Bowhead Whaling Bans, Environmental Activism, and Adaptation Among Iñupiat Peoples in Alaska, 1977-1981

Bowhead Whaling Bans, Environmental Activism, and Adaptation Among Iñupiat Peoples in Alaska, 1977-1981

This is the ninth post in the Historicizing Adaptation blog series, introduced here by series editor Shannon Stunden Bower. On a cool and unusually crisp day in August 1977, Harry Brower, Sr., sat solemnly at his desk in Utqiagvik, Alaska, deliberating the dubious future of the bowhead whale hunt. Since approximately 800 A.D., populations of Iñupiat people residing in what now constitutes the North Slope Borough (NSB) had utilized toggle-head h…