Environmental Change, Indigenous Knowledge, and Subsistence on Alaska’s North Slope

The centrality of women in successful whaling is described in detail in an interview we conducted with Ida Olemaun, a female elder of Barrow and a whaling captain’s wife. Here she describes what she learned from her mother (also a whaling captain’s wife) about the spiritual connection between women and whales, and the responsibilities of the wife of a whaling captain to the whaling crew:

One thing that Mom has told me was that whenever there is a whaling crew that is setting up to become whalers . . . it’s the lady that’s more the one that’s really in control . . .. And that the whale looks at the woman and that the whale lands on real like, green pasture. That’s how I can describe it. And gives of itself . . .. And what the woman does is prepare for their clothing, make sure that they have food as the preparation is going on, and they have warm parkas . . .. So as a whaling captain’s wife you have to be responsible for that, to ensure that they have their needs met.

Because the presence and participation of women, and wives in particular, is necessary for a successful whale hunt, their role is in no way auxiliary. As Bodenhorn summarizes, “wives ritually attract the animals and are thus classified as hunters by Iñupiaq men,” and “animals give themselves up to men whose wives are generous and skillful; it is also the men’s responsibility to treat the animal properly, but it is the woman to whom the animal comes.” ¹

Sociologists Janet Mancini Billson and Kyra Mancini provide a similar analysis of traditional Inuit culture in Nunavut, Canada prior to European influence:

The Inuit did not delineate gender roles as precisely as some have reported, which, in turn, had a profound effect on the balance of power . . .. Contrary to popular images of nomadic life, females crossed over into “male” territory when it was necessary for survival. They also fished and helped with communal caribou drives . . .. Similarly, although women counted food preparation and cooking as a central part of their role, men crossed into the woman’s territory of preparing food and mending clothes when they lived on the land for extended periods while hunting or fishing. ²

Evelyn Donovan captures the sense of complementary roles and the sharing of in the following quote. Although she is a skilled hunter, she also takes great pride and pleasure in the work of sewing and cooking:

I’ve gone up and hunted myself . . . and there’s other women who’ve done the same . . .. We need each other to balance the subsistence lifestyle as well. We all have our own places, we have our own jobs to do. The minute we go to camp, while the male, the men set up camp, I’ve already started cooking so we can eat and make for sure that everything’s right. And we work hard like this instead of standing around. There’s a difference but really not, I guess if you will, in the sense where we go hunting every person no matter whether they’re a woman, a man, or child, we all have a job to do.

Mary Sage is a young Iñupiaq mother who grew up in Seattle and Fairbanks but moved to Barrow several years ago, because she wanted to become more involved in traditional culture (her mother is originally from the North Slope). Here she describes learning to butcher, and its multilayered significance concerning identity and community participation:

At first I was really intimidated because I’ve never seen butchering and I’ve never participated in butchering an animal or hunting . . .. The first time I saw someone butchering was my neighbor and it was this huge bearded seal and it just shocked me because oh my gosh, you know, I’ve never seen that. You don’t see that in Fairbanks, you know? . . . And then I felt like a tourist cause when my friends parents’ were butchering I would take pictures . . .. Once I learned how to butcher, you feel like you’re giving more, you know, you’re helping out and it gives you a good feeling of connection to your ancestors . . .. So, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve learned a lot.

Iñupiat women have distinct and special roles in relation to subsistence practices, but their contributions are not strictly limited to those roles. In a different vein, Evelyn Donovan enthusiastically describes her love of hunting, and how she learned to hunt:

Four of us older sisters we were taught to hunt. So that’s why I love to go. A lot of women don’t do all what men do . . .. The way I learned my Dad would take us cause we’re four older girls. He’d take us on the boat and we’d go hunting. And back then, I’m almost sixty, back then you have to be really rich to have an outboard motor. So what did we do? We’d go on the edge of the water and by the edge of the rivers and pull the boat along . . .. And I loved to hunt so I always went with him. I know I carried many hundreds of hind-quarter of caribou every hunting season.

In interviews, participants often mentioned women hunting caribou, and on the walls of quite a few of the homes we visited were yellowed photos of female ancestors and family members, posing proudly on the tundra next to felled caribou, looking fabulous, with hunting rifles in hand. Both male and female participants discussed women hunters with admiration, and although women whalers and hunters of sea mammals are far less common, exceptional women whalers and seal hunters were also mentioned. This is consistent with the picture of gendered norms in Iñupiat society presented by Bodenhorn, who found that women who slay animals are considered skilled rather than “unwoman-like,” and “men and women are not thought to be somehow congenitally incapable of doing something generally assigned to” the other sex. ³

1. Bodenhorn, “I’m Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is,” 58, 61.[↑]
2. Janet Mancini Billson and Kyra Billson, Inuit Women: Their Powerful Spirit in a Century of Change, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007, 43.[↑]
3. Bodenhorn, “I’m Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is,” 60. Flexibility of roles is evident in recent studies of Iñupiaq family structures. In a study of twenty-five “complex” (non-nuclear family) households on the North Slope, anthropologist Amy Craver found that, “Generally Iñupiaq sex roles and division of labor are not rigidly defined. If a husband is disabled, the sons or wife will become the family’s hunter. An unmarried woman with children will often hunt to feed her family or rely on a brother or relative to provide for them.” But importantly, men will also take on caretaking and food preparation work typically associated with women when needed. The families Craver studied include quite a few examples of young, middle-aged, and older men taking care of elders and children as their primary work. Amy Craver, “Household Adaptive Strategies Among the Iñupiat,” in Complex Ethnic Households In America, Ian Craver, Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, 107. Similar data concerning flexibility and egalitarian tendencies in contemporary gender roles (in spite of the presence of sexism) are presented in Julie Winkler Sprott, Raising Young Children in an Iñupiaq Village: The Family, Cultural, and Village Environment of Rearing, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2002.[↑]