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‘No whale, no music’: Iñupiaq drumming and global warming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

Chie Sakakibara
Chie Sakakibara*
Affiliation:
The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Hogan Hall, 2910 Broadway, New York 10025, USA (cs2704@columbia.edu)
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Abstract

This article explores how climate change has recently influenced the Iñupiaq cultural identity as the people of the whales. Their traditional whaling cycle reveals strong indivisibility of music, emotions, and place based human identity. To illustrate such integrity of the Iñupiat and their culturally critical bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus), a search was made for specific ways in which climate change influences Iñupiaq spiritual and physical ties with the whale in relation to traditional music making. Traditionally, the Iñupiat say that it is the whale who brings them music, thus no whale harvest means no music production. However, when the environment is less predictable, the homeland eroded, place based songs gone, and human-whale integrity threatened, how specifically are these changes manifested in the Iñupiat-whale relationship? Providing detailed descriptions of 2005–2006 nalukataq (midsummer whale feasts), this article examines how contemporary Iñupiat respond to environmental changes in the emotional and cultural dimensions through their music making.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 289 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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