This book lies at the intersection of my personal life and stories of America’s northernmost Indigenous society. My narrative is steeped in a deep long-term relationship between a culturally adopted Japanese woman in the two Iñupiaq villages and her adoptive family members, relatives, mentors, collaborators, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances. This is the story of the people and the bowhead whale, and at the same time, the story of my own life. My fieldwork has become synonymous with my personal growth and fulfillment as an adopted member of whaling crews through participation in everyday life in contemporary rural Alaska. In many different ways and contexts, my adoptive families and kin taught me that the Iñupiaq-whale relationship is a force of innovation and adaptation that now serves as a way to cope with social stress and the unforeseeable future. In other words, this book was germinated in my own process of becoming an Iñupiaq (meaning “a complete person”) through building a relationship with Iñupiat and their nonhuman kin, and I present this book as a humble offering for the people and whales who are connected through emotive bonds, words, stories, and songs that they have so generously bestowed upon me.