The Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska celebrates the Inupiat culture and tells the story of commercial whaling in the United States. In the nineteenth century, over 2,000 whaling ships set out for the Arctic whaling grounds in the Bering and Beaufort seas.
They battled the harsh climate in the pursuit of bowhead whales, a rich source of oil and baleen. The whalers came to rely on the Inupiat people, who had survived and thrived in the high Arctic for generations. In addition to crewing on ships, Inupiat Eskimos hunted for food for the whalers, provided warm fur clothing, and sheltered many crews that were shipwrecked on the Alaska coast.
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