Indigenous Ways to the Present
Native Whaling in the Western Arctic

Edited by Allen P. McCartney

432 pp., 6 x 9
30 photos & maps
Paper $30.00
ISBN 978-0-87480-814-8
Anthropology/Arctic Studies

The traditional pursuit of whales by Eskimo hunters, as it continues to be practiced, is an activity in which humans interact directly with nature. To present-day urban dwellers, such association between people, animals, and the environment may seem exotic. But for the Iņupiat and Yupik peoples these relationships are important, vital pursuits.

A copublication project with the Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press of the University of Alberta, this volume traces regional Native whaling practices for the past 2,000 years. Contributions center on three themes: variation in whaling practices, Yupik and Iņupiat whaling traditions over time, and interactions with changing environmental conditions that include major climatic episodes as well as shorter perturbations. Emphasis is placed on the diversity of approaches to subsistence whaling. While the majority of contributions result from NSF-funded research, several other contributors are ethnographers and archaeologists who have carried out whale research in Alaska for many years. Also included are essays presenting Russian research along the western margin of the Bering Strait and the Bering and Chukchi seas.

“This is an important book and will have a long-term impact on the field. The papers by cultural anthropologists put whaling in the western Arctic in a social context.”
—Herbert D. G. Maschner, series coeditor, The Anthropology of Pacific North America

The late Allen P. McCartney was professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas.