Kealoha in the Arctic

• Main Author: Rosenthal, Gregory
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of California Press 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Inupiat
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520295063.003.0004

From 1848 to 1876, most Hawaiian whale workers engaged in the icy climes of the Arctic Ocean. Chapter three begins with the story of Kealoha, a Hawaiian whale worker who in the 1870s lived among the Inupiat of Alaska’s North Slope for over one year. Bodies—both cetacean and human—are a central category of analysis for understanding Hawaiian experiences of Arctic whaling. In the Arctic Ocean, Hawaiian men interacted not only with ice, wind, cold, and snow, but also became intimate with whale anatomy as well as their own bodies through work. European and Euro-American discourses on the “kanaka” body held that Hawaiian men were not fit for work in non-tropical climates, but Kealoha and thousands of other Native men challenged these racialized ideas, proving their fitness and their manliness in the “cold seas” of the North.