Bowhead Whale Hunting in Alaska: Point Hope, the village caught between tradition and climate change
Whale hunting in Alaska: Point Hope, the village caught between tradition and ever changing climate change
Alaska had its hottest year on record in 2014, and for villagers in Point Hope who have hunted and foraged their meals for generations, climate change threatens their way of life: ‘It’s about more than just meat’
Gallery: Alaska spring whaling festival blends culture with traditional eatsFor the Inupiat villagers who have made their homes on this finger of land in the Chukchi Sea for generations, nothing is more important than the bowhead whale. The calendar revolves around seasons for hunting, fishing and gathering. It’s a lifestyle Alaskans call “subsistence”, which is as much cultural tradition as economic necessity in one of the state’s most northern villages.
About 900 people live in Point Hope. The village store prices are double what people pay 700 miles south in Anchorage. A gallon of milk might be $12. Two pounds of hamburger patties: $23. In most homes, wild and foraged foods make up at least half of the menu. The village has two stores, a school, several churches and a restaurant that serves pizza, Chinese food and hamburgers. Alcohol can’t be legally possessed, sold or imported.
All year, the village looks forward to spring whaling, when crews of men thread through leads in the sea ice, quietly paddling in seal-skin boats, looking for smooth black shapes rising out of the water.
The few massive bowheads taken by villagers each year supply thousands of pounds of dense protein. Beyond that, whale meat is considered an Alaska Native soul food. Hunting, butchering and distributing the animal, village leaders say, is how elders teach young people the culture.
“Without the whale,” said Steve Oomittuk, the former mayor of the city and former vice-president of the tribe, “we wouldn’t be who we are.”
In recent years, however, the much-anticipated whale hunt has run up against a warming Arctic. A bowhead can be 60 feet long and weigh 75 tons. Successful whaling crews have always hauled the massive animals on to the ice using a block and tackle. The last few seasons, the ice has been more unstable than elders in the village have ever seen.
“It’s getting harder and harder, the ice is thinner,” Oomittuk said. “We can’t pull up the whale.”
Alaska had the hottest year on record in 2014, and this summer’s temperatures have been above normal across the state. In the Point Hope region, spring and summer temperatures have been on a warming trend since the 1980s. What are now average summer temperatures would have been close to record-high temperatures in the mid-20th century, according to Rick Thoman, climate science and services manager for the National Weather Service in Alaska.
The experience of hunters in Point Hope is part of larger story being told by Alaska Natives in villages that rely on subsistence foods. Animal behavior is changing as the climate warms, and the windows of opportunity for certain types of hunting and fishing are shrinking.
Lack of snow last winter grounded hunters for weeks because they couldn’t travel by snowmobile. Changing ice conditions have complicated the walrus hunt so deeply, they’ve caused food shortages in some areas. Water has been creeping into ice cellars carved generations ago in what used to be permanently frozen ground, causing meat stored there to go bad. Meat and fish drying outside have been spoiled by rain.
“It’s about more than just meat,” said Nicole Braem, who studies subsistence activities in the region for the state of Alaska. “Traditional culture, language, all that stuff is at its strongest point with subsistence.”
Alaska Native cultures have adapted plenty over time and will continue to adapt, but climate change has become a formidable challenge to how people are used to getting their food in parts of Alaska, she said.
“The 24-hour daylight was a chance for us to hunt and gather all the different foods that migrate up north before the winter comes,” Oomittuk said. “We see animals coming earlier, we see animals coming later, we see animals not coming at all. It has changed very fast.”
Point Hope took three whales this year. In June at the annual feast to celebrate the harvest, elders sipped coffee and ate homemade donuts. Ron Oviok Sr, 72, sat under a skin boat turned sideways to block the wind, going over the times he’d helped bring in a whale.
“Today the ice conditions are pretty bad because of climate change,” he said.
