Under low clouds and light sprinkles, 15 high schoolers, quiet with morning grogginess, arrive on the docks. On a bright blue tarp spread over the dock’s slick planks lie two gutted Tsaa, Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina) — belly up, their rib cages, fat layers and sock-like skin visible.

The science teacher reminds the students to stand an “arm-swing” apart because of knives and sharp objects. A researcher explains the personal protective equipment: “Even though there’s nothing inherently dangerous, we want to avoid contact with seal blood and mitigate exposure to zoonotic diseases.” He offers blue surgical booties to those without rubber boots as well as latex gloves and full-coverage aprons.

The necropsy is sponsored by the Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via the Indigenous Peoples Council for Marine Mammals. Hoonah City Schools students participate in both scientific and traditional Lingít seal processing methods.

Using a dual-instructor model with cultural specialists (the seal hunters) and researchers (some from the University of Alaska Fairbanks) as co-teachers, the necropsy demonstrates how traditional sustenance harvesters can contribute to the ecological data used by government resource managers. As an art educator at the school, I’m here to sketch, modeling an aesthetic approach to documentation. Intriguingly, I’m sketching the scientific process of my father, Franklin M. Harold, an internationally known biochemist, in the context of the Indigenous values of my adopted home.

Over the next two hours, researchers and the less squeamish volunteers gather data: check for damage, measure the size, take skin and whisker samples. The skin’s genetic information will connect an individual seal to a lineage. The whisker, a movement-sensing organ which detects prey, will yield life history and dietary information because it grows continuously throughout life.

I delight in such factoids. It’s the only piece of my father’s devotion to basic research that I adopted. He was committed, above all, to investigations undertaken for no specific purpose — knowledge gathered for knowledge’s sake.

Now the hunters take over. Under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, only coastal Indigenous people meeting blood quantum requirements may harvest marine mammals. In the hunters’ hands, the seals transition from simply being research subjects, labeled and documented as “Hoonah Small” and “Hoonah Large,” to Beings who are part of the sustenance tradition of gathering and eating wild foods. That’s why the Lingít Language and Culture teacher Lgeik’i Heather Powell reminds the students that you must, “have a good attitude in your heart as you cut into seal.” Tomorrow, the students will make seal grease and seal cracklings with one of the hunters, Guk’l Bill Veler. They will distribute the foods to their families, Elders who no longer harvest, and hosts of local Ku.éex’ (memorial parties) to be gifted to guests.

With fluid knife strokes, the hunters peel the skin off the fat layer — just like removing adhesive backing from a mailing label. Guk’l Bill Veler explains that in the summer, seals have less fat and tend to sink when shot. “I swam for this one,” he jokes.

Elder Sinak Owen James, soft-voiced and infinitely generous with sustenance knowledge and cultural history, demonstrates calling a seal. A croak slides from his throat, no visible movement from his mouth. Of course, a few kids try to imitate him. It reminds me of a hot August day with him 20 years ago.

That day, I had accompanied Owen to net sockeye salmon. On the way home, skiff already heavy with 100 red-tinged fish, he suddenly slowed. Fifty yards ahead, a shiny black head bobbed at the waterline, revealing only eyes and nose. “Seal oil sure tastes good with boiled fish,” he said.

He made an unidentifiable, disembodied sound. The bewhiskered head peered at us. He repeated the sound. Now the head was closer. He lifted his rifle, relaxed. Fired. Soon we were back on shore, not far from where we had cleaned the fish. His hands blended into beach gravel, disappearing in a fan of blood.

With the hunters now in charge, things move quickly. Blood splatters their boots and rubberized rain gear. Their hands fly with the same ease that I find with my pen and brush — except that all I can do is describe, forever at arms’ length from what they simply do.

Hunter Sheens Levi Mills says that, recently seal populations have been higher, but they don’t have as much fat as expected. I add this as notes beside the sketch. I assume the researchers do the same. But does that information — from a lifetime of seal hunting — count as data for the researchers? Acquired over eons and passed down through generations, Traditional Ecological Knowledge refers to the Indigenous information, traditions, and beliefs about the interconnections between all beings within an ecosystem.

The students’ attention wanders: they chit-chat and cell phones emerge. But everyone perks up for an organ tour. I’m still trying to document the varied red hues in the bloody pile when the researchers whisk the parts into waiting coolers for future lab analysis.

* * *

It’s been a year since the necropsy — and two months since my father died at age 95. His friends send me consolation emails, full of praise for his devotion to scientific thinking. His work strived to publish results — get information out there where the like-minded can access it. His goal was facilitating a larger dialogue, building on concepts to further understanding.

I find the necropsy sketchbook in a pile on my art table. Turns out, I hadn’t finished the spread. Perhaps I hoped to hear what exactly the researchers found out. Or had “Hoonah Small” and “Hoonah Large” simply dissolved into the larger data pool?

My concern highlights an essential difference between knowledge types and access to information. Indigenous knowledge is shared according to community tradition and grounded in an understanding of the ecosystem, including the human relationships within. The science of my father is a quest for reproducibility, often detached from the specific location. Moreover, you normally need an admission ticket of education and academic connections to access his understandings.

Thinking about this, I realized that there are two conceptual receptacles the seals were distributed in: cultural food and scientific data. I know exactly where the food bucket went. The oil extracted from layers of blubber became a golden, sour syrup. Like the cracklings, crunchy insoluble material leftover after rendering, it carried far more significance than practical nutrition. It’s about the feeling on the tongue, the filling up of the stomach with the flavors and strength of the ancestors. The processing embedded the participants in the routines of ancestors, binding generations by sharing the practices. When this oil was then distributed at the first fall Ku.éex’ of the year, the whole community became part of the process.

But too often, the location of the university science bucket is unclear. In the quest for universal rules that apply everywhere — in the painstaking process of duplicating the research, verifying the conclusions, and refining the thinking by building on ideas — “Hoonah Small” and “Hoonah Large” could have simply become part of a wider data set, thereby erasing their individual stories. I suspect that’s what my father would have expected.

But how about a public accounting of how the specific observations by the hunters and the students meshed — or didn’t mesh — with the information later tallied in a lab? “Hoonah Large” and “Hoonah Small” were our neighbors. Surely, the humans they shared these waters with should know of their contribution. Kind of a “Celebration of Life,” like I’m currently planning for my father.

That’s where those students come in. The seal samples are stored for safekeeping in a repository at the Museum of the North on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. “Research as education is my passion,” says Arielle Halpern, senior program manager for Indigenous Science and Research at SHI and affiliate professor of Environmental Science at the University of Alaska Southeast. She looks forward to future opportunities to work with students to analyze the samples. She knows that in order to have a more cohesive understanding of the world we share and stronger, more powerful partnerships between community members and Western-style experts, information from multiple systems of knowledge needs to be better fused. She also wants sustenance harvesters to understand how they can contribute to the process.

Eventually, all that information also needs to be available to the people of the place where it originated: even if just highlighted dots on a scatter plot, which specific ones were “Hoonah Large” and “Hoonah Small?” Perhaps one of those students on that slippery dock will even be inspired to pursue a degree, pull out those samples — and someday bring that information home.

• Stephanie Harold is an art educator and Alaskan sketch artist working in wild places to create evocative visual stories about nature, science, and culture. She has lived in Xunaa Hoonah for over 30 years. She can be contacted at @discoverybysketch, stephanie.harold.substack.com or discoverybysketch.com. • “Woven Peoples and Place” is the monthly column of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP). SSP is a dynamic collective impact network uniting diverse skills and perspectives to strengthen cultural, ecological, and economic resilience across Southeast Alaska. Follow along at sustainablesoutheast.net; on Linkedin, Instagram and Facebook at @sustainablesoutheast; and on YouTube at @SustainableSoutheastAK.