Beluga Hunting July 1964

Living in Kivalina in 1964, My husband, Tiger was lucky enough to be part of a group of hunters who caught four beluga whales. It was early July and I remember the anticipation in his voice as he called out “Belugas.” He rushed out to be part of the crew to hunt down these creatures. I was excited as well and hurried to a spot where I thought I could watch the hunt taking place. There was nowhere to watch and I returned home hearing the sound of the boats and the occasional shot.

Tiger returned to the house he told me the crew had caught four belugas. I couldn’t help but think that the old way of hunting was with combined with the new. The umiaqs they used were wooden frames with skin over the frame. In addition, the boat was now powered by an outboard motor. Although they had rifles with them, Tiger told me the belugas were caught by harpoons. What an experience for him!

He said all the village would be at the area where the belugas were being hauled up to shore and suggested to me to come and join the excitement. I was surprised to find that the belugas looked more like white proposes than whales.To me the belugas looked huge. Tiger later told me that belugas weighed between 2,000 to 3000 pounds whereas a killer whale can weigh up to 12,000 pounds. I can’t even imagine the men hauling one up to land.

When I arrived, it appeared as though every man, woman and child had come to participate in an ancient tradition. Everybody had a knife to cut off pieces of the flipper and I knew I was witnessing something that had been part of the culture for hundreds of years. It was fun to watch the children as they eagerly cut off a piece and chewed it with satisfaction. The look of delight on their faces is something I will never forget.

I hoped no one would suggest that I try a piece but Tiger whispered to me “you need to try it Deanne.” I shook my head indicating I really did not want to try it, but he had already cut off a piece and handed it to me. Everybody was watching my reaction as I took a bite and I smiled at them to let them know it was okay. In reality, it was tough — perhaps a bit like shoe leather with salt on it but for the Eskimos it was a delicious treat, one they looked forward to every year.

Tiger told me the men would do most of the work the work on the belugas, cutting them up and laying them in strips to dry. I was happy knowing I would not have the work I had when I cut up the seals a month ago.

The day after the beluga hunt we were invited by a neighbor to eat as she put it “real Eskimo food.“ Some of the food served was muktuk which was the skin and the blubber of the beluga caught the day before. In those days it was most often eaten raw. It was too fatty for me to eat much of it but I was happily surprised to find I liked it. It is still served raw but now the natives often serve it finely diced, breaded, deep fried and served with soy sauce. Such a departure from the traditional way of serving it but something I would love to try. I look back on that time so many years ago, and realize how lucky I was to be part of a culture that is changing rapidly in part due to climate change.

#DeanneBurch #Kivalina #Alaska #thealaskanobodyknows #journeythroughfireandice

My Dogs Part 3

We had taken two dogs home with us from Alaska. Clover was born in a hole and was supposedly wild. She was given to me by one of the women there, Charlotte Swan. When we took the two dogs home we found that Clover was not the wild one. In fact compared to Pepper she was docile.

Tiger took the two dogs for a walk every day. We lived in a small farmhouse and he was able to wander the property with the dogs. Pepper was free to run and many days Pepper would deposit a pheasant at Tiger’s feet. Tiger would throw the pheasant into the freezer and soon we had enough for a small dinner party. There was nothing like having a dinner party with pheasants with no shot in them. How could we possibly tell our guests that our dog had caught them for us?

Pepper’s favorite thing to chase however, was cats. Any cat in his site was fair prey for him. Barn cats didn’t stand a chance when they got close to Pepper. When we moved to Winnipeg in 1966, we tied Pepper and Clover up to stakes in our fenced in backyard, but cats could get through the fence and God help them if they got close to Pepper. He would lunge and snap at them and one time was able to injure our neighbors cat. Yes, we soon learned that we couldn’t tame a sled dog. And yet, Pepper was gentle when we brought our newborn, Karen home from the hospital. He took one sniff at her and seemed to know she was ours. He and Clover became her guardians. No one was allowed close to Karen.

