Teacher recalls mass caribou kill

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Editor's note: When Point Hope teacher Kurt Schmidt discovered dozens of dead caribou on the tundra near the village in summer 2008, he was outraged. He reported the caribou and wasted meat to Alaska State Troopers, prompting an investigation that has led to charges against eight Point Hope hunters. This is Schmidt's account of what he saw and why it matters to him.

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I have been a hunter since 5 years of age when I shot my first rabbit with a bow and arrow. My father taught me how to hunt and fish. When I was age 4, he began taking me on several two-week-long hunting trips each year. But first he taught me how to shoot straight, how to properly utilize the kill, how to get around in the country, how to provide meat for my family, and most importantly how not to waste. Waste is sinful. Hunting and fishing regulations across the nation and world seem to reinforce this idea -- all meat is to be salvaged and utilized

I too am following my father's example, taking my 10-month-old daughter moose hunting and salmon fishing, and the same goes for my 4-year-old son. They sleep on a bed of salvaged caribou and sheep skins in the cold months when camping.

In my Alaskan travels, I have managed to meet and learn from many Alaskan Native elders, Yupik, Inupiat, Aleut, and Tanana, what hunting has done and meant for them. I have been invited to summer fish camps, spring and fall seal camps, geese hunts, caribou hunts, moose hunts, trap-lines, crabbing, egg picking, munnaking (ice fishing), setting nets under the ice in rivers and lakes, duck hunting, berry picking and even into the successful whaling crew of my soon-to-be father-in-law Elijah Attungana.

Across the cultural board in my experience, in regard to caribou, this is what is eaten: Parts of the intestines are eaten, the slightly aged rumen contents are also good eats. The braids of fat embedded in the mesentery tissue connecting the intestines to the bloodstream are a delicacy.

The botfly larvae embedded in the hide of caribou, known as kumuks or nugoostics in various ethnic regions of the state, are also eaten, especially early in the spring when the maggots are thumb-sized. The tongue, the brains, the neck meats are all eaten. The skin of the front and rear legs is used to make mukluks, the hides were used by the Nunamiuits up until the 1960s to make their caribou-skin homes. The sinews along the backstraps are salvaged for sewing even today. The long bones are broken to either eat the marrow, or boiled to make buttuk, a fantastic hearty and tasty soup broth. The ribs are roasted beside an open willow fire until medium-rare, and then salted and eaten. They are fantastic this way when fresh off the fire.

{flv img ="videos/ev_video.jpg" showstop="true" width="250" height="200"}ev_video{/flv} Home video provided to investigators allegedly documents the hunt's aftermath. In this sequence, former teacher Point Hope Kurt Schmidt counts carcasses.

I was taught when you are finished cutting the caribou, an easy way to remove the blood from your hands and knife was to take some of the stomach or rumen contents and scrub your hands in it. On a cold day it is invigorating, and all blood matter is quickly dissolved and washed away.

I have hunted for and with Native elders in various communities, and they offered to teach me how it is that they cut and process game. They also expressed immense gratitude that I was out there with them to help them catch food; they had been unable for weeks to get assistance while their relatives were sadly preoccupied in other endeavors.