portion of the meat is prepared that day by the captain's household. The whaling crew's flag is raised about the house and all the Native people line up with baggies to get their portion of the prepared meat. 

Another section of the whale, called the Itigruk from the tail section is prepared and served at the spring whaling festival called Nalukataq. This festival, which I attended in 1994, happens in June and is associated with the summer solstice. The entire community turns out, sitting on the ground, and is served a variety of foods including soup and different types of whale meat like maktak (blubber generally boiled) and fermented meat that is dark and slimy in consistency. There is traditional dancing as well as the famous blanket toss. I was literally right there helping to pull the blanket but was too nervous to actually get tossed.

Great article that describes much of this "Inupiaq Traditions: The Gift of the Whale" and here is another from Alaska Magazine, "Inupiaq Whaling: Life, Identity, and Survival."

A note on aesthetics: The fall hunting season, there is no sea ice. Hunting is done from motorized boats and the whale is pulled up onto the beach. It looks something like this. I had pictures that I took of fall whaling when I was living there, but who knows where they are now. When people see these images, they often have a negative response - it often looks just like a bloody mess to them. For people unused to butchering an animal and unfamiliar with this process in Inupiaq culture, that visceral response masks what is actually a ancient and familiar practice that requires much cultural expertise. It is a spiritual and cultural high point of the year for Inupiaq people and represents hundreds perhaps a thousand years of cultural continuity. A visceral response of revulsion causes us to misinterpret the significance of the moment. I wrote about this at the beginning of chapter 6 in Being Viking.