(Marc Lester / ADN)ĭuring the whaling season, everything else in Point Hope comes to a pause. It was Nashookpuk’s first whale as captain in 14 years. Whaling captain Jan Nashookpuk adjusts his crew’s flag near the location where the bowhead whale his crew hunted would be pulled onto the ice near Point Hope on May 10, 2023. Subsistence hunters in the village have 12 attempts annually to harpoon the animal - the number set by the International Whaling Commission in accordance with the Point Hope population, as well as with the health and abundance of the whales in the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort stock.

Today, depictions of whales adorn village buildings, posters on school walls outline subsistence seasons, and baleen and jawbones lie outside the houses. The animal provided residents with food, oil for fuel and bones for house frames, tools, grave markers, boats. In Point Hope, or Tikigaq in Iñupiaq, life has revolved around bowhead whales for thousands of years. It was surreal to us.”Īn aerial view of the northwest Alaska village of Point Hope, on the Chukchi Sea, on May 13, 2023. “We had to sit down for a second because we’re like, ‘Did we really catch a whale?’” Schaeffer said. Jan’s wife, Tada, and his 25-year-old daughter, Janice Schaeffer, stopped home to calm their feelings and decide what food and kitchenware to pack for a night on the ice.

People were eager to help Nashookpuk’s crew pull their whale, more than 48 feet long, from the water. The bell rang, and for several hours, Point Hope buzzed with the sounds of snowmachines heading out to the ice, a few miles away. Then, on their return to camp, the whalers saw the animal that they harpooned, setting off a chain reaction of human activity. He went out on the ice most of the years, helped other crews catch whales and, since participating crews share harvests, provided meat for his own family.Īfter a sleepless night in a tent on the ice edge of the Chukchi Sea, he and his crew chased at least two whales that morning. In his late 40s, after his father passed away, Jan Nashookpuk became a captain. Then he became a harpooner for his parents, Henry and Emma Nashookpuk. He grew up whaling, first, as a boyer on his uncle’s crew as a young boy, bringing food to the ice camps. “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Nashookpuk, 63. It meant that his crew had landed a whale for the first time - the culmination of years of work. It’s a traditional way, in the Iñupiat community of around 900 people on the Northwest Alaska coast, for a whaling captain to announce a successful hunt of a bowhead whale. Then he climbed a tower and rang the bell several times. He pulled a sled with two black flippers from a bowhead whale. With children watching from snow banks and everyone cheering, Jan Nashookpuk arrived on a snowmachine.

Snowmachines, four-wheelers and trucks rushed to the green church in the middle of town. POINT HOPE - The village came to life on a bright May afternoon. Whaling captain Jan Nashookpuk rings a church bell in Point Hope on May 10, 2023, a traditional way to signify a successful bowhead whale hunt to the community. Updated: 1 day ago Published: June 3, 2023

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