Remembering the whale feast

Luke awoke this morning hungry, excited and slightly hung over. He licked his palm and tried to calm the curls that had plagued him since he was a year old. A good looking man, those curls had brought him both good and bad—a few girlfriends, and more than a few jokes—so the palm licking routine was now a nervous habit, no matter how gross his hands. The last few days of travel had been rough. Without the green machines of Europe, Africa and the South Pacific, getting through the United States had been expensive, cumbersome and seldom safe. Fortunately, along with his curls, Luke also retained his resourcefulness, charm and sense of humor from his infant years and so was able to navigate with some success the black markets and corruption of this stubbornly ancient oil economy.

He should reach Barrow tonight, but what will he find? Years ago at this time of year, his parents would still have to bundle him in his snowsuit just to get from the house to the car. When the sun set for the last time of the summer on May 10, snow buntings, or snowbirds as the locals called them, would sing throughout the darkless night. A fresh early May snowfall would clean the view from his window as it covered the dusty snow banks and dirt streets that had recently melted through their eight-month cloak of ice. Today, the only sound he heard were the mosquitoes buzzing in his ear, and his leftover longtime favorite, mac and cheese, was beginning to sweat oil in the warmth of the early May sun. The snow had long ago melted here, just a few miles south of Barrow.


In 2007, spring whaling season brought Luke the only food he liked better than mac and cheese, and that was bowhead whale. He ate the meat, the maktak (blubber) and even the kidneys, but his favorite was the maktak. His parents told him stories about their first spring in Barrow when his father took him to a feast hosted by the whaling captain down the street. With only two teeth and a third just poking through, he couldn’t chew the rubbery tongue, meat and blubber, but he enjoyed the softer kidneys, fry bread and whatever other small pieces his father cut for him. He especially enjoyed picking the small morsels swimming in the juices on his father’s plate.

Most people came to the feast, got their pre-bagged but still warm portions of whale, said their thank-you’s, and retreated back through the arctic entryway, across the snow machine-filled driveway to their still running pickup trucks and SUV’s. Inside, school-age girls divided the chunks of whale into clear plastic produce bags from the Stuaqpak and handed them to the near continuous flow of people coming in and out of the front door. Opposite the kitchen, a group of elders sat around a large slab table with an assortment of large pans filled with the different parts of the whale for filling the bags and eating around the table. One pan had the maktak, another the cooked meat, and yet another the tongue. A fourth pan held the kidneys and intestines, sliced into one-inch sections about two inches in diameter. His father, Mark was game to eat each delicacy, that is except the intestines, which he discreetly avoided.

As the only two non-Native people staying to eat—Luke’s mother had chosen politely to work from home that night—Luke and his father were given a paper plate, a filet knife like they used in Juneau to clean fifty pound halibut, and an invitation to take as much of the bounty as they liked. An elder man pulled an end table for them to sit on to the corner of the table of whale and brought another plate and knife. The company at the table smiled as the two unzipped, shuffled, and began selecting, sawing and chewing through the offerings. Note: The feast is only a small portion of the whale. The above photo is of the much larger portions of raw meat and other parts divided for the community to eat throughout the year.

“Where are you from?” asked an elder woman at the far end of the table. The rest continued chewing, half looking at the cute, rosy-cheeked baby, and the other half now paying no obvious attention to the newcomers. It was comfortable.

“We just moved here from Juneau in December. We live down the street, Mark replied.

“Are you a teacher?” A common question to new, young, non-Native people in Barrow. Most teachers came for the school year and quickly left on the last day of school having made their money for “doing their time” in Barrow.

“No, my wife works for the Borough, and this is my full-time job,” Mark said as he nudged Luke with a smile.

“Boy or girl?” asked another more senior woman with short, white curly hair sitting next to another woman who must have been her sister. At first glance, they looked almost identical. Both were still wearing their traditional floral-patterned, fur-lined parkas despite the well-heated room ventilated only by the occasional waft brought in from the arctic entryway by someone picking up their share of tonight's feast. Both had short, white curly hair that gleamed even more brightly around their brown, weathered faces and wise but surprisingly youthful eyes.

“He’s a boy. His name is Luke,” Mark answered as Luke gave a very charismatic, whale juice drool smile to the sisters. Luke was born with a full head of dark, thick hair that eventually thinned and was replaced by a lighter brown, finer batch. As Luke’s second round of hair grew longer, waves and curls began to protrude in all directions, and coupled with his handsome face, often brought questions about his sex from strangers.

The focus returned to the whale, and Mark was glad to have time to continue chewing the rubbery tongue. “There’s no fast way to eat a whale,” he thought to himself. After a few minutes and a few more visits from neighbors stopping in for their whale-to-go, the first woman spoke again, not bothering to swallow her work in progress.

“It’s very brave of you to come,” she said. “One other doctor at the hospital came once.”

Mark smiled. Normally if someone tells you you’re brave for coming to a place, it means that there must be some danger in being there, but here, there was nothing to fear but the preconceived thoughts he had about what it must be like to eat a whale. Luke didn’t notice anything odd about them being there, and Mark could tell that it must be unusual, but got no sense that anyone minded or, other than including them in the tableside conversation, was changing their ways in any great way due to the presence of a new white face and his son. Luke definitely made the experience easier for everyone. Babies are a universal sign of love and trust, and babies who laugh and smile like Luke bring laughter and smiles from everyone—brown, white, black or purple, whale-eaters or vegetarians.

They had been in Barrow long enough to understand that locals were understandably reluctant to reach out to newcomers who usually came to make an inflated salary for the same work they did elsewhere, then left with their money after completing the time set in their predetermined contracts. But, Luke’ parents were learning that if they made an effort to participate in the local life, the Inupiat would meet them with kindness and generosity even if they usually wouldn’t go out of their way to bring each ephemeral passer-by into the traditions of their ancient culture.

The conversation continued in short spurts with the occasional stare, smile or funny face directed at Luke. Mark recognized one elder woman as one of the extemporaneous prayer chanters at the church service for the whaling captains a few weeks prior. He smiled to himself, remembering how Jesus had brought a piece of James Brown into this old woman’s soul whether she knew it or not. She said she hadn’t eaten whale until she was around twenty when she had also moved to Barrow. That was 1946, when she had moved from an interior arctic village to live with relatives on Alaska’s northernmost coast. Mark appreciated her attempt to find commonality in their experience, and everyone continued sawing, chewing, making faces and nudging themselves into small talk.

After an hour, his father packed the remaining meat from his plate into the plastic grocery sack with the other various whale delicacies he had been given, and bundled Luke into his seemingly endless layers of fleece and down. He thanked the hosts and the elders and asked them to pass his thanks to the captain of the Neakok Crew that landed the whale. With the distinct taste of whale still fresh in their mouths, Mark carried Luke into the single digit temperatures and steady wind for the short walk home under the Arctic’s high evening sun.

Luke heard stories of that night, and others like it, throughout his childhood. His father told him about the dreams of whales he had that first night he ate the meat of a bowhead whale. Luke remembered those things now, as he prepared for what he hoped would be the last of a long string of hard days getting back to Barrow, or what was left of it.

He hoped with every ounce of faith, justice and truth he could muster that he would at least be able to share that ancient experience once more, now, when he was old enough to remember it for the rest of his life as his father did. He longed for that direct connection to a time before nature was confined to the television, monitor or, at best, the other side of the window. The shortsighted greed of the generations before him had cost him the chance to know polar bears, seals and walrus. Now, he prayed that it hadn’t also deprived him of knowing the bowhead whale and the culture that had survived on it for thousands of years.

Did any bowhead whales survive the unprecedented changes of the last few decades? What was left of the culture that was inextricably dependent on those whales? Would he ever again get to chew maktak and feel the warmth stored in its fat as it rolled through his body like an incoming tide through the breached levee of his belly, filling every fingertip and every toe with tingles of renewed energy? Would he still like it? Like it or not, tasting its connection to the earth, or just knowing this culture from the past had survived to the present, would give him the hope he was seeking for the future.