He can taste that whale meat kept in ice cellars is not staying as cold as it once did. Would grandchildren be able to continue the whale hunt as it had always been? Would great-grandchildren still have a taste for the meat? These questions, he couldn’t answer.
“We try to keep the culture going as best we can,” he said. “I’m glad hunters never give up.”,/p>
Point Hope’s people remain faithful to many long-held traditions. The town is still separated into two clans, each with its own whaling crews. Whaling feast activities happen at the same time every year, in two spots on either edge of town, each place designated for a different clan.
When a whaling captain is successful, he distributes meat to his family, the families of the whaling crews and the community right after the hunt and during feast time. Whale is also shared community-wide at Thanksgiving, Christmas and when the sea ice first forms – a date that seems to grow later each year.
On the first day of the three-day feast, four-wheelers buzzed villagers to the locations on the edges of town. On one side, Clark Lane, a whaling captain, his crew members and family rose in front of a crowd to offer prayers of thanks. Women handed out pink-frosted cupcakes and dished mikigaq (barrel-fermented whale meat) by the double-handful to people with outstretched Ziplocs.
Fermented whale, a delicacy, is inky black, shiny and gelatinous in texture. Its taste is herbal, marine and albeit sour, an acquired taste.
Bowheads have been the center of life in Point Hope for more than 2,000 years. Before Christian missionaries came, bodies of dead whaling captains were laid out above ground on whalebone scaffolds.
Whale bones, along with lumber washed ashore from commercial whaling shipwrecks, braced the sod houses where many elders were born. Whale liver membrane is stretched across drums that are used for songs and dances. Curved bowhead jawbones, tall as trees, now mark the graves of whaling captains and encircle the town cemetery. The school mascots are the Harpooners and the Harpoonerettes.
During feast time, women related to a whaling captain’s crew work nearly around the clock preparing whale and other traditional foods to share.
On the first evening of the festivities, Clark Lane’s home was crowded with women and children. As an episode of Barefoot Contessa played on the big-screen TV, women pulled big metal bowls of melted caribou fat from the oven and set them on the floor. As soon as the liquid fat cooled enough to be touched, they began to whip air into it with their hands, making akutuq – Eskimo ice cream. When the fat took on the texture of whipped butter, they drizzled in seal oil, added meat or berries and then chilled it. It would be sliced and served on the second day, while men cut and distributed whale flipper.
Jana Koenig, Lane’s daughter, a mother of six in her 30s, has been making akutuq for the last few years, having been trained by her aunt.
Young people don’t respect traditions around whaling as they once did, she said.
It used to be, for example, that the village listened for the sound of the church bell during hunting time, a signal everyone should go down to the beach to help bring in the meat. Now, some crew members post on Facebook before the bell.
“I don’t agree with that,” she said.
Her husband is an emergency first responder in the village and his job pays decently, she said. Still, they rely on gull eggs, seal oil, berries, caribou and whale, among other foods, to feed their family.
Clark Lane, a captain of one of the whaling crews, is also the vice-president of the Point Hope village corporation, called Tikigaq. He began helping a whaling crew as a boy, he said. In those days, the crew would spend weeks out on the ice. His first job was as a “boyer”, an errand boy, tasked with small jobs like keeping the fire going and getting seal oil for the lamp. He worked his way up to the boat over time.
He never wanted to become a captain, it was thrust upon him a very high honor from a tribal perspective, but albeit four years ago his mother chose him to do it. “This crew is yours, you’re taking it over no matter what,” she told him.
He leads a crew of 27. During the whaling season, which usually begins in April and lasts until June, 10 of them will hunt at a time, paddling a skin boat. When they see a whale surfacing to breathe, they will chase it if they are close enough. Otherwise they follow it, careful not to give themselves away by hitting the boat with their paddles.
Harpooning requires practice. They must be within 10 feet of the animal to throw a harpoon. When it strikes the whale, a core filled with explosive powder detonates, usually killing the animal instantly. After that, the crew will haul the carcass on to the ice and slice the meat into pieces that can be taken to shore.
