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Tap on the igloo to go home.

Whale Meat Potlatch,
Christmas Day 2006, Point Barrow Alaska
text and images © 2006 2007 by Dr. M. Mustoe December

This report includes images. Tap on any highlighted word and a related picture will come up in another window.

It is Christmas day in the Arctic town of Utqiagvik, Barrow, AK. All the churches in the community are actively engaged in practicing an age old custom that is predicated upon the cycle of the abviq, Balaena mystecetus, the bowhead whale. This evening I walk to the Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church in downtown Barrow. There is no room to park, and taxis are shuttling people in and out of the area near the entrance of the church. People and families are everywhere, and I am a little apprehensive about just barging in with my camera strapped around my neck like a tourist. Finally I get past the crowd and make my way into a large plywood floored room just off the main chapel. It is the distribution room for the whale meat, and almost immediately someone offers me a chair. "Here, sit down right here, and you'll be close so you can eat all you like!" "This is flipper and.... this dark and other light meat is really good!" he says. At the counter where I sit is a communal plate piled with muktuk and other parts of the whale. An ulu stands ready by the tray to cut up more when the supply goes down. But its not just whale at the Inupiat all-you-can-eat buffet tonight. The fare also includes a bowl of wonderful home-made cranberry juice, lemon cake, home-made bread, fruit cups with peaches, coffee and even soda pop. And.... there is this very small.... baby bottle.... on the table, but for the moment I see no babies. But that will change.

I eat my first whale meat cold. In fact, everything other than the coffee is cold here. Someone offers me a cup of cold caribou soup. A frozen fish is brought out, and an ulu quickly makes sushi of it. We all eat it, cold. Bowhead whale, I come to understand, comes in a variety of flavours, all of which I like and eat my fill of this night, cold. This is a potlatch (or potluck) and although eating together is certainly a part of the theme, it's really secondary to the real reason people are here, the distribution of food amongst hundreds of families in this community.

Gilbert Simmonds greets me with a smile that I seem to recall from somewhere else. Then when he speaks, I hear an echo from a few days before. As I walked into the AC grocery in town for the first time, this young man was standing at the magazine rack. He turned toward me and out of the blue wished me a Merry Christmas. It doesn't take long in Barrow, or its adjacent bedroom community of Browerville to make contacts. "You need to get some meat" he says. "I don't know how I'd get it back to Oregon, Gilbert." "Oh, it will freeze up good! Don't worry. I'll get you some good pieces" he assures me. Before long, I have my own box of whale, muktuk, the fatty portion of the whale and its skin, and meat, which includes parts of the flipper and other parts of the whale's body.

The room in which I sit is filled with servers who are dividing up and delivering the whale meat to families who have come to the church for their share in the harvest. The main chapel is connected to this room, and the sounds of the church's public address system bleeds over into the "whale" room. Oddly blended with the frantic noisy hustle of the servers breaking frozen muktuk apart and packing it into boxes, one can also hear Christmas songs and testimonies from the people in the main chapel. Along the wall behind me are pots and pans of all kinds of prepared goods. Some are labeled and some not, but I am particularly interested in one pan marked "Whalers Delight". I was offered a sample, and geepers it was good! Sometime when you're in Barrow, ask someone for the recipe!

I meet Miranda Brown. Miranda is a long time elder and member of the church. She is taking pictures with a digital camera and asks me if I am from the Sounder, the local newspaper. I tell her no, and we trade notes on cameras and batteries. Miranda explains to me that the feast I am witnessing takes place three times each year. Once when a whale is caught, next at thanksgiving and finally on the night of Christmas day. Little do I know it but in an hour or two, Miranda would share with me one of the most precious and memorable Christmas Stories I would bring home from Barrow, all because she needed some images downloaded from her camera. She tells me after all the meat is gone, they'll be distributing the Whaler's Delight along with all the other prepared foods and finally Washington State apples and oranges from Florida and California. Now, amongst the sound of the workers, I hear the hymn Silent Night sung partly in Inupiaq and English. Another anachronistic dichotomy is unfolding before my eyes. And for moments like these, you come to Barrow.

