Nuvuk

After trips to Hawaii and southcentral Alaska, my return to Barrow has been just as eventful! We’ve been blessed with beautiful weather and a friend offered to take me on an ATV ride past the end of the road to Point Barrow in search of beluga whales. While we didn’t see any whales, we came across a small graveyard and stopped to take a look. The graves were from the late teens and early twenties. The grave with the largest marker had a small caribou skull adorning the foot and the smaller grave to the right was adorned with an offering of five ducks. We were really pleasantly surprised to see this as missionaries in the past did their best to eradicate any behavior that was deemed shamanistic and the stigma lingers. I hope to head out there again to document the grave with the caribou skull, but I was really pleased with how the offering of ducks came out. Going to Nuvuk, the Inupiaq name for the area of Point Barrow, was a great experience. You are surrounded by two seas on a small jut of gravel containing remains of polar bear meals and remnants of subsistence hunting. I look forward to the wedding I’m going to shoot out there soon!