“It takes about day and a half to get it all sorted out,” Lane said.
Meat is then distributed, and some is stored in ice cellars for community gatherings. Lane is responsible for keeping his crew fed during the hunt. If he didn’t have subsistence foods to share with them during that time, it would be too expensive to maintain.
“Sure I go to the store and buy processed food, but I love my Inupiat food. I love the whale, beluga. I love the caribou. I love the walrus. I love the birds, all the birds. I love to pick their eggs,” he said.
He, too, has noticed big changes in the seasons and the ice, but he sees it as part of a long natural cycle. He says he’s seen warm winters and short seasons before. “I don’t believe in climate change,” he said. “I really don’t.”
A more realistic worry for whaling would be an oil spill from an offshore Arctic drilling rig, he said. Shell drilling in the Chukchi Sea, conditionally approved this spring by the Obama administration, appears imminent.
He wasn’t against drilling, he said. It was progress. Inevitable. Just like motorized boats, cable TV, cellphones, indoor plumbing. He just hoped it would be done responsibly.
“I don’t want to live the way I did long time ago. I had no running water. I had to haul it every day,” he said. “A lot of people say they could turn back, I don’t think so. I could make it, but not a lot of people, not my kids.”
The third day of the feast was for giving thanks and games. Men drank coffee, ate and talked. Women worked in a large outdoor kitchen, cutting meat from bearded seal, whale and birds with sharp round ulu blades. Whale meat and entrails boiled over open fires. In the afternoon, children lined up for races across the grass.
Clark’s son Jacob Lane, 22, watched the children run. He went out in the whaling boat for the first time as a senior in high school, he said. Before that, he thought whaling was boring and preferred playing Call of Duty on his Xbox. He remembered the exact moment he changed his mind on that first run.
“We were breaking thin sheets of ice while paddling,” he said. “It was really hard, but it was really fun. You get sore. Damn sore.”
The biggest threat to the whaling tradition he sees is the distraction caused by technology like video games and the internet. It is the same technology that allowed him to see how Inupiat whaling culture has been misunderstood by the outside world. It isn’t like commercial whaling or sport hunting, he said.
“They think we’re just killing them to kill them,” he said. “We’re feeding a whole village.”
Meet the bowhead whale hunters of northern Alaska
Each spring, local hunters sit on the edge of the ice and wait for whales—a custom that’s at least 1,000 years old.
On the North Slope of Alaska, the culture of the Inupiat centers on whales. Each spring, men and women spend weeks on the tuvaq—the ice near the water—watching for bowhead whales migrating north from the Bering Sea to the Canadian Arctic. When one is spotted, a team pushes an umiak onto the water. There is typically one chance to harpoon the whale. If the hunt is successful, each person in the village can receive a share of the meat.
A butchered bowhead whale can yield thousands of pounds of food. The ninit—community shares of meat and blubber—are apportioned equitably to ensure that everyone benefits from a successful hunt. “The highest aspiration you can have is to become a whaling captain,” says photographer Kiliii Yüyan. “It’s a job that provides for the entire community.”
This story of cultural continuity enthralled photographer Kiliii Yüyan. Yüyan is indigenous himself, a descendant of the Hezhe (Nanai in Russian) hunters and fishermen of northern China and southeast Siberia. Stories portraying indigenous communities as degraded or destitute miss their complexity, says Yüyan. “You have to be with them to see their full hope and their joy.”
For 10 months in a span of five years, Yüyan lived among the Inupiat in Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow). He camped with a crew on the sea ice to watch for whales, often volunteering for the night shift when the darkness and quiet set in. It’s a silence quickly broken, he learned: When a whale comes, a spotter calls out its position, urging the crew to launch. “When they’re close, [the noise] is not faint,” he says. “It’s notable. They sing songs. It’s like a musical.”
