Ronald Brower, Sr., an Inupiat from Barrow, Alaska, was born in 1949. He writes a firsthand account of how his community thrives through the seasons on what they catch. The bowhead's significance, described in his 2001, Part II lecture about Eskimos' traditional life, has "for the Inuit people been the center of our cultural, nutritional, and spiritual well-being for over 3,800 years." (Part I of his lecture was given in 1978.)
Brower was raised in a sod house in Iviksuk and, because he was sickly as a child, he was cared for by his neighbors while his family tended trap lines. The elders taught him the myths, legends, and history of his people that led him into a life of teaching. This 2001 lecture speaks of the feeling of starvation that overcomes his community when they are not able to hunt the whale due to regulations imposed by the government.
"For the Inuit of the Chukchi Sea, it is a dismal time when we are unable to capture the bowhead whale. When we cannot capture the bowhead, it is as though we do not participate in celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in our communities. Then we are forced to subsist on less central resources to meet our nutritional needs until we can resume the hunt of the great bowhead the following spring".
The commercial whaling industry served to collapse the native population, yet things gradually became better for the Eskimos in the 20th century with the formation of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. This organization serves to protect the whaling traditions of the native Alaskans. It is Brower's lectures which help us understand the struggle Eskimos were experiencing to feed their families and what the purpose and use of each animal they hunted meant to them.
Quotation: Ronal Brower, Sr., Part II Lecture, 2001.