Tiger’s mother was looking after Karen, who wanted her to stay with her for a week in Harrisburg, while we went back to Winnipeg. The house was quiet without Karen but our rambunctious dog soon made up for it. We went out for a party one night leaving the dogs in the basement. The dogs greeted us at the door. They almost seemed to be smiling. We were horrified to find that Pepper had chewed a huge hole through the door of our rented house.He hated being locked up.

Meanwhile Clover was the perfect dog. It’s true she nipped at peoples’ ankles who wanted to get close to Karen but for the most part she was a quiet dog. When we first acquired her, she was no bigger than Pepper’s tail but she soon grew into a beautiful dog with pale golden fur.

Unfortunately Pepper, the dog we thought we could make into a pet met his demise one summer. He killed a small dog and fearing a child might be next, Tiger had him put down.

Clover was supposedly wild and when I brought her back from Charlotte’s place, all she wanted to do was hide. She was no bigger than Pepper’s tail and too young to be taken from her mother. Somehow we were able to tame this creature. She lived with us for 16 years — in every house we lived in. She was born in a hole, lived in our tent in Kivalina, our farmhouse in Harrisburg, three homes in Winnipeg, our tiny house in Kotzebue, Alaska and our two houses in Harrisburg. When she was given to me as a gift, we had been going through a difficult time. Naming her Clover seemed to be a risky thing to do but in the end she became our four leaf Clover.

Charlotte Swan who gave me Clover

#DeanneBurch #Kivalina #Alaska #thealaskanobodyknows #journeythroughfireandice

My Dogs-Pepper Part II

Part II of my dogs

I thought I was going to write about the dog that stole our heart in Alaska but I realized that Pepper and Coco were the first to steel our hearts — the dogs we raised as puppies to become part of our dog team. The first day we arrived back in Kivalina, Tiger took the sled and team out to get ice for water. I stayed back and heard a commotion outside the house. Looking out, I discovered that Pepper had dragged the sled over to the house. I hurried outside and buried my face in his fur. It was obvious that even after four months of having another person care for him that he remembered and wanted to see me.

We found out we couldn’t stay in Kivalina for another winter and so we decided to bring Pepper into the house and make a pet out of him. Could we really make a pet out of a working dog? Well, we were certainly going to try. When he first came inside, he smelled everything including my crotch. This made me uncomfortable because I hadn’t been able to have a bath and thought I probably smelled. Pepper was like a bull in a china shop — too big for our tiny house and when we moved into a tent it was even worse. We kept him outside, staked up to a post. When we brought him into the tent, there was barely room for us.

We took him upriver and he was exuberant up there. There were no trees in Kivalina but upriver there were small willows and other bushes. He would run around peeing on every bush he could find. The natives thought we were crazy to even think about taking him home with us. In retrospect, maybe we were but we were determined to make this wild dog into a domesticated one.

As we sat at the Kivalina airstrip with all our belongings and our two dogs Pepper and Clover, I began to wonder if we were crazy. Clover was still a puppy but Pepper was a former sled dog ,full of enthusiasm and energy.

The dogs made the trip home to Harrisburg without a problem. We could hardly wait to introduce the dogs to my in laws. My father in law had picked us up at the airport and as soon as we let Pepper out of the car, he ran around and peed on every tree that he saw. This was a whole new experience for him and he was overjoyed. Meanwhile, Clover squatted a couple of times and we brought her into the house. My mother in law sat in a straight chair in the hall and bent down to pet her. Clover growled a happy growl and sat close to her waiting for Pepper to make his appearance. After we felt he had totally satisfied himself, we brought him inside. Mom ran her hands through Pepper’s fur and suddenly he lifted his leg and peed on her! Mom took all this in stride. In fact, she even laughed about it before she went upstairs to put on another pair of slacks. Tiger and I were amused and appalled at the same time. What on earth
had we gotten ourselves into? Maybe we couldn’t domesticate this dog and perhaps the natives were right. We were crazy to try and make a pet out of him. In the years to come we would learn more about his wild instincts but despite this we loved him.(more about Pepper in my next blog.)

