The Iñupiat are an Indigenous individuals native to northern Alaska who, for hundreds of years, have lived principally in seaside villages north of the Arctic Circle. With a lot of their villages inaccessible by roads, most Iñupiat proceed to subsist by looking and harvesting native animals and crops. And, because the movie Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale (2017) illustrates, no creature is so central to the group’s subsistence, in addition to its cultural and religious life, because the whale, which may usually feed a complete village. With gorgeously framed imagery from Kiliii Yüyan, a Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese language American photographer and filmmaker who specialises in documenting the lives of Indigenous peoples throughout the globe, the movie exhibits the scenes surrounding the seize of a bowhead whale within the Iñupiat village of Nalukataq. Greater than only a hunt, the act is a religious observe, imbued with rituals and prayers which have sure Iñupiat communities for generations.