This moment really began nine months ago. During the spring of the year, schools of whale arrive in the water leads opening up in the pack ice of the Arctic. The Inupiat have a name for this whale-way of unfrozen water, Uiniq. It is through the uiniq during the spring of the year that the culture of the Inupiat finds identity with the environment. The uiniq is the opening to the world of the abviq, the essence of spirituality for the Inupiat people. On their way to their breeding grounds, the whales follow the open waters along the shores of the north slope of Alaska and return toward Siberia in the fall.

Just knowing this natural cycle exists helps to understand why, when one is in the coastal Arctic of Alaska or Canada, the conventional boundaries of the political world dissolve in uqsruq, sea mammal oil. For wherever the whale passes within this region, raising itself to the surface to blow out and take in air, by virtue of its presence, it unites the cultures of these shores into a realm. It is no wonder that at the time of the Kivgaq, the spring time celebration known also as the Messenger Feast, that Inuit people from as far as Greenland and Siberia gather for the festivities in Barrow. It is the bowhead whale, with its baleen guarded mouth and a body the size of a box car, that provides the other element for syncretism, the blending of holy things, on this divine night. For on this holy evening in Barrow, Christmas evening, it is not only the arrival of a saviour being celebrated, it is also the arrival of energy from the sea. Divided equally with the sharing of glad tidings of great joy comes the sharing of muktuk and sustenance. This meat is life, but it is also spiritual essence, the force that unites the Inupiat people. This past spring whaling season crews from Barrow harvested 19 whales: it was an exceptionally good year. And now it is time to give thanks and share this blessing with the people.

[Side Note: There was lots to be thankful for in Barrow this year including the safe return of Shane Neakok from Iraq. He was honoured by Alaska Airlines by being the first passenger off our plane that arrived into Barrow. He met with his 92 year old grandmother and a delegation from the community. It was a happy time and you can clearly see in this picture that Shane was very happy to be home for Christmas.]

The Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church in Barrow has the longest historical presence of any of the churches here. In Alaska during the 1880s, church and state went hand in hand, and missionaries were paid to do their work with governmental educational funds. Church denominations were allocated to specific regions to proselytize and set up schools. The Presbyterians already were in Southeast Alaska, but during this time they were also given St. Lawrence Island and the north slope of the Arctic.

Two female singers in the main auditorium are providing a two part harmonic rendition of Angels We Have Heard on High when I meet Lynden Itta, a young man who is attending Bible school in Oregon. He invites me to try the fish. Lynden will be going back outside (the Alaskan term for the lower 48) on January 4th. He tells me that he plans on being a pastor or evangelist in a few years, and he is eager to get back down there to study. I take his picture as we try the fish. The gl-ooooooria part of the song catches on in the distribution room, and now some of the servers are singing in unison.

The Presbyterian Church is one of the largest buildings in Barrow, and tonight every room in the church is being used. Nearly 400 people fill the church. The auditorium is packed. Amongst the members of the congregation, wolf, sealskin, and arctic fox trimmed jackets and parkas are obviously en vogue. But they are not de rigour. I count as many mukluks as there are Nikes, as much rip stop nylon as there is caribou and seal. Modern times have come to the Inupiat. Yet my eye always seems to be directed toward the beautiful natural skinned jackets and parkas some are wearing.

It is a productively noisy scene. In the main chapel, the floor is covered with sheets of cardboard to protect the carpet. From the pulpit, parishioners share their testimonies. One speaks of God's miraculous power protecting him during a whale hunt. Another young man gets up and sings, "take this message to my mother, God has saved her wondering boy." Individuals, and small groups get up to sing Christmas songs; any one is invited to give a merry Christmas wish. Children dressed in suits and seal skin parkas wander up and down the isle. Adults and families sit in the pews waiting for their number to be called. A duo sings a rendition of an Inupiat version of the the Twelve Days of Christmas.....what did their Akka (grandma) give them on the fifth day? "FIVE IVORY EARRINGS!" It's a hit and the congregation applauds the singers.

