Story and Photography by Bill Hess

Clad in his white hunting parka, Malik braced one Sorrel boot against the wooden sled. He grabbed the rope that wove back and forth atop a load of camping gear, and with a mighty tug tied everything down. Then he turned his face into the east wind. "I feel really good today," the Iñupiat Eskimo hunter said, smiling. "A whale is coming. I can feel it. Someone is going to catch a whale today."

Kunuk, Malik's whaling captain—also known by his non-Iñupiat name of Jonathan Aiken—yanked the starter rope of his bright red Ski-Doo. The motorized sled roared to life. Towing the umiak-the traditional wood-and-seal skin boat-behind him, Kunuk drove off over the ice. Their women had sewn together the white hunting parkas, which camouflaged the men perfectly against an expanse of ice and snow. Crew members fell in behind the umiak over which the hides of six large bearded seals, or ugruk, had been stretched. The crew drove northeast, parallel to the lead, along a stretch of open water cutting through the arctic ice pack in the Chukchi Sea. They were some five miles offshore from Barrow, Alaska.

Rough, broken ice forced the crew to stop frequently to cut trail through rugged pressure ridges. Finally, members reached a broad stretch of new ice. This expanse barely had time to freeze to a thickness of about three inches when wind and water shattered it into thousands of tiny, jagged shards. Freezing slush then had welded the shards back together into a chaotic jumble of small pressure ridges, which rose from a tangle of ragged, oddly shaped shards. These shards jutted, like razor blades, in every direction.

Wind or current coming just a little too strong from the east could easily break this unstable ice apart and carry it into the lead. Coming from the west, the same forces could drive older ice into it and grind it into rubble again. The Aiken crew parked their snow machines, took up picks and chopped through several hundred yards of this dangerous jumble to the lead. Here, they would establish their whaling camp.

It was late April. The crew had spent the previous night camped on relatively safe ice closer to land. They had taken turns standing atop a perch of ice. They watched migrating bowhead whales. Sometimes two or three at once would sound-surfacing and blowing a V-shaped plume of water high into the air after their long dive. The sight of the whales had raised everyone's spirits, even if the animals remained out of reach.

Iñupiat elders have long taught that a bowhead desires to give itself to a worthy crew-a crew that works in harmony, that will freely share its flesh with all the community. Before his death, Point Hope elder and whaling captain Patrick Attungana explained how, at each whaling village, "a whale will camp. It will allow itself to be killed. When the whale is caught, just the body dies. The whole whale gives itself to all the people. The dead whale's being, or spirit, returns to the live whales. The returning whales begin to listen to that whale. He tells them that his hosts were good. . . . The whale that had good hosts starts wishing and telling others that it will camp again the following year. . . . We who are older believe those stories of the Eskimos about the animals. When you hunt the animals in harmony, you don't have problems catching the animals." In 1977, this cherished harmony was shattered.

Spurred by scientific estimates placing the bowhead population between 600 and 1,800 animals, the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on the ancient hunt. The U.S. government agreed to enforce the ban. The estimates came from scientists standing atop ice pinnacles near Point Barrow counting bowheads migrating from their winter home in the Bering Sea to summer waters in the Beaufort Sea. The Iñupiat insisted that scientists saw only a fraction of the bowheads.

"We were trying to explain everything to them, but they wouldn't listen," said the late whaling captain Harry Brower, Sr. of Barrow, often described by his people as "Iñupiat Ph.D." "I been trying to tell them, you don't see the whales because they go under the ice and don't show up in the lead. They come up in the young ice. They push their nose up, put a crack in the ice, and breathe. . . . We've seen it-so many springs!"

Wainwright whaling captain Ben Ahmaogak thrusts his darting gun into a bowhead whale.

The whalers also knew that, after passing through the Bering Straits, some whales turned west into Soviet waters. The scientists had overlooked these whales.

Determined to defend their aboriginal rights, whale hunters from ten Iñupiat and Siberian Yup'ik villages organized the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission in August 1977. These hunters represented 1,500 Arctic coastline miles, from St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea to Kaktovik, near the Canadian border. They argued their case at IWC meetings worldwide, convincing the IWC to approve a quota of twelve whales landed or eighteen struck. Any whale hit by a harpoon counted as struck, whether the hunters succeeded at landing it or not.

