BARROW -- For 17-year-old Michelle Kaleak, spring whaling season is the best time of year.
Sometimes she joins her family's crew out on the sea ice, where it's peaceful to wait for the bowhead to come, she says. Other times she helps in the kitchen of Lillian Nageak, her grandmother. It was in that room, wielding a tiny ulu as a young girl, that she learned to prepare whale to eat. Back then, as now, several generations work to cut the skin and blubber, freezing some to make maktak and boiling some to make uunalik, and dividing it all into shares to distribute to the community.
This week, the Nageak crew is whaling, participating in the deeply important Inupiaq subsistence activity. Nageak says her sons are becoming captains, carrying on the legacy of Marchie Nageak, who died eight years ago. It's a part of the year both women look forward to, hoping for an announcement of a successful hunt on the VHF radio in the living room.
"The whole town is always yelling when the whale is caught," Nageak said. Kaleak said she often hears a whaling crew offer a prayer of thanks over the airwaves, and a lot of hooting and hollering too. "You can just hear all the happiness," she said. In this video, visit the Nageak home and hear both generations describe the various ways they prepare bowhead whale to eat.