Icy Strait Point
HUMPBACK WHALES BUBBLE FEEDING
With a population of around 1,000 people, Hoonah, Alaska’s largest Tlingit village, has maintained many of the native traditions that were lost further south in Alaska. And the Huna Tlingit people are considered the keepers of some of the culture’s older traditions. Even today, says Dybdahl, an estimated 50 percent of the local diet in Hoonah is sourced from the surrounding sea or the forest. “People still hang fish to dry and smoke it; we still harvest seals and eat the meat smoked sometimes,” he says. Hoonah’s people forage seaweed along the coast and harvest spruce buds, beach asparagus and goosegrass, a type of arrow grass with medicinal properties. Sitka black-tailed deer, crab and chinook salmon also make up a large part of the Huna Tlingit diet. “People just love their native food,” says Dybdahl. “The Huna Tlingit are doing the same things they’ve always done and adding new twists to preparations, too, from foods that have been introduced.” During a walk to Hoonah village, about 15 minutes by foot from Icy Strait Point, you might see humpback whales bubble feeding as you stroll the
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