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

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A forceful debut...Clark's prose soars...Furthermore, his sympathy for and devotion to his subjects is real: he speaks both Indonesian and Lamaleran and fosters an intimacy that allows him to disappear entirely in the telling of their story. He brings us into his characters' lives, showing us the rhythms of Lamalera and the day-to-day tensions the villagers face...Clark successfully depicts these people in their full human complexity rather than as primitive tropes... His finely wrought, deeply reported, and highly empathetic account is a human-level testament to dignity in the face of loss and a stoic adherence to cultural inheritance in the face of a rapidly changing world."-- Tim Sohn, Outside Magazine

Over three years, Clark spent a year living with the Lamalerans, participating as a community member, even eating manta ray brains. 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.

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Clark’s writing is supple but unshowy. Here’s an account of one harpooner’s encounter with a whale: Like a first-rate novel, too, “The Last Whalers” has an abiding but unforced theme. It’s about the flood of modernity, in the form of outboard motors and cellphones and televised soap operas, as seen from the perspective of a curious but wary society that fears losing itself in the deluge. Clark is hardly the first observer to study Lamaleran culture. Anthropologists and documentary filmmakers and others have been here before. But he brings empathy and literary skill to bear. This is a humbly told book, one in which the author’s first-person voice does not intrude. Over the course of three years, the author, a two-time Fulbright recipient, spent months at a time on the island of Lembata with the Lamalerans, a group of hunter-gatherers. Of the 1,500 members of the tribe, 300 are dedicated to hunting sperm whales as well as other marine mammals and fish. Scrupulously leaving himself out of the narrative, Clark focuses on a few individuals to tell the story of the group. Chief among them are two young men who aspire to become harpoonists, the most prestigious—and dangerous—position on the whaling boat. Jon, raised by his grandparents after his parents abandoned him, struggles to find a place in a society that scorns him. Ben, an expert harpooner and boatmaker, finds himself drawn by the attractions of life outside the island. The author also closely follows Ben’s father, Ignatius, and other older builders and masters of the long rowboats whose construction, unchanged for generations, is guided by the “Ways of the Ancestors.” Clark pays less attention to the women of the group, many of whom are sent away to be educated and work elsewhere in Indonesia, sometimes returning to care for elderly family members, though he does devote space to the daily life of Jon's sister Ika, who wants to marry a young man from another tribe. In between the stories of the individuals, the author chronicles the history of the group and the ceremonies he attended in a society that meshes Catholic faith and animistic religion. Perhaps surprisingly, among the chief villains of the narrative are the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy, which promote whale-watching rather than whale-killing. The author argues that sperm whales are less endangered than the Lamaleran society.

stars. As an Indonesian, I am glad this book is written. There are not many books out there about Indonesia's marine communities and culture, let alone the Lamalerans in Lembata Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province. First of all, I like that the narrative is using the POVs of Lamalerans. They could be very, very detailed, from constructing the tenas (the whaling boats) to household duties. I enjoy being immersed like that. There are many types of POVs: Jon the aspiring lamafa (main harpooner), Ika his sister (I love her parts about the traditional market and bartering practice), Ignatius the old harpooner, Frans the shaman & shipwright, Bena the Katy Perry fan girl, and many more. As someone who grew up in the concrete jungle of Jakarta and part of one ethnic minority group, I feel like there are still so many facets and types of lives in my own country that are completely different from mine and considering the fact that we have more than 300 ethnic groups and 700++ languages, my own life experience is basically nothing. A New York Times Notable Book and Finalist for the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Best Travel Book Award 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.One family, one heart, one action, one goal" to remind Lamalerans that the unity of the tribe is paramount. Given their reliance on the whales, it is no surprise that their entire culture and belief system is oriented toward the hunt. Their cosmology is built around the seasonal return of whales: shamanistic rituals are designed to guarantee a good hunt, and every gust of wind has a potential message about the whales, delivered by the omnipresent spirits of the ancestors. The hunt itself has a vocabulary so specific that it brings to mind that old (and debunked) cliché about the number of words the Eskimo have for snow. The specificity serves a purpose, allowing whalers “to compress paragraphs of information about the hunt into a few syllables,” Clark writes. “More than that, though, they were also linguistic microcosms of a whole way of life, and will be among the first words to vanish if the Lamalerans’ culture weakens.” A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity. The tribe of the Lamalerans (they live on the Lembata island, a remote Indonesian volcanic isle) They settled there around five centuries ago and because the land is quite poor, they cannot survive on agriculture. Therefore, they hunt the largest carnivore on Earth, the sperm whale. The book is based on studies of the author, who lived several years among the Lamalerans, and is structured around telling lives of several tribe members. A large part is about how globalization changes traditional centuries-old attitudes, how modern motors and cell phones can co-exist with belief in wizardry and keeping traditions. It should be noted, that the Lamalerans aren’t a newly discovered group, they were catholicized (while also keeping local beliefs) in the 1920s and say the names of almost all tribe members are usual for Catholics Ignatius or Jon (so they were influenced by the outside world for several generations already). However, during the last 30 years they got access to modern motors and ability to sell their catch for exports, as well as more strict rules about going to school or following other laws. A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

When whales are sighted by the Lamalerans, a chant rises (“ Baleo! Baleo!”) and is passed from house to house. The men race for their boats, which traditionally have been wooden ships called téna. They urge each other to “Row like you want to feed your families!” 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. This humility gives the book an organic and resonant propulsion. Accumulated tensions are only slowly released. Scenes are delivered, not summaries. This book earns its emotions. The Last Whalers is marvelous because readers come to know these people intimately. A young man dreams of becoming a harpooner, the most honored position in their society, yet also dreams of life in the city. A young woman receives an education but committed to care for her elders must return to the village. The elders must preserve the old ways and knowledge while accepting that change is inevitable. To leave the village is to also leave the unity of one family, one heart, one action, one goal. It is hard to walk away from the strength of community to live in isolation with only yourself to depend upon. The Lamalerans’ experience, then, speaks not just to the danger faced by earth’s remaining indigenous peoples but to the greater cultural extinction humanity is suffering. from The Last WhalersDeeply 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. And what hope, then, do these whalers have of resisting the onslaught? “There is a saying in Lamalera,” Clark tells us. “ Preme ki, ‘Hope, but not too much,’ reflecting the belief that the whales would never come if the people demanded them.”

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 forces of the modern era and a global economy, their way of life teeters on the brink of collapse. Journalist Clark's carefully researched and often dramatic first book follows the residents of a small village on a remote Indonesian island as they engage in the tradition of hunting whales and adjust to the incursions of the outside world. Thirdly and probably the most important, it was almost mindboggling to think about how an indigenous culture like this could survive amongst the globalized world. It is a recurring theme in the book, ranging from using motorboats instead of tenas, driftnet instead of only harpoons, opening to a global market or just stay with subsistence fishing and bartering with nearby tribes. I feel like there would be more erosion of cultures and tradition - with both positive and negative impacts- as the area is opening up in terms of available infrastructures and many expat Lamalerans bringing modernities and whatnots. It is really hard to balance but they themselves just have to find and decide for themselves the most suitable formula, not us in Jakarta, or Kupang (provincial capital), and other parties. 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.”One thing you learn, in squeamish detail, is how to carve up a dead beached whale. “By the end,” Clark writes, “only the flippers retained their skin, so that they rested against the flesh like mittened hands trying to cover a naked torso.”