The whalers realized they had to educate the scientists. With support from the North Slope Borough, the AEWC launched a bowhead census. For more than a decade, biologists counted whales. The U.S. government cooperated and launched a study to determine the subsistence and cultural needs of each community for bowhead. Despite the pain, AEWC members agreed to live by the quota. They negotiated a cooperative management agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration allowing the Eskimos to manage the hunt and enforce the quota themselves.

I first ventured to Barrow in spring 1982, hoping to photograph a successful hunt. Instead, I was greeted by hurt, angry, frustrated whalers. Historically, Barrow whalers had landed upwards of fifteen bowheads. In 1982, their share of the quota was four. In rapid succession, they had struck and lost each whale allotted to them. To these men, such low numbers were a warning from the whales, a warning that tradition was not being followed. "Our culture tells us we cannot say how many whales we are going to get," Barrow whale hunter Raymond Neakok told me. "The quota is disrespectful to the whale. We cannot just go out and catch a whale. The whale must give itself to us. The whale will only give itself to crews who show it respect-and only when the feelings are good. How can we have good feelings when we are divided by this quota? We have no whales. We will have no Nalukataq, no Thanksgiving. No Christmas."

The community hauls up a bowhead near Barrow, Alaska. Despite the hard work no one complains. Even bitter rivals work and share in unity when a whale is landed.

A whaling captain will spend thousands of dollars outfitting a crew. Then he will give all of the flesh of the whale away. He will take no money. This sharing begins at the butchering. In June, the great whale feast called Nalukataq is held. All are welcome. All are fed. Prayers are offered. Songs are sung. All are sent home with generous shares.

The highlight comes when the skins from a successful umiak hunt are shaped into a blanket and used to toss daring celebrators high into the air. The celebration ends when successful crews dance traditional style on the umiak skins. In good weather, they do so in the glow of the midnight sun.

During the early part of this century, Christian missionaries divided up northern Alaska for proselytizing. Some, such as the Friends, in Kotzebue, deemed nearly all aspects of traditional culture evil and tried to extinguish it. Others, such as the Presbyterians, in Barrow, and the Episcopalians, in Point Hope, were more tolerant. All groups worked, however, to supplant shamanism with Christianity. Even so, the Iñupiat people succeeded in bringing their own culture into churches. The churches became places to gather in prayer and song before sending whalers down to the ice. Today, during Thanksgiving and Christmas, the churches become bowhead distribution centers. Successful captains and crews bring box upon box of frozen bowhead to the chapels. They feed the community and pass out shares for later use.

In 1982, there was no whale feast in Barrow. Not in June, when the Nalukataq traditionally happens. Not at Thanksgiving. Not even at Christmas.

That year, the North Slope Borough added an acoustics program to the bowhead census. Using an underwater hydrophone array, scientists identified whales otherwise unseen. As data accumulated, the Scientific Committee of the IWC gradually conceded that the hunters were right. By 1985, the IWC accepted a "best estimate" of 4,417 bowheads; by 1988, it was 7,800 bowheads. By 1996, IWC estimates had grown to 8,200 bowheads. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alaskan Eskimo peoples renewed old ties with Eskimo and Chukchi relatives and friends in far eastern Russia. The North Slope Borough hired Russian Eskimo and Chukchi observers, who confirmed that some bowheads spend summers in Russian waters. These whales have yet to be included in census numbers.

The IWC also wanted to know how fast the bowhead population was growing, and to be assured bowhead numbers would increase. Studies have pro-ven that the numbers are increasing at a healthy rate. The IWC also wanted assurances that whales would be killed humanely, with as few as possible struck and lost at sea.

Since 1988, hunters in Barrow have tested a new titanium-encased penthrite "super bomb," created in Norway specifically for harpoon-mounted darting guns. The bombs have resulted in many instant kills. By 1999, the super bombs are expected to be available to hunters in all ten whaling communities. In past times, struck-and-lost rates as high as 50 percent were common. In recent years, between 72 percent and 80 percent of all struck bowhead have been landed. Because members of the AEWC proved that the bowhead population is growing-proving also that Eskimo hunters are responsible managers-quotas have risen dramatically. At an IWC meeting in Monaco in October 1997, the AEWC and IWC agreed on a five-year "block quota." Through 2002, Alaskan Eskimo whalers can land a total of 255 bowheads, for an average of fifty-one whales a year. They are allotted sixty-seven strikes a year.

