“People of the Whale is the story of an Iñupiaq whaling crew, living where the vast plain of ice meets the waters of the Arctic Ocean. For the last 2000 years, the Iñupiat have stood on the edge of the sea ice, waiting for the migration of bowhead whales. When a whale passes near the edge of the ice, the experienced crew, paddles over Arctic waters in an umiaq, or skinboat, to catch it… In 1977, the Alaskan Iñupiat won the right to maintain their traditional hunt of bowhead whales and manage the population. By 2011, the Iñupiaq had quadrupled the population of the bowhead, while hunting them for subsistence. The story of the Iñupiat is a prototype of successful conservation using Indigenous traditional knowledge. I spent four years living on the Arctic sea ice with the Iñupiat, sharing the watch for polar bears and eating fermented walrus. I began to understand the complex Iñupiaq relationship with the whales they hunt.”