Join the University Libraries’ Indigenous Nations Library Program as they present “Of Whales, Songs and Global Warming: Inupiat Responses to Climate Change” as part of the Native Pathways Lecture Series, on Thursday, Feb. 26 at 4 p.m. in the Willard Reading Room in Zimmerman Library. The lecture will feature Chie Sakakibara, Ph.D., research fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, who will focus on the Inupiaq Eskimo people of Alaska and their cultural responses to global warming.
Her research examined how the Inupiaq people of Arctic Alaska culturally process environmental changes caused by global warming and the specific ways in which global warming affects indigenous society and traditional institutions and practices that link these people to the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus).
Identifying themselves as the “People of the Whales”, the Inupiaq people rely on the bowhead whale to maintain their lifestyle and culture through the hunting process, the communal distribution of meat and associated ceremonies and other events. Arctic climate change influences both bowhead whales and triggers direct threats to subsistence whaling, which threatens indigenous traditions, music and perceptions. Currently, this threat makes global climate change policy a human rights concern for the Inupiaq population.
By elaborating on the cultural survival efforts and sustainability of the Inupiaq people, this presentation considers the past and future actions of the United States and the world in the time of global warming and displacement of human identities.
The day’s events include: a brown bag lunch from noon through 1 p.m. in the Herzstein Room, which will be followed by the lecture at 4 p.m. in the Willard Reading Room.
For more info contact Savannah Gene, lecture series coordinator at savgene@yahoo.com or call (505) 277-7433.