“I’m Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is”: Iñupiat and Anthropological Models of Gender

1. What they did

Anthropologists have often used hunter-gatherer societies, and Inuit societies in particular, to build general theories about men and women. Barbara Bodenhorn tested four of these widely used models against what Iñupiat of Alaska’s North Slope told her about their own lives:

• Men hunt, women gather, and only men regularly hunt big game.
• Men’s say in social affairs rises with the share of hunted meat in the diet, so Inuit, eating almost all meat, should be among the most male-controlled societies.
• Men dominate the public and political sphere, while women hold power, if at all, in the home.
• Development worsens the position of women, who take on more subsistence work and earn fewer wages.

Her material comes from conversations and interviews with Iñupiat in Barrow and Wainwright between 1980 and 1986, together with older ethnography, diaries and recorded elders’ accounts. The paper was presented at the 1990 Inuit Studies conference.

2. What they found

A gendered, not a natural, division of labour

• Men make tools, hunt and fish; women fish, hunt occasionally, butcher, preserve and prepare food, tan skins, sew and care for children. The married couple is the ideal working unit.
• No task is thought to be beyond the other sex. Women joined whaling crews when hands were short, and a woman who was “a crack shot” was seen as skilled, not unwomanly. Women brought the meat home, so they knew the land as well as their husbands, were better dog handlers, and were “often better trackers”. Men’s hunting kits always held sewing tools.

Wives as hunters

• Iñupiat see hunting as a sacred act. Animals give themselves to men whose wives are generous and skilful. “The whale comes to the whaling captain’s wife,” one man told her, and a successful inland hunter said simply, “I’m not the great hunter, my wife is.”
• The wife offers marine animals a drink of fresh water, butchers the animal and shares the meat. The animal’s spirit sees her generosity and gives itself to the hunter again. Her sewing makes a “second skin” that pleases and attracts the animals.
• Wives once asked the moon for animals, and whaling captains’ wives still move slowly, think peaceful thoughts and act generously during whaling season.
• A man who loses his wife is said to be unable to manage, because an animal needs a wife to give itself to.

Shares and sharing

• A “share” (ningik) is earned by anyone who contributes to a hunt, by owning the harpoon, butchering, or even fetching ducks from the water, whatever their gender. “Sharing” is giving that keeps the animals coming back.
• Smaller animals (seals, caribou, walrus) are divided among those who took part. Polar bear, beluga and bowhead whales are shared with the whole community, and whaling couples feast the community three times a year.

Work, wages and leadership

• In 1980, about as many Iñupiaq women as men worked for wages in Barrow (229 and 252). Through the 1980s women held posts such as mayor, city manager, school principal, state legislator and director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.
• Leadership as a whaling captain or shaman rests on knowledge and skill, which are not gendered. Elders recalled women shamans and men acting as ritual partners for them.

3. What they concluded

• Men hunt: for Iñupiat, hunting includes attracting, killing, butchering, turning the animal into food and clothing, and the proper rituals. Women’s sewing, butchering and sharing count as hunting. The anthropological model starts from an unexamined definition of hunting as finding and killing animals with tools.
• Male dominance: women control their own labour and the shares it earns, can start a divorce, and are central to good relations with animals. The claim that this society is male dominated is hard to sustain, and “domination” cannot be judged from one or two practices.
• Public and private: for Iñupiat the public sphere is organised around animals, not gender. Whales belong to the whole community, smaller animals to households, and both men and women act in both.
• Development: because women’s ritual work is based in the community and their labour is their own, they move into waged jobs more easily, while men struggle to combine jobs with hunting. Men “have a harder time of it.”
• Behind all four models lies a Euro-American assumption that gender is fixed and tied to biology. Iñupiaq ideas about names, kinship and animals stress constant change, so gender there is not fixed either.