#DeanneBurch #Kivalina #Alaska #thealaskanobodyknows #journeythroughfireandice

My Dogs

Dogs have always been a part of my life. They were an integral part of our life in Alaska. Before hunting season, we bought two dogs to train and be part of our future dog team. We called them Pepper and Coco and when we took them on walks, they were true scavengers, picking up tin cans (probably because of the residual smell of food). They would use them as pillows at night. It was an endearing sight but tin cans didn’t seem to me to be very comfortable. I wanted more than anything to spoil these dogs but to my husband Tiger it was something he didn’t want me to do. And so I waited until he went hunting and I would bring them into the house to keep me company.

As time went on, we acquired eight dogs for the team. I had imagined a team that was beautiful — much like the kind of dogs one sees in movies of the north. Our team was a assortment of breeds. Most were a mixture of Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute with German Shepherd mixed in. In truth, our team was not a handsome one but it took us places we wanted to go.

I was given a gift of a six-week-old puppy by one of our friends in mid-September. Tiger wasn’t keen on this gift of mine but he agreed it was all right to accept it. The puppy was beautiful. She was half wolf with silver tips at the end of her grey fur. Her ears were already upright and she had an almost quizzical expression on her face. I carried this gift home in my arms, confident she was going to be my pet. I wanted her to stay in the house with me and keep me company when Tiger was away.

Tiger told me she couldn’t be my pet because dogs in the far north were for work not for pleasure. She would have to stay outdoors with the other dogs. The dogs paid no attention to her and she whined for the comfort and warmth of her mother and her brothers and sisters. We decided she could come into the house for short periods of time but then she grew accustomed to being away from her home and she was staked outside with the rest of the team.

Tiger had taken one look at this bundle of fur and decided she had such a sturdy frame that she would be part of our team. He even had eyes on her for a leader! Somehow my puppy had become his dog. We decided to call her Bubbles after showgirls because if she was going to be a leader, she needed a sexy name.

I brought her inside when Tiger was gone which wasn’t often because the days were getting increasingly shorter and he rarely went hunting. Bubbles and I took long walks beside the ocean. It was starting to freeze and there were chunks of ice on the beach that were the color of dusk. The glow on the horizon tinged the snow with peach and lavender and I felt as though we were walking in a wintry fairyland. As I look back, I often wonder if I would have taken these walks had Bubbles not been part of my life in Kivalina.

Bubbles never became part of our team because in early December, Tiger was in an accident and we had to go to Harrisburg for medical help. (To find out more about his accident, be sure to read my memoir, Journey Through Fire and Ice.) Tiger’s father and I went up to Kivalina after the accident and he suggested that we bring her back to Harrisburg with us. Suddenly the dog that was meant to be the leader of our team became my pet. When we first arrived in Harrisburg in mid-December, it was 45 degrees there. When we left Kivalina, it had been 35 degrees below zero. I took her outside to play and she immediately dug a hole. The poor dog was suffering from the heat and her winter coat was too heavy for the temperatures in Harrisburg. Tiger spent three months in the hospital and during that time Bubbles was my constant companion. She lay beside my bed every night and when I was not at the hospital visiting Tiger, we would go on long walks together on his parents’ property.

After Tiger was released from the hospital, he too went on walks with her and became stronger each day. He rarely left the property but one day he took her with him to get a license for her. People stopped him on the street wanting to know where she had come from and how they could get a dog like her. Of course, there would never be another dog like Bubbles — a combination of Alaskan husky and wolf.

As Tiger recuperated, she became his buddy as well. She was almost like our baby and was the best thing that happened to us while we lived in Kivalina.

A few weeks before our return to Kivalina, Tiger and I went to New York for the weekend leaving Bubbles with his parents. We returned from a happy holiday to learn that Bubbles had been run over by a car. She was such an important part of our life and we both felt that no other dog could ever take her place. And then after spending three months in Kivalina, Clover came along and filled the empty space Bubbles had left. (to be continued)

#DeanneBurch #Kivalina #Alaska #thealaskanobodyknows #journeythroughfireandice