Whale Snow: Inupiat, Climate Change, and Multispecies Resilience in Arctic Alaska

“The Japanese epistemology begins and ends with sonkei (respect); likewise, with the Iñupiat, with the word quksin. Chie Sakakibara begins her research journey with two Iñupiat communities and establishes avanmun (reciprocity) and is adopted by the Iñupiat. Her Iñupiat relations share their uqaaqtuat (personal stories) about their intimate relationship with aġviq (the bowhead whale).”—Sean Asiqłuq Topkok, University of Alaska “When invited ‘not to disappear’ after her initial time in Utqiaġvik, Chie Sakakibara accepted with energy, insight, and compassion. The result, as she shares with us in Whale Snow, is a remarkable and personal engagement with the Iñupiat of northern Alaska. Her book is a powerful testimony to Indigenous ways of being in the world, to the values that sustain a society in the midst of environmental, economic, and political turmoil.”—Henry P. Huntington, Arctic Science Director at Ocean Conservancy