Alaskans Affirm, 'The Gift of the Whale is the Gift of Easter'
Episcopal News Service. June 12, 1991 [91146]
The Rev. Scott Fisher, Associate Editor of the Alaskan Epiphany
On the northernmost edge of North America, past all the trees and all the roads and north of all the shopping centers and skyscrapers, just past the great stark cliffs of Cape Thompson and their lonely herd of muskoxen, a windswept peninsula points like an index finger into the ocean.
On the western edge of that peninsula, amidst gravel and the tiny delicate summertime flowers, is the oldest continuously occupied site on this continent, marked on maps as Point Hope, but known to its residents as Tikigaq. This is the home and the land of the Inuplat, the "real people," the Eskimo.
In the center of the community, at the center of their lives, stands St. Thomas Episcopal Church, the northernmost Episcopal church in the United States. Almost all of the 600 or so residents of the community are members of the church, which celebrated its centennial last year.
On the second Sunday of the Easter season this year, the newly consecrated Episcopal bishop of Alaska flew the 1,200 miles from his home in Fairbanks, to Anchorage, to Kotzebue, and then to Point Hope, a distance equal to flying from New York to Omaha. It was important that he get there. Several days earlier a phone call to the diocesan office brought the tragic news. that four-year-old Ebrulik Frankson, grandson of the Rev. Seymour Tuzroyluke of Point Hope, had died and the funeral would be Monday. Bishop Steven Charleston wanted to be there with his friend and his priest, even if it meant long hours in airports and airplanes.
Almost 12 hours after he first arrived at the Fairbanks airport, the bishop, accompanied by the Rev. Scott Fisher of his office, was landing in Point Hope. The ice-covered ocean shone brightly in the springtime sun, despite it being 20 degrees below zero. Several hours later, in the large green church, the entire community gathered for the traditional Arctic "Singspiration," filling the church and the land with songs and testimonies and witnesses to God's love and care, even in tragic circumstances like the death of children.
Monday afternoon, led by their bishop, they gathered again and, with tears and flowers, laid to rest the small white coffin in the snow of the whalebone-fenced cemetery. The bishop, dressed in Arctic gear, stood in the snow and the wind and said the ancient prayers..."ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
For thousands of years springtime and Easter have been times of hope, even in the midst of death, in Point Hope. Spring has been a time for watching the wind. While other parts of the world celebrate the arrival of flowers and summer, Point Hope awaits the great annual northern migration of bowhead whales. A good north wind in the spring will shift the ocean ice and produce an open lead for the whales to follow. And there the whaleboat captains of Point Hope and their crews and families will wait.
At the heart of what it means to be one of the Inuplat is the hunting of whales in the spring. A successful hunt will feed the community for the coming year, and provide for joyful feasts and community celebrations at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and throughout the year. All of life is based on God's gift of whales in the Easter spring, and this is the way it has been and is and will be, even though threatened and bound these days by international whaling quotas and potential off-shore oil exploration.
Several hours after Ebrulik's small white coffin had rested in the sanctuary of the church, the Rev. Elijah Attungana's "umiak," or skinboat, rested in the same place. Attungana, like his father before him, is one of the 18 whaling captains in the village, and in this small boat he and his crew, alongside the other captains and their crews and their boats, would soon watch for the whales.
His boat, now resting in the sanctuary, was filled with whaling equipment from each of these other crews. To "catch a whale" one must be right with God, and so, for the better part of this century, the whaling season has begun with a "Rogation Service," a blessing of the whaleboats, crews, and captains by the priest. Now that the bishop was here, he could lead the service, crafted in its present version by Tuzroyluke, and bless the boats, offering to God all that was about to happen. Resting there in that skincovered boat, amidst paddles and harpoons, sealfloats and ropes, was all of their lives, all of the past of their community, and all of the hopes for the future. The Rogation Service is a total offering, the embodiment of the ancient phrase from the Eucharist about "here we offer and present unto thee our selves, our souls, and bodies."
In solemn procession the captains walked into the sanctuary, followed by the priests and finally their bishop. After prayers and readings and sermon, the three priests and bishop gathered around the boat and the equipment. With holy water they prayed, the new bishop blessing the captains, the crews, the offering, and finally even the gathered community. "And when you feel the saltspray when you're out in your boats this spring," he repeated over and over again, "you'll remember this moment, this water, this blessing, and know that God's blessing is with you."
With an outburst of smiles and anticipated excitement at what God was going to do, with a chorus of "Good Luck!" and handshakes between the captains, the service ended. Bishop Charleston stood in the midst of it with a wide smile on his face. "I've got a good feeling," he said. "You watch; I've got a good feeling."
That night, when the brief night finally descended, the new bishop of Alaska was playing Scrabble with some of his new friends. On the outskirts of the village, polar bears moved north in their annual spring migration. The next day the men of Point Hope would begin cutting a trail through the jumbled ice, out to the open water. Soon a north wind would begin to blow, opening the way for the gift of Easter, the gift of whales. Within a month, the excited telephone call into the diocesan office in far-away Fairbanks brought the news that the people of Point Hope had just caught their sixth whale (as opposed to three the previous year, as opposed to none the year before that), thereby filling their quota of 6 "strikes" for the year and reminding all of God's continuing care and love.
When they gather for the "nulukatuk," the whaling feast, at the end of whaling season in June -- to give thanks to God, with song and dance and blanket tosses and muktok -- their new bishop will return, to lead their thanks as he led their prayers...early in the season of Easter and whales.