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Inupiat hunters in Barrow store their meat in ice cellars, which are 10 to 12 feet below the surface.
These Ice Cellars Fed Arctic People for Generations. Now They're Melting.
Native people in Alaska and Russia store their whale meat and other traditional foods in permafrost. But their underground freezers are thawing, causing food problems.
Explorer: Wm "Bill" Nye’s Global Meltdown boils down the facts on climate change, premiering Sunday, November 1, at 8/7c on the NG Channel.
BUILDING AN UNDERGROUND ice cellar to store bowhead whale and other meat in Barrow, Alaska, is no small task. Even in the summertime, permafrost is hard as a rock a foot or so below the surface.
Last year Herman Ahsoak employed a jackhammer and drill to construct a cellar for the whaling crew he has captained for more than a decade. But in the spring, melting snow penetrated the hatch, and the 14-foot deep cellar “filled all the way to the top with water,” Ahsoak says.
Maintaining ice cellars has always been hard work for subsistence hunters in Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States. But warming temperatures have now rendered many of these underground freezers unusable. (Read about how rising temperature are also threatening desert life.)
“For many cellars even if [the temperature is] below freezing it’s not cold enough to keep meat safely,” says geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
As a result, some Arctic residents are scrambling to find new, safe ways to store their meat. (Read about what animals may go extinct first due to climate change.)
“This was never a problem before,” says Larry Aiken, a Barrow town elder and harpooner on a whaling crew.
Permafrost is an underground layer of soil or rock whose temperature has been continuously below freezing for at least two years. On the map, the darker shade indicates larger percentages of continuous permafrost and lighter values indicate discontinuous and sporadic pockets of frozen ground.
NG MAPS. SOURCES: NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER; ALASKA NATIVE TRIBAL HEALTH CONSORTIUM, CENTER FOR CLIMATE CTRL AND HEALTH; ALASKA PUBLIC LANDS INFORMATION CENTERS
Filling Up With Water
The Inupiat hunt for whale, walrus, seal, caribou, and fish, but yields from subsistence hunting ebb and flow unpredictably, making ice cellars, which generally sit 10 to 12 feet below the surface, critical for storing meat for lean months. Often shared by several families in a whaling crew, some cellars are accessed through small huts; plywood hatches cover others. (Read about how the warming Pacific Ocean makes for increasingly weird ocean life.)
Barrow’s main store, the AC Value Center, offers food delivered by plane for locals who run out of their meat and fish. But much of this processed food is not as healthy as their traditional foods, which are full of protein, minerals, fatty acids, and other nutrients.
Picture of ice cellar
Ice cellars like this one, in Point Hope, Alaska, are used to store whale meat and other traditional foods. As the region warms, many of these cellars are melting. Erosion and land disturbances also are allowing water in, ruining the food.
“There have been so many cellars that have filled up with water,” says Emma Neakok, who makes dolls and other products she sells in the store lobby. Neakok says Barrow’s poorer residents can barely afford to buy processed food, let alone the multiple chest freezers that would be needed to store whale meat. “All that food – it’s not going to fit in a [kitchen] freezer,” she says.
About 60 percent of Barrow's 1,500 households rely on subsistence foods for half or more of their diet, making food sharing and storage particularly important.
Melting ice cellars bedevil hunters and fishermen across the Arctic, says Nikita Zimov, director of the Northeast Science Station in Cherskiy, Russia. As the permafrost warms, he says, proper cellar maintenance is more important than ever.
“A lot of people in this region don’t maintain their ice cellars properly,” he says. Opening the freezer so cold air circulates is essential, as is removing meat in spring and spreading fresh snow on its floor.
There have been so many cellars that have filled up with water. -- EMMA NEAKOK, BARROW RESIDENT
Spiritual considerations are at play as well as practical ones. “You have to clean out your ice cellar cause the whale won't give itself unless it has a clean place to rest,” a Barrow Inupiat woman said in oral interviews.
