The Last Whalers: The Life of an Endangered Tribe in a Land Left Behind

Product Information

Over three years, Clark spent a year living with the Lamalerans, participating as a community member, even eating manta ray brains. The Last Whalers is an absolutely extraordinary work. Clark’s portrayal of the Lamalerans, a hunter-gatherer tribe inhabiting a remote Indonesian island, is both fascinating and moving. He expertly shows how the Lamalerans hunt the largest carnivore in history, the sperm whale, using centuries-old technology. By having lived amongst the tribe across three years, the author is able to describe the hunts in stunning and dramatic detail, with the insight of someone intimately familiar with not only the mechanics of the process, but also the history, culture, and people of Lamalera. Estar de acuerdo con el estilo de vida de este pueblo no es el punto del libro, como sí es dar a conocer una cultura distinta. Y sobre todo, el libro es una crónica que expone como la globalización y el capitalismo está absorbiendo y destruyendo a muchas comunidades con culturas, idiomas y religiones diferentes y propias, la pérdida de riqueza humana que eso supone. Y cómo existe esta que, aún adoptando formas de vida modernas, se resisten a desaparecer para ser un pueblo más dentro del sistema actual y continuar siendo ellos mismos. Y los dilemas y enfrentamientos internos y externos que eso les supone. Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.

I started the book with high hopes, and the first few chapters were very interesting. The author describes the life of a small group of whale hunters in a remote island in Indonesia. Apart from describing the high-adrenaline whale hunts and everyday life in the village, the author focuses on a couple of families in the village, all interrelated. He introduces us to a handful of people in the village, harpoonists and ship builders, a shaman, patriarchs. And, inevitably, we hear the modern world is encroaching on the village's traditions, with young men preferring to work in the cities and listen to pop music rather than to live on dried whale meat and participate in the old ceremonies.I was mesmerized in the beginning, but by the time I was halfway through, certain questions started to come up in my skeptical mind. How did the author know so much about what these villagers were thinking? Had they really confided their inmost secret longings, some of them considered shameful, to this foreigner? Had this American journalist really spent a considerable amount of time living with these folks? How come he stayed outside of the story altogether - there was nothing about how he came to live with them, or how he communicated with them. (Disclaimer : I stopped reading the book about half-way through, so if this information was introduced later, I simply didn't get that far.). I found it odd - don't chroniclers of specific populations typically describe how they got to meet them and how much time they spent with them, and who their informants were? As subsistence whalers, their life is deeply entwined with the natural world, and the rhythms of that world. The description of the hunt, what an honor it is to be the harpooner of the whales, and the knowledge and skills needed to be successful, is compelling. The bravery of the crews, who hunt whales using traditional iron and bamboo harpoons to capture huge sperm whales, is astonishing. For someone from the Western world who is completely separated from the hunter/gatherer society its a brilliant picture of a different way of life.

On a volcanic island in the Savu Sea so remote that other Indonesians call it "The Land Left Behind" live the Lamalerans: a tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who are the world's last subsistence whalers. They have survived for half a millennium by hunting whales with bamboo harpoons and handmade wooden boats powered by sails of woven palm fronds. But now, under assault from the rapacious fores of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse. Clark successfully depicts these people in their full human complexity rather than as primitive tropes. Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues. The stories of the Lamalerans themselves are even more gripping--from a young orphaned whaler waiting for his big break to an aging legendary harpooner struggling to understand his son’s resistance to the traditional way of life. They bravely stand up to the forces of modernization, largely refusing modern technology that would make the hunts easier and far less dangerous, and relying on bartering and gift-giving instead of paper currency. They hold on to the ways of their ancestors, believing that their tradition--however inconvenient--contains their essence, and that by giving it up, they may lose what it means for them to live.This was an extraordinary, and difficult, book to read. The Lamalareans are an indigenuous society, located at the far eastern tip of Indonesia. For centuries, their way of life had not changed, and their religion, culture and society were intertwined with the Way of the Ancestors. The Way provided them with all their physical and spiritual needs. And then the modern world intruded. Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.” Lembata, in Southeast Asia, is home to the Lamalerans who arrived there 500 years ago. They settled on the beach under a cliff, surviving by fishing for sperm whale and Manta ray and flying fish. Those who are successful in the hunt share with aging family members and community members. They are one of the few hunter-gatherer societies left in the world. But industrialized society is crowding in on them. Their children are enticed to the cities for education and jobs. Some remain for the air conditioning and running water. Outboard motors and smaller boats are replacing the handcrafted boats propelled by oar and the young carry cell phones.