A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle

The Iñupiat are an Indigenous people native to northern Alaska who, for centuries, have lived mostly in seaside villages north of the Arctic Circle. With many of their villages inaccessible by roads, most Iñupiat continue to subsist by hunting and harvesting local animals and plants. And, as the film Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale (2017) illustrates, no creature is so central to the community’s subsistence, as well as its cultural and spiritual life, as the whale, which can often feed an entire village. With gorgeously framed imagery from Kiliii Yüyan, a Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese American photographer and filmmaker who specialises in documenting the lives of Indigenous peoples across the globe, the film shows the scenes surrounding the capture of a bowhead whale in the Iñupiat village of Utqiaġvik. More than just a hunt, the act is a spiritual practice, imbued with rituals and prayers that have bound Iñupiat communities for generations.