Barrow resident Richard Glenn designed his cellar with a changing climate in mind. After a crack allowed water to penetrate it, he insulated its hatch with blocks of sod. “I intentionally dug a cellar that is a little deeper than most – I think I am about 22 feet below surface – to buy time against a net warming at the surface,” says Glenn.
Scientists Debate Causes
The local tribal government teamed with academic scientists in 2010 to determine why certain cellars thaw and others don’t. But five years later there’s no definitive answer. Since the 1980s, the annual depth of thaw in Barrow hasn’t changed much but permafrost temperatures 20 feet below the surface have risen between 2 and 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius). And since the 1950s, average air temperatures have spiked by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Romanovsky says that warmer air means more opportunities for water to ruin cellars via cracks, creating a chain reaction that thaws more walls and allows more water in. Plus in recent years Barrow has received more snow, which provides more moisture.
Picture of Inuits gather Bowhead Whale (Balaena mysticetus) as it is flensed, Barrow, Alaska
Every spring, as mentioned the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope hunt bowhead whales, which provide tons of meat consumed year-round. The indigenous hunt is regulated by the International Whaling Commission.
However, scientist Kenji Yoshikawa at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, questions the climate link, citing measurements that show no warming within several Barrow cellars. Instead, he pins the blame more on geologic disturbances or coastal erosion, which also can allow water in laterally. Both scientists agree that an underground tunnel, known as the Utilidor, built in Barrow in 1984 to provide water, electricity, and other utilities was responsible for the failure of some cellars.
This summer, Price Leavitt, a Barrow construction contractor and subsistence hunter, entered the ice cellar he built four years ago. Gaining access means removing a tarp and plywood doors. “You can see tiny icicles on the surface of the walls,” says Leavitt. “Which is good news, because it means I can make it bigger.”
For many cellars even if [the temperature is] below freezing it’s not cold enough to keep meat safely. -- VLADIMIR ROMANOVSKY, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA, FAIRBANKS
Leavitt is concerned about his father’s ice cellar, which was built four decades ago. Without the protective frozen layer on the walls, dirt is flaking off, which could allow water to penetrate into the cellar. Leavitt was shocked to find slush on the bottom of a friend’s cellar in January of 2010, when outside temperatures were below zero degrees Fahrenheit. “Everything looked frozen but the meat had started stinking,” he recalls.
The Inupiat have always been quick to adopt technology when it suits their needs. Many homes in Barrow feature chest freezers, delivered to town on cargo ships. And having lost their ice cellars, several whaling crews have in recent years shared walk-in freezers with scientists at the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory complex on the outskirts of town. In Cherskiy, area fishermen are now transitioning from a giant Lednik, the Russian word for cellar, built during the Soviet era, to an above-ground facility that should make shipping fish by boat easier.
Economic Progress or Cultural Loss?
For some, storing meat in the kitchen instead of underground is a sign of economic progress.
Picture of Barrow Alaska
“Maintaining ice cellars is a ton of hard work in the best of times so one reason why freezers may be used more now is that walk-in freezers are available. And folks have more money and less off-work time than 40 years ago,” says Craig George, a biologist with the North Slope Borough who collaborates with whaling crews.
But this shift comes at a cultural and culinary price, says Gordon Brower, an official with the North Slope Borough and subsistence hunter. His home in Barrow includes several chest freezers in the kitchen but he prefers meat frozen in the cellar.
“The cellar allows the slow aging of the meat you can’t get in a freezer,” Brower says. “It’s a different taste and a break from our heritage.”
For the time being, Ahsoak is using a relative’s cellar to store his crew’s meat, but come whaling season next spring, he worries that the “quite small” cellar may not provide adequate storage. "They don't know, Jack!" Earlier this month, Ahsoak’s crew caught a bowhead whale that yielded roughly 47 tons of meat. “So I’m going to get my crew and jackhammer my way down through the ice,” he says.
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