For the crew back on the ice, an increased quota was good news. They parked their snow machines and began to pitch camp. Kunuk armed the harpoon-mounted darting gun with one of the new super bombs. Eli Solomon, Kunuk's lifelong friend and shoulder gunner, chambered a 16-inch long copper-shelled black-powder bomb inside the heavy, brass shoulder gun. Kunuk carefully laid the harpoon over the bow of the umiak. Hand-carved paddles were wedged into place between the ugruk skins and the ropes binding them to the umiak frame.

Before they could complete their preparations, a bowhead arrived. Crew members scrambled. They grabbed the gunwales of the umiak and pushed it to the edge of the ice, then shoved off in pursuit. Overcome with excitement, one of Kunuk's grandsons who had stayed behind lost his breakfast between two chunks of upturned ice. The bowhead dove, disappearing into the ocean depth. The crew returned to the ice. Soon, they set up camp. Another whale blew. A second chase ensued. The whale vanished.

The work of breaking trail had left me hot and soaked in sweat. If I did not change into something dry, I knew I would sink into a state of cold misery.

I went into the tent and removed my parka. I placed a Canon F-1 camera with a medium telephoto lens in one pocket and another with a 24 mm wide angle lens in the other. I laid the parka by the tent flap, then spread dry clothing in front of me. I removed my warm outer garments and my shirts, boots and socks. This was my fifth season venturing onto the ice, and not once before had a bowhead come to a crew that I had followed. Suddenly, the tent flap whipped open. "Whale!" Kunuk's eldest son, Johnny, whispered excitedly. I jammed my feet back into my boots. I yanked my cameras from my parka and cast it aside.

In this state of near-undress, with my untied boot strings flapping free, I slipped outside. Just yards from the ice edge, the triangular hump of a bowhead appeared. It glided silently towards the umiak where Kunuk, crouched low in the bow, grasping the harpoon, waited. Just behind Kunuk, Eli sat, gripping the shoulder gun. Several crewmen crouched on the ice around the umiak, ready to shove off. It looked and felt to me as though the whale were bowing before the umiak, as if it were truly making an offering of itself.

As quickly and silently as possible, I scooted behind the umiak to the backside of the windbreak. I heard the hollow, scraping sound of the keel being pushed over the ice, followed by the splash of the umiak entering the water, then a blast of air from deep within the bowhead's lungs as it exhaled its final breath. I popped my head over the windbreak. Kunuk had raised his harpoon. Eli had lifted the shoulder gun into firing position. His son, Claybo Solomon, stood directly between my lens and the action. I scooted just inches to the side, then pulled the viewfinder to my eye. My breath had frozen onto the viewing glass. I could see nothing but blur.

Kunuk began the motion to thrust the harpoon. Instinctively, I shot as fast as my thumb could crank the manual film advance. Kunuk's harpoon sank into the whale. The trigger to the darting gun contacted the bowhead's skin, firing the super bomb deep into the whale's body. Eli followed close behind with a shot from the shoulder gun. An explosion flashed from the barrel. The recoil knocked Eli off the seat and onto the floor of the umiak. The whale disappeared beneath the water.

No one moved or breathed.

Seconds later, the shock of two muffled explosions rippled through flesh, water and ice. Johnny and Jonas took off over the ice with the float, unraveling the rope connecting it to the whale. Malik sprinted close behind. Several more seconds passed. The whale rose to the surface and rolled onto its side. It raised a flipper into the air, and in this way told us its spirit was about to shed this "parka," which it had now given to Kunuk and, through him, to his entire community.

"Thank God!" someone shouted. Suddenly, everyone was clasping hands, hugging, laughing, crying. Tears stained my cheeks. Perhaps a few of these tears were for the death of this great animal. Yet in that death I had witnessed something ancient and beautiful. I had witnessed a gift of life, culture and of spirituality, given by a whale to men.

This year, there would be a Nalukataq. Daring whalers and other community members would climb onto the skins that had carried the umiak to the whale. Community members would gather around those skins, take hold of ropes woven into their edges and, pulling in unison, toss the bravest and most skilled fifteen to twenty feet into the air. The mid-night sun would shine bright on Kunuk, Eli, Malik, Claybo, Johnny and all the crew as they danced atop those same skins.

Come Thanksgiving and Christmas, the people would gather in the churches of Barrow, where they would again share the gifts of the whale.