DAVID THOMAS

IAI: You said you recently moved to Point Hope from Palmer, Alaska. How did that happen?

DT: “I made a really good friend through the Native Youth Olympics and the World Eskimo and Indian Olympics. Over the years he would invite me to Point Hope to go seal hunting, and I got hooked. He and his family would invite me back every year. I got on a whaling crew and I would stay for the spring hunt, then head back to Palmer. This last year my friend, he told me I have all my clothes and my guns here, I might as well just move here. I have been there since, that was about a year and a half ago. I have everything I need, the land and the ocean provides.”—David Thomas is Inupiaq who lives in Point Hope, Alaska. He was photographed at the Teller, Alaska.