WARNING!  This post contains photos of a whale being butchered.  You might have strong sensitivities to seeing the slaughter of a mammal with large quantities of blood! 

The natives in Barrow had lived in the area for a very long time.  And, unlike most indigenous people elsewhere, there was little or no possibility of developing an agrarian economy ... the earth is permanently frozen, and little grows in it.  So their source of food had to come mainly from sea, and/or from animals that migrated through the area.  

When the treaty banning the hunting of whales was signed, some exceptions were made.  One of them was for the Inupiats in Alaska. They were given the right to hunt a small number of whales each year.  And, as luck would have it, two whales were killed on successive days while we were there.  It was unusual and we were invited to watch and photograph the process of "harvesting" the catch. 

The whales were towed back to Barrow from the kill point.  In many ways, the catch seemed like an occasion for a celebration ... kind of like a block party in Los Angeles!

For some reason, we had no cameras with us on our first visit shortly after the whale had been hauled ashore.  I regret that as there were several shots I did NOT capture that still reverberate inside my head!  The images shown here all came from later visits after much progress had been made in separating the various edible parts.

It was very much a community effort.  I guess that there were about  thirty people involved.  Most were men but there were at least four or five women helping:

There seemed to be a lot of work involved in separating the meat surrounding the baleen.  

I do not know what part of the whale this was:

Intestines?

Outer skin with a thick layer of blubber...

It was hard work that took an entire night to complete:

This man was separating meat from the carcass with a hand knife:

Long strips of blubber:

A closeup of a piece of blubber:

Near the end:

Virtally all of the whale was carved up and divided amongst the community where it  is stored in the cellars of their houses built above the permafrost!  Only a few bones remained and they were carted off to a bin where the birds and polar bears would clean them off.  Nothing was wasted!

I sat next to an elderly man on the way out of Barrow.  I asked about how the meat was divided and he drew me a picture  showing who got to take the various parts  of the whale.  

All-in-all, it was a fascinating and unexpected view into the past.  In my mind it made up for the lack of Polar Bears, but I regret that I had not yet developed the experience as a photographer needed to tell the story better!

Adam

P.S.  I was offered a piece of fresh, raw, blubber which I politely declined ... I'm sorry now that I didn't  try it.