In 1884 in Barrow, Charles D. Brower established a trading post that would not only put Barrow on the map but his name as well. It traded in everything whale including the five ivory earrings just sung about. Brower learned Inupiaq and married two native women. The old trading post building still stands along the shore of the Arctic Ocean and next to the famous Whale Bone Arch; it's now a restaurant. I ate a Brower Burger there just three days ago. All of this matters since what I am witnessing has been predicated on this local history. More so, in a few minutes, I will speak to someone that carries the genetic history of all of this in his blood, a direct descendent of one of the 14 children sired by the original White trader settler, Charles Brower.

In the distribution room, a chain of men are handling boxes of frozen muktuk by throwing it between each other. One can barely make out the tune "Come Into My Heart, Lord Jesus" being sung in Inupiaq in the chapel as the men begin throwing the whale meat onto the floor making a thud, attempting to break up the frozen chunks. The lady with the two-way radio is Roberta Leavitt. she is directing the meat handlers on how many pounds each plastic box should get. The boxes go to the families and some families get a larger portion than others. She calls out a number corresponding to a family, "Number 21!" and it is delivered immediately by one of the servers. A testimony has just ended in the main chapel, and over the din of the activity in the distribution room Roberta tells me that it's a miracle that she can even do this because she is allergic to fish and there is so much fish being handled here outside of whale meat. But she loves her job and she would not miss this honour for anything. I am reminded of another miracle occurring at another famous fish and bread distribution event. I guess fish, bread, thousands of people and miracles go hand in hand.

There are a lot of young people here this evening. Many of them are servers and all seem to be having a good time. Roberta introduces me to Tiffany Oyagak who, many feel that, she is wearing one of the prettiest coats they've ever seen. I've already overheard the chat. And I agree and ask her if she would not mind if I take her picture in that beautiful coat. She agrees and what I see through the viewfinder brings back an old 1960's Ricky Nelson lyric, "I'm a traveling man, I've made a lot of stops, all over the world...I've a pretty Seniorita waiting for me, Down in old Mexico, If you're ever in Alaska stop and see My cute little Eskimo." Tiffany could have been the cover girl on that album. The body of her coat is dark with a halo of the whitest fluffiest arctic fox around the hood. Fox also trims the base of the jacket and the ends of the sleeves. But what really sets this coat off is the ring of beautiful pink roses around the base of the coat. Am I looking at a rose in the arctic? I think I am, a young lady, a little shy to talk much, with a wonderful smile, representing the future of Inupiat people, a happy one filled with roses.

But the run for the future here is not the run for the roses. Rather its the chase of a whales. And tonight Miranda points out to me three whale crew captains assisting in the distribution. Henry Kignak has just got back from Hawaii, he wears a colourful Hawaiian shirt and a necklace with two bear claws. Lloyd Kanayrak is another captain from another crew. Both of these men are strong men and handle the heavy boxes of muktuk with ease. As I talk with them they project a very balanced intellectual view on what they do, how they do it, and what it means to their culture. You can tell these men are seasoned professionals in the business of subsistence hunting. I ask Captain Kanayrak something about the kind of meat that exists on these whales and how it gets distributed. "It all depends on the captains and what parts they bring in. You've got the muktuk part which is the fat and the skin, and then you have the tail flippers, the flute, which was brought earlier to the elders, and the tongue. Mikiaq is fermented meat with a little muktuk served as a delicacy, Point Hope...some of the whale meat went there this year, we've had a good harvest this year." Captain Kanayrak worked on his grandfathers crew and Like Captain Kignak, it has taken years to acquire the knowledge, skill, and experience it takes to get to where they are today.

In the corner of the room standing somewhat alone is another man. He looks to be about five seven and is wearing a dark heavy jacket, and dark pants. He looks almost like he could be a cousin to Yul Brynner but he has a lot more hair. There's a kind of silent persona surrounding him that projects an authority about him that stands out. Miranda introduces me to Harry Brower Jr. Brower. The historic name drops on my head like a whale bone. I am seeing the genetic reflection of a lifetime of whaling history standing before me. I am in awe. What do I ask a man like this and really not sound like a landlubber from Oregon? He is very gracious with me and tells me that he has been in this business of whale hunting all his life. He has served as Chair of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and as the deputy director of the North Slope Borough (NSB) Department of Wildlife Management. His resume and expertise on subsistence hunting is world renown.

I am interested in the process of the hunt and with articulate detail he describes, "Well we use more than one boat we have a wooden frame boat used in the spring and we have an aluminum skiff boat that can be used to chase the whale if need be. We have to approach the whale from here to the edge of that box to strike the whale." He was pointing to a box of food not more than ten feet away. "It's a dangerous business and we work with a bare minimum of equipment to be out there on the ice." He explains to that subsistence hunting uses very little equipment tow ropes, forty ton block and tackle, harpoons, and that is about it. The processing of a whale takes about two or three days and is started immediately on the ice at sea. Crews are made up of from eight to forty men. Nearly fifty crews went out nearly seven miles last spring. "What is a good harvest," I ask? "Our harvests fluctuate on an annual basis. This year was a good harvest of 19 whales in the spring and in the fall another 3 for a total of 22 harvested." A bad harvest can be three, it can be nothing. "So what is it that sets up the conditions for a good harvest?" I ask. He tells me, "The environment, ocean conditions, ice conditions, weather patterns, wind direction, those are all the variability's that we have to deal with out in the ocean." It is a complicated and dangerous business.

I tell him that I've enjoyed the whale meat I'd eaten at the Christmas feast. Captain Brower, no doubt a connoisseur of this animal, seems encouraged and reflects, "I have never been able to describe the flavour of it. I've given presentations to different levels of people in Washington D.C., to different schools in California and the International Whaling Commission, it is very difficult to explain when they ask what can you compare it with, and I tell them nothing, because there is nothing you can compare it with because of the different ways we eat it, frozen, boiled, pan fried. we cook it the way we want to." I ask him for his suggestion on how I might try my hand at cooking my share when I get back to Oregon? "Try frying it with a little butter it makes a great stir fry." "Would you mind if I get a shot of you before you have to go?" "No, not as long as it's with a camera!"

What an experience, I have just spoken with the icon, the personification of whaling history in Barrow. But all these men are historic. Even in the way they are revered within their community. Where I am headed in few short hours is another world. Can I share in understanding the economic struggles of the subsistence-based Inupiat? Hardly. My metaphor for this in my material world is too weak. We both call it survival, but clearly one version is so much more substantive in the context of necessity. After all, its not exotic whale meat I'm trading in daily; rather, it's simply time for money, two abstracts of the modern world that don't seem to fit in the Eskimo paradigm of subsistence economic values. Where I am headed, there are no whale captains, like Henry Kignak, Lloyd Kanayrak, Harry Brower Jr.. These are men who ubiquitously command the respect of the community not on the basis of their personal income or some social veneer of prestige but rather their collective contribution to a community, through a process some in the illuminated world might even find repulsive and primitive. Their purpose for existing as a culture is based on values derived from measures centuries old and predicated on a concept of productivity rooted in the very essence of the Inupiaq culture. These are men endowed with a lineage of integrity. But the material world is no place for a whaling captain. For the material values of the subsistence based culture that he represents runs completely counterintuitive to the notion that drives the popular culture of the illuminated world, "when it breaks, when its used up, throw it away, there is plenty of that where it came from." Or is there?

