BIG WHALE

Watched an interesting TED Talk by artist Jonathan Harris, who collects and photographs stories from around the world. 

Last May Jonathan spent nine days living in Barrow, Alaska, (the northernmost settlement in the United States), with a family of Eskimos, documenting their annual spring whale hunt. He describes the hunt:

"We were about six miles from shore, camping on five and a half feet of thick, frozen pack ice, waiting for a whale to come close enough to attack."

When one did come close, the Eskimos threw a harpoon at the whale and then hauled it onto the ice and cut it up. The whale was about 40 feet long, and weighed over 40 tons. (How they maneuver a whale that big without special equipment is beyond me). Anyway, it will provide food for the community for a year. 

"The Eskimos use no chainsaws or anything; it's entirely just blades. An incredibly efficient process." 

The last part of this TED Talk described one of his more recent projects in a Himalayan kingdom nestled between Tibet and India. 

"Bhutan has this really wacky thing where they base most of their high-level governmental decisions around the concept of gross national happiness instead of gross domestic product, and they've been doing this since the '70s. They now have a completely different value system in a country with an incredibly non-materialistic culture, where people don't have a lot, but they're incredibly happy." 

All in all, an interesting talk, so much so it made me want to leave Dover, PA for a while, to see some of these cultures first hand. 

To view this TED Talk click HERE.