For This Alaska Town, Whaling Is a Way of Life

For many Alaska Native communities, subsistence hunting and fishing is a way of life. For the Apassingok family, it accounts for more than 80 percent of their food. If Daniel Apassingok and his sons, Chris and Chase, have a particularly fruitful day out on the water pursuing seals, walruses, and whales, they can feed their entire Siberian Yupik village of Gambell.

So it was a collective victory for the village in April 2017, when then-16-year-old Chris became the youngest person in his community to harpoon a whale: Gambell fed off the bounty for months. But after his mom, Susan, posted about the exciting accomplishment on Facebook and the Anchorage newspaper picked up the news, the family received thousands of online hate messages—even death threats.

At once heartbreaking and heartwarming, this story is the subject of One with the Whale, a new, award-winning documentary that premieres on PBS’s Independent Lens on April 22. Created by co-directors Pete Chelkowski and Jim Wickens with the community’s blessing, it showcases the struggles of subsistence hunting—and the lack of understanding about its importance.

“Subsistence hunting is a traditional lifestyle that’s been passed down from generation to generation, and we rely upon it dearly,” says Daniel Apassingok. “It helps feed not just the community, but the next village and people all over the state.”

With a population of around 600 people, the remote town of Gambell sits on the northwest cape of St. Lawrence Island within the Bering Sea, closer to Russia (36 miles) than the Alaska mainland (200 miles). The environment there is rugged and barren, lacking trees or other vegetation. Conditions can be harsh, with temperatures dropping to -20°F in the winter.

For Chelkowski and Wickens, who are not Indigenous, making this film had a profound impact on their understanding of Alaska Native lifeways. “I’m from New York City, and there are probably more people living in the building I grew up in than in the whole village of Gambell—so witnessing the way of life in Gambell was really eye-opening,” says Chelkowski “But this is not some fairy tale; these are real people who are living in the most difficult conditions on the planet and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And they do it with hope and love.”

In Gambell, packaged foods and other supplies arrive only by plane, and the inflated prices at the local grocery store reflect those import efforts. For their family of five, Susan spends upward of $500 a week on the mainly processed foods that line the store shelves. Compounding matters, a lack of jobs makes it tough for many Gambell residents—whose poverty rate hovers around 35 percent—to afford those high food costs.

“You have to hunt, you have to gather berries, you have to gather sea vegetables,” former John Apangalook School principal Rob Taylor explains in the film. “If you don’t do subsistence activities, you die.”

The school allows students to miss 10 school days per year for subsistence hunting and gathering, though kids often skip out on more than that in order to put food on the table. Given the imperative of providing for their families, it can be tough to impress upon young people the importance of formal education.

Of particular significance is the springtime bowhead whale migration, which kicks off a weeks-long whaling season starting in late March or early April, when temperatures warm up to 20°F. Apassingok recalls some seasons, like last year’s, when they didn’t catch any whales. In those years, they try to make up for the lost harvest by catching more seals and walruses throughout the spring and summer. But whales—particularly bowheads, one of the largest and heaviest species—are the ultimate prize. Each can yield hundreds of pounds of meat and maktak (skin with blubber), which are rich sources of lean protein, healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids, and vitamins A, D, and E.