Photos: Bill Hess' images show lifetime of cultural learning

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At the beginning of my Mormon mission, my parents sent me $80 a month, by the end, $100. That was what I had to live on, so there wasn't much left for film and processing. I didn't take many pictures. One time, both my Navajo companion and I went completely broke mid-month. The Lakota never even let us get hungry. They stuffed us full of delicious food, day and night. In the near past, the Lakota had ridden their horses into the midst of great herds of buffalo. Many remained superb horsemen: Lakota cowboys.

Photographer Bill Hess has spent a lifetime learning about cultures, with much of his experience in Alaska Native and Native American communities.

It was a long journey, up through a tiny tribal newspaper in Arizona and covering village news for Howard Rock's Native Alaska newspaper, The Tundra Times, in the early 1980s. As a cash-poor freelancer, during Alaska's deep recession in 1986, Hess managed to buy an airplane for $15,900. Scrounging for gas, he flew all over the state to meet its rural people.

Winning the trust of Alaska's traditional whalers is tough. They've been burned by journalists many times. And their subsistence tradition is private, spiritual and extremely dangerous. No place for tourists or amateurs.

Somehow, Bill did win their trust.

Read more: Photographer recorded adventure and meaning in whale hunts