Inupiat Zen

Jeff Berger is a long-time member of the Center. What follows is an unedited e-mail I got from him recently, after one of his trips to the far north in Alaska.
-Sensei

According to an Inupiat dictionary, alliviniq means "ice under other ice that could at any moment come out from under due to current or boat wake." The Inupiat people have lived along the North Slope of Alaska for thousands of years and have good reasons for knowing about alliviniq. For the past week and a half, I've been on the North Slope in Barrow Alaska, interviewing many residents for a museum exhibit I am to build.

It's early August. The sun is always shining and temperatures range from the 30s to the 60s depend-ing on wind direction, ocean currents, and whether the melting summer pack ice is on shore or miles out into the Arctic Ocean. Soon the sun will set for the first time in eighty days, beginning the return to the dark, cold winter. But even after the sun begins setting each day, the tundra and ice will continue to warm and thaw for several weeks.

The fall whaling season will resume in September. Then people from Barrow and the other whaling villages along the coast will paddle umiaks, skin boats, across the waters in pursuit of Bowhead whales. In the spring, Bowheads migrate from the northern Pacific to summer feeding grounds in the Arctic Ocean east of Point Barrow. In the fall, they return to the northern Pacific.

Inupiat people hunt and harpoon whales from umiaks in much the way they have done for millennia, even though they use aluminum boats, outboard motors, snow machines, TVs, CD players, microwaves, tanning salons, etc. for other tasks. If the primary methods of whaling have changed only a little, the Bowheads themselves have also changed slowly. Inupiat whalers can identify individual whales they have unsuccessfully pursued in previous seasons by markings on the head and body.

Last year, a whale was caught that had a metal harpoon head lodged in its body from a previous hunt. On the old harpoon head were scratched some initials. One of the crew that had struck the whale looked at the initials and realized they were those of one of his grandfathers who had died many years before.

Bowhead whales live a long time and the Inupiat have hunted them for a long time. A whale brought ashore two years ago had a stone harpoon head imbedded in it.

When a whale is caught, the meat, blubber and body parts are shared out by the captain of the whaleboat in a distribution ceremony. The crew of the successful boat gets certain portions of the whale, crews that assists in the capture receives other parts, the community as a whole receives shares as well. What portions go to whom is determined by tradition.

During an interview, I asked a whaling captain what his responsibilities were. Without hesitation he said the first responsibility is to feed the community. The second is to ensure the safety of his crew.

Whaling is dangerous. It demands full attention. I know the "definition" of alliviniq, but what good is that?

The umiak rocks, the wind blows and the waves surges.
Now! Look! See!
Alliviniq!!