Etching salmon and belugas on bowhead baleen, Alaska elders and youth partake in Iñupiaq art form

Fish hanging in a smokehouse, a wolf holding a piece of meat, a beluga whale: Those were some of the images etched on bowhead whale baleen during a workshop at the Elders & Youth Conference.

More than 50 people gathered on the first floor of the Dena’ina Center on Tuesday afternoon to inscribe their designs on keychains and plaques made from bowhead whale baleen. The workshop was presented by Utqiaġvik’s Ilisagvik College and offered participants a chance to use the Iñupiaq art form to depict what subsistence means to them.

“Etch about your future. Etch about what Indigenous ways of life mean to you. Etch about what makes your heart happy,” said Tigigluk Frieda Nageak, Ilisagvik College spokeswoman and one of the workshop hosts.

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Baleen, found in the jaws of whales and used to sieve planktonic creatures from the water, can reach 14 feet in length and varies in color and texture, depending on the age and size of the whale, said Avu Justina Wilhelm, Ilisagvik College president. Indigenous artists have traditionally used baleen for carving, etching, weaving baskets and making jewelry, artwork and miniature ships.

The Tuesday workshop brought together people from the northern regions of the state, as well as the Interior, Southeast and Southwest Alaska.

Shirley McMillen from McGrath drew northern lights and the Big Dipper on her baleen plaque, “just for all of us in this room, we’re from Alaska,” she said.

Lena Layland, an 18-year-old from Cantwell, made a gift for her auntie Violet Jamison: an etching of Denali that she sees often and can draw from memory. Layland, who is Athabaskan and has Inupiaq relatives, has never made art from bowhead baleen before.

“This is the first time,” she said.

A mother from Buckland sat with her son drawing a sissauni, a beluga whale, which is the Buckland school mascot and a type of traditional food that has been less common to harvest in the area in recent years.

Danny Cornell from Juneau honored his clan of Eagle/Wolf moiety by etching a picture of a wolf holding a piece of meat.

“That piece of meat,” he said, is “just to represent the tough life in the wintertime.”

While workshop participants focused on their art, college staff, students and elders in the room spoke about the role harvesting bowhead whales plays in subsistence and cultural preservation in Arctic communities.

[Bowhead quota extended for northern Alaska communities]

“We set everything aside and we focus on the whale,” Wilhelm said. Wilhelm, whose husband is a whaling captain, shared that with the fall whaling season active in the Arctic now, the community of Utqiaġvik in the past weeks has been landing large whales, averaging between 42 and 52 feet.

One elder in the room was Delbert Rexford, the former president and CEO of Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corp. and a prominent Utqiaġvik whaling captain. He shared that his Inupiaq name is Suqqaq, which translates as baleen.

“Because my name is Suqqaq, baleen, I am a work of art,” he laughed.

Rexford emphasized that harvesting a whale is a spiritual practice and a community effort in his village, only possible after months of preparation and when people come together.

“When we harvest a whale, we feel whole,” Rexford said. “It’s a labor of love.”