KIVALINA, Alaska — Long before the heart pounding fear of death began to keep him awake at night, Andrew Koenig was a lively hunter. His grandfather’s Eskimo name, the name given to him at birth, meant “point man.” He could travel 50 to 70 miles a day on the ocean in a boat the size of a pickup truck, in search of whales. He would head out across the ice and snow on his snowmobile, looking for animals whose meat his family could eat and whose fur he could trade for food and gas. He enjoyed flying in helicopters and airplanes.
And then, one day, sometime in his 40s, this fearless joy stopped. He and his wife, who’d had six kids together and their own whaling crew, divorced. Fear prevented him from going too far off shore. Fear came at him at all times, day and night.
“Everything seemed to fall down, you know, like the Book of Job in the Bible. My life is almost similar to that one,” said Andrew, sitting inside Kivalina Episcopal Church in the village he has lived in all his 53 years.
“What happened?” he asked. Somewhere along the way, he began, he said, to fear death.
Back then, this fear was so powerful he went to the hospital for a battery of medical tests. The doctors found nothing wrong with him. His “illness” was spiritual.
The fear is still there sometimes but it has lessened over the years. He sees fear now as an enemy he must vanquish. It goes away entirely when he reads the Bible, he says, when he draws closer to God.
The condition of a hunter’s spirit, according to Andrew, is as important, or more important, than anything else, including his tools.
“I learned from people that you need to wash your heart before you go out in the ocean. You can’t take along your grudges with you,” said Andrew, who works now as a custodian at the village school but still hunts with friends. “How come? When you’re a whaling captain, you have to be humble to every one of your crew. … You have to ask them what do you need? Do you need warm clothing? You know you have to take care of them as a captain.”
Once, when he was a boy, learning the hunting traditions and skills of his ancestors, he went to Point Hope, another coastal whaling community north of his village. And he began to understand that whaling is spiritual.
A priest who was also a whaler told him a story about an old man somewhere in Wainwright or Barrow fell into a coma and his spirit went out to the whales.
“He became a whale with them, and he understand their meetings and their talkings before they make their journey,” he said.
According to the story, a humble captain appears under water to the whales as a thin black line, like that made from a pencil.
“A humble captain who has a clean heart, that’s all you can see,” he said.
If a whale sees wide columns under water, “that’s a bad guy, a guy who’s always cussing and you know, who’s not a happy person. Them whales, they said there’s two lines. That thin line, they just love to come up on that. That’s a beautiful home, a beautiful place. And the dark line, that wide, in a crew, the whale swam under, and the whale would not come up near that crew.”
It was afraid of them.
“This man, who was in coma, when they finally reached Wainwright or Barrow, he recognized his family, a whaling crew. And so as a whale, he recognized his family. He come up to them. And his family caught a whale, they caught that whale. As soon as they caught that whale, it flipped over, that whale died, and that old man wake up. After that whale died, that man wake up because he recognized his family as a whale.
“He go as a whale, and that’s how he learned about spiritual,” said Andrew. “The whales, how they live their lives, they have a spirit that if they die they want to go home to a clean shelter.”
Whales are like people, said Andrew.
“We know that we are going to die. Our last wish would be what? We want to be with Jesus? Yeah, that’s where we’d want to be. That’s how the whales travel their lives. They bless people like that. God’s blessing. That’s what I learned about hunting on a whaling crew. You got to be clean.”
The same principles apply to hunting on land.
“If I’m in need, like maybe my kids need a box of crackers here, I go out hunting because I know that fur will bring some dollars,” he said.
He prays, ‘Lord, I need something today, it’s a beautiful day today.”
Maybe he is traveling along on his snow machine and sees a bird. “That raven is going down like this,” he says, making swooping motions with his hands. “And I look at it with binoculars. And I keep traveling, and I see that crow still doing the same thing, you know flying around. …. When I go to that area, sure enough, there’s a wolverine there.”
Animals, too, have spirits.
“The Lord uses the whales, the Lord uses the ravens to show you where you can get a blessing from,” said Andrew. “He uses animals like this to bless you. That’s how we survive here in the North, in Alaska. We cannot go without the Word of God.”
