fbpx
Alaska Magazine
Tag

subsistence

Browsing
Nathaniel Wilder
Authentic Alaska

First Whale

By

Young Inupiaq captains provide food for their community Text by Molly Maqpee Lane, Images by Nathaniel Wilder Time stands still when you catch a bowhead whale. Meetings are canceled, work is forgotten about, chores go undone, the kids don’t go to school, and sleep is out of the question.  The only focus is on harvesting the giant mammal. Sometimes it can take hours, sometimes it takes days to put away. It’s such a joyous time that it doesn’t feel like work. Thomas Edison once said, “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” That is what whaling is all about. I am from Point Hope, Alaska. It is the oldest continuously inhabited region in North America. We have always been an Inupiaq subsistence community. Thanksgiving of 2022, my in-laws Jacob and Della Lane Jr. passed down their whaling crew to my husband, Jacob Lane III,…

Culture

Caribou People

By

The importance of the Porcupine herd to the Gwich’in people

[by Charlie Swaney and Peter Mather | photos by Peter Mather]

AS I SIT WITH GWICH’IN HUNTER CHARLIE SWANEY UNDER A CLASSIC BLUE CAMPING TARP, A RAIN DRIZZLE SILENTLY DRUMS ALL AROUND US.

Culture

Ionia

By

Intentional community eats with purpose [by Amy Newman] LIVING OFF THE LAND IS THE ALASKAN WAY: Alaska’s Native people have led a subsistence lifestyle for generations; sportsmen stock their freezers with salmon and halibut in the summer and moose and caribou in the winter; weekend foragers spend the late summer months filling buckets to overflowing with berries for jellies and jam. Yet even in a state where subsistence living doesn’t elicit much awe, Ionia, a 200-acre intentional community located in Kasilof, 160 miles south of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula, manages to stand out. The 45 men, women, and children who live in the semi-isolated community focus on living as naturally and healthfully as possible, said Eliza Eller who, along with her husband, Tom, was one of the community’s founders. The idea for Ionia was formed more than 30 years ago, in 1970s Boston. Four families, each experiencing mental and…

Sign up for our newsletter for more exciting Alaska travel content.