My night for time travel is not over. I've seen the past flow forward into the present and now I will get a glimpse of the future. Whose baby bottle was that by the tray of muktuk? For nearly the last four hours what I have been witnessing before my eyes had taken place for centuries amongst this culture; energy flowing through the flesh of the bowhead whale and dispensed to a community of people. Likewise, for centuries these people have collectively distributed that energy through a subsistence-based social system that has taught them to successfully survive and thrive in one of the harshest places on Earth; truly a socio-economic miracle. It's a night for miracles, so why not consider one more. This part of the day will close with a story about about another kind of distribution, another kind of giving and receiving. (Tap on the baby bottle for a surprise visit)

My friend Miranda, the Elder in the church, has been taking pictures of the festivities with a digital camera. She mentioned to me that her card in the camera was nearly maxed out but it would not be until May that she could get to a store in Fairbanks and get these images downloaded. So I offered to burn them from her card onto a CD myself using my computer back at my room at the King Eider Inn.  She asked if I needed a ride back to the motel and I said yes.  As I was getting into her brand new Grand Am, bought in Fairbanks, I heard the distinctive cries of an infant.  "What's that?"  I asked, and she pointed to a little face nestled down in the hood of her jacket.  So that's who the baby bottle belongs to eh?    

Little Miranda was born four days ago on the advent of the longest period of darkness during the Arctic year. That's just the beginning of this little ones adventure into the cold, dark, Arctic winter. Can you say that the woman who gave birth to little Miranda 4 days ago really deserted her?  After-all, she didn't simply leave the baby alone on a street corner.  Rather she told the adult Miranda, "Here I don't want this baby, I just want boys, you can have her." Is that really desertion? The adult Miranda's response to this was, "This baby needs a mamma! I have all boys and I want a daughter!  Is that really opportunism? Tomorrow,  Miranda will become little Miranda's legal mother. Miranda is happy that she finally has a daughter! Little Miranda is happy to be warmly snuggled up against another human being.  Does she ask, "Is that you.... mamma?" Does it matter who it is at 4 days old and 20 below zero? Being born, being helpless, and being left behind, in the endless night of the Arctic winter is truly a nightmare.  In contrast, being found and being loved, especially when darkness reigns all around you, is truly an Arctic miracle. 

For a few moments my mind wanders selfishly into my own enigma; even here this world can be too complex. But in the midst of this moment traveling down this bumpy, cold road, a metaphor emerges for me. It could of been so much simpler if I could of just cried and someone would have stuffed me into the hood of their parka. Of course one would have had to hope there was someone willing to provide the parka space, more so.... the love.

The car slowly warms up, and little Miranda's crying subsides. On this Arctic night of this Christmas Day, we drive through the icy streets of Barrow. It seems odd, but there is traffic in this little town around the clock. Earlier today as I walked along Apayauk Street, which parallels the shoreline of the Chuckchi Sea, it seemed like I was walking along a freeway. Yet below the snow and ice there is hardly a road to speak of, just dirt. Tonight the street running almost directly from the Presbyterian church to my motel, is almost bumper to bumper. The potlatch services are just getting out and people are rushing home to prepare for the community dance to be held later this evening. "Whatever happen to the dogsled?" I ask Miranda. She laughs and tells me, "I don't even own a dog!" How about a carseat? Why should she? She has a perfectly good amaut.

But this evening Momegana Street serves an additional purpose. It's nearly twenty below and the Pontiac rocks like a cradle as it negotiates the snowy, icy ruts on the roads of little Miranda's home town. Snuggled safely between the contemporary design of a modern head rest and encased in her, soon to be legal mother's, historically traditional parka hood of wolf fur and seal skin, little Miranda, swaddled in a dichotomy, finally succumbs to the warmth and rock of her "Grand Am cradle". Her crying subsides and she falls asleep. This world can be such an incredibly lonely, complicated, and cold place Little Miranda....but I think you have just won your first battle in it. Congratulations! Merry Christmas, and pleasant Arctic dreams.

Baby and Mother, Miranda