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such a way as to move with every nuance of the sea, as if they are part of the sea. Unangan kayaks are the first high-seas craft known to have a form of ball bearings, made of ivory, to allow every critical part of the craft to bend with the movements of the sea.
    A friend and I built an iqyax one year. It took us nine months, the same amount of time that it takes for a baby to be born. From building this craft, I was amazed to learn how my people knew the sea. We built the iqyax as closely as possible to the original way it was done. It wasseventeen feet long and twenty-two inches wide. A split bow prevented the craft from submarining in rough seas—the sea would go through the split bow and lift it up so the craft did not submerge. The rear was of such a design that it helped maintain control of the craft in a following sea when the craft is moving down a swell, no matter how large the swells of the sea. The “ball bearings” would allow the craft to move with every movement of the water, making one feel as “one with the sea.”
    There are stories told to me by my Kuuyux, a special Unangan mentor, of Unangan men who traveled in their seventeen-foot iqyaxes as far south as the tip of South America, southern California and the Pacific Islands, and as far north as Point Barrow and the Russian Far East. Our people’s navigational abilities were unparalleled in North America at the time. Because the Bering Sea has an average of twenty days of sunshine a year due to the Japan Current meeting with the cold air of Siberia, creating clouds and fog, our people could navigate without the stars—a feat that requires tuning into, and merging with, the “spirit that lives in all things.” The real human being is able to navigate by feeling the energy of the sea and land, watching the direction of swells in the sea and the kinds of birds and seals that come through the fog, knowing the direction of tidal movements, feeling the rhythm of the water, listening to animals on the rookeries and cliffs, intuition, “gut feel,” and heart sense. All of this was done without thought of any kind, 1 and hunters passed down songs and stories about Unangan navigation for coming generations. Today, there are still some people who can travel this way without a compass or any modern-day navigation aid. Most of the men who fished for halibut when I was a child had this ability. However, today young men use modern navigation aids such as radar and GPS. Years later, I traveled to Patagonia, in southern Argentina, to see the Mapuche people who had invited Elders from Alaska to visit. It was at that time I found out something furthermore interesting about the travels of my people, which I write about in the chapter called“The Mapuche of Southern Argentina.”
    Unangan men began their kayak training as young boys when they would be required to sit in the water along the shoreline for hours each day for several years. They were also required to run up and down hills while carrying large basalt rocks with outstretched arms before being considered ready to join the men. Bruno Frohlich, a forensic anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institute who studied Unangan cultures for three decades, noted that the average Unangan man would be considered an Olympic athlete today, with biceps that would shame most men.
    Anthropologists have documented that the Unangan practiced a basic form of brain surgery, unsurpassed in the Northern Hemisphere, with words for every part of the body and a sophisticated mummification process that equaled that of the Egyptians.
    With small poison-tipped spears and from iqyaxes and oolooxtahns, our ancestors successfully hunted large whales while they were foraging in bays for several days. When a whale was shot with the spear, the poison, rendered from a plant, would make its way to the heart of the animal and nowhere else. After three days, the whale succumbed.
    The appreciation for