The Show Girls Club, Fairbanks, Alaska

Greg Palast

Etok [1943-2015]
His “American” name was Charles Edwardsen Jr.
He died this week, whaling.
I didn’t have any trouble picking him out, even in the pumping lights of the Fairbanks strip club where we were supposed to meet: the leather-dark face, a wolverine pelt sewn into his parka collar with its vicious fangs still attached, and, around his neck, five huge claws of the last polar bear killed by his father. Eskimo bling.

While I’d heard that Eskimos kiss by rubbing noses, the look in Etok’s eyes suggested I wasn’t going to get the nose rub.

“Mr. Palast, we are the last of the Pleistocene people,” he told me. “It would be an honor to help you fuck up …more

Etok is One Bad-Ass Eskimo-
In September, Obama Quietly OK’d
Drilling in Arctic Waters”“”“WTF???

Greg Palast

Alternet.org – From the Arctic Circle, from inside a whale carcass (really), Greg Palast investigates…

There is a legend told among the Inupiat Alaskans who live above the Arctic Circle, “Etok Tames the Green People.” It goes like this:

In the Old Days, as today, the peoples on the edge of the Arctic Sea killed whales. It’s just what they do. It’s what they eat. But the Green People didn’t like that, and so the Green People set out one day in their fancy-ass black powerboat to stop the people of the Arctic Sea from doing their whale killing thing.

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This is Alternet’s excerpt from Palast’s new book, Vultures’ Picnic.
Note: Get the book this week and you’ll get all the videos from the interactive edition, no charge. Just go to VulturesPicnic.org, click on, “I’ve bought it, so send me the link to my free films.”

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It was a long, long time ago in 1979. The elders tell us how the Green People showed up outside the Inupiat Native village of Kaktovik in their black powerboat and set out their stores of vegetables on the beach. The Green People only ate green food. The Green People then set off in their black powerboat on their blubber-saving mission, with a plan to block the Eskimo’s bidarka whaling ship. Quick as a Raven’s wink, they got lost in a fog bank and stuck in the ice sheet. Prepared, committed, and resourceful, the Green People set out their pup tents on the ice floe and slept, hoping for the fog to lift in the morning. …more