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Comments (7)
What crap is this?
May 6, 2008 4:35 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 6, 2008 04:35
WAIL, SKYLARK & WHITEDOVE: you may have missed the point of the article because you may not see some of the basic assumptions that come with it:
Everything has a spirit, and the spirit and animal that contains it are all equals of mankind. If your relatives are family, the animals around you are extended family. The story he told of the old man's spirit becoming one with the whales to give an idea of that parity of importance. So no, he's not glorifying killing whales (SKYLARK), he hunts because it's how he feeds his family. He is praying for both the hunted and his family that needs the products of the hunting (WAIL). He prays that he needs to find something to feed his family, and the Raven (who, remember, is a member of the extended natural family, like the Whale) shows him where he can find prey on land. He prays for the life he is about to take, he prays in thanks, for the good it will bring his family. I agree with WHITEDOVE, that Christian missionaries should have left his people alone. However, the damage is done, and Christianity's influence (for better or worse) is here to stay in western civilization. You don't need to tell him, however, that he needs to 'wake up' and see what's going on with the planet. His people are very, very aware of that, but in the ice and snow and not terribly thriving economy or infrastructure have more immediate needs, thankyouverymuch.
May 5, 2008 11:17 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 23:17
Thanks for the very enlightening and inspiring illustration of how cultural and religious beliefs and values can come together in the way a person earns a living, in this case, through hunting. Andrew Koenig sounds like a man that it would be a pleasure to spend time with.
May 5, 2008 7:36 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 19:36
Christian missionaries shouldn't have messed with these people's minds when they stepped in their lands a century ago. I have no idea what this man is talking about. Is he saying that he's learned that he shouldn't hunt animals anymore, or is he saying that it's okay to hunt because God gives him permission?
Didn't these people use to have a beautiful philosophy of their own, which is to have respect for nature as it is and not try to control it? They would have been the ones teaching us to leave the wilderness alone. The earth's ecosystem works in perfect balance without human's interference. We've taken so much without giving anything back. The whales are suffering because of the harm we are doing to the oceans and the planet. If anything, these people should be the frontrunners of conservation movements, not hunting.
Maybe this man's "fear" was his "guilt" of killing animals, which is more closer to what his heart actually feels, and a message from God telling him to wake up and realize what is happening to the planet.
May 5, 2008 6:25 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 18:25
So, I certainly hope this means he has stopped killing whales. Or does it just mean that he wants to glorify the killing...
May 5, 2008 3:46 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 15:46
Who is praying for whom? The prey or the predator?
To hunt whales from a sealskin kayak with a spear is certainly a daring effort. A lifetime's catch would not dent the species population. Odds favor a greater number of widows and orphans than captured whale carcasses.
The hunt from a motorized, steel vessel, using harpoon guns with charged tips is something else. A fleet could wipe out a species and still not yield much cash. There are also dangers, but mostly for the whales.
Is the latest version of piety simply a partial revision of the confidence mobsters give to their victims: "Sure, I'll pray for ya, but I'll then hafta kill ya."
May 5, 2008 1:19 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 13:19
This man has found what I found ten years ago, when I died in the middle of brain surgery for a severe aneurysm and stroke, and stood in Heaven.
The voice and hand of the Lord is not with tv evangelists and self-righteous evangelicals, but in the creation he has placed us in to live.
We can see its beauty in the order of nature, and we can feel its power in the rage of a storm. He has left them for us to dwell with and in, and to seek him there.
It does say in scriptures, to seek, and you shall find, and what you shall find is his face, which will bless you with peace within so strong that it will truly bring your presence to the order he has given.
Abandon the mind, it is merely a motor for the body, and trust the Lord, and he willshow you great and mighty things beyond any you could imagine.
But putting aside the mind is the most difficult task, for it is discarding a garment of pride, and seeking humility. But if one does, his garments will become as gold, for there is a narrow path, but to where it leads is the greatest of rewards.
May 5, 2008 1:01 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on May 5, 2008 13:01