Today, the primary subsistence use of walrus in Togiak is for food. After a successful harvest (either a kill or discovery of an edible beached animal), walrus meat, hide, and blubber are distributed throughout the village. Because of the demand, the hunters themselves may retain relatively little from each animal. In addition to the meat, hide, flippers, and blubber, the lungs, kidneys, livers, and hearts are still used. Today, most of the meat is preserved in electric freezers.
Different rules pertain to malluk, walrus products salvaged from bleached carcasses. In contrast to fresh walrus, which is distributed widely, the harvester of malluk cooks it at home and invites a few friends or relatives over for a meal. As noted above, malluk is handled with caution because of the possibility of food poisoning, and is usually not simply given away. Also, not everyone enjoys or appreciates an "aged product" such as malluk.
In contrast, fresh walrus hide and blubber are choice foods in Togiak. "My kids love eating walrus hide and will request their mother to cook it until crunchy," one hunter explained. The hide is cooked with a layer of blubber attached, or else the hide will be too dry, "like a cracker." Fresh walrus hide is boiled or aged for later use. Also, the hide and flippers from fresh walrus may be fermented to make taaqassaaq. "Aged fermented walrus hide gets soft, juicy, and chewy. [It's] a good snack" (J. Dyasuk, personal communication). A small amount of walrus blubber is rendered into oil, but seal blubber is by far a more important source of oil in Togiak today.
In contrast with the past, walrus stomachs are no longer used for containers or drum covers. Nor are rain coats made from walrus intestines any longer.
Ivory is also used from harvested or salvaged walrus. There are a few walrus ivory carvers in Togiak. There is interest in developing an ivory carving program in the village schools.
The limited data available on this topic suggest that very little of any marine mammal products are presently received by Togiak residents from any other villages. To the contrary, Togiak appears to be a major supplier of marine mammal products for other Bristol Bay communities, as it was in the past. For example, according to preliminary results of a study conducted for the Minerals Management Service, no interviewed Togiak households received marine mammal products from other villages in 1989, but 58.3 percent received such foods from other Togiak families. In contrast, 20.8 percent of this sample gave away marine mammal products to other Bristol Bay villages..., and 20.8 percent received big game from these other communities (Social Science Research Associates 1991). No households in Manokotak reported sharing walrus with Togiak families in 1985, although one walrus was taken by a Manokotak hunter in that year (Schichnes and Chythlook 1988:77). One elder in Togiak said that when people visit their relatives in villages to the west, such as Goodnews Bay and Platinum, they sometimes return with a small gift of walrus, "enough for a meal."
Another important use of walrus for Togiak residents today is sharing with other communities. Togiak walrus hunters state that when they receive requests for walrus from other villages in the area, they respond without any expectation of immediate exchange or trade. For example, 16 households in Manokotak (30 percent) in 1985 received gifts of walrus from friends and relatives living in Togiak (Schichnes and Chythlook 1988:78). Except for seal oil (received from Togiak by 22 Manokotak households), more families in Manokotak received walrus than any other resource from Togiak.
It is interesting to note that 41.4 percent of the households in Ekwok, 75.0 percent in New Stuyahok, and 71.4 percent from Koliganek, all island villages on the Nushagak River, reported receiving gifts or seal oil or meat in 1987-8, with Togiak a major supplier. However, only one household in the three villages received walrus in that year (Schichnes and Chythlook 1991). This suggests that while sharing of marine mammal products between Togiak and the inland villages is very common, this sharing rarely involves walrus, perhaps because of the relative scarcity of this resource in Togiak's subsistence harvests today.
Subsistence uses of walrus have a long history at Togiak, and in some other Bristol bay villages. The oral traditions recounted by Togiak elders, and contemporary practices, suggest that hunting hauled out walrus in spring and especially in fall at locations such as Round Island were highly organized activities which supplied the village with highly valued subsistence foods.
Evidently, over the last decades, an involuntary shirt in walrus hunting methods has occurred at Togiak. When Round Island was closed to hunting, hunters had to shift to open water hunting methods and to the salvage of walrus hide and blubber from carcasses found dead on the beach. In contrast to onshore hunting, hunts in open water result in the loss of many animals due to sinking. Locating the animals is more problematic, hence walrus is a less reliable source of food at present that it was in the past.
Perhaps to compensate for lowered harvests and reduced hunting opportunities, it appears that substantial effort is made to comb beaches for walrus that can be salvaged for food and for ivory. Although this activity does provide some hide and blubber when fresh carcasses are encountered, many, if not most, yield little food because of their advanced state of decay.
As noted above, walrus hunts on land were contexts during which traditional values were passed across generations. As told by one respondent, the rules governing hunting "were written only in the minds of hunters. "Young men had to demonstrate that they had learned these rules in order to earn the respect of senior hunters and the right to lead hunts themselves. Elders have noted a loss of these values among some young people who have "lost a firm grip on Yup'ik culture."
Consistent with the elders' concerns, and as noted above, the history of the use of walrus in Bristol Bay, as well as elsewhere in Alaska, contains examples of cases in which large numbers of animals were killed solely to obtain ivory for sale, resulting in waste of much or all of the edible portions of the walrus. This suggests that subsistence hunting in critical habitat areas such as Round Island were to resume, appropriate management tools such as seasons, harvest quotas, and permitting procedures may be necessary to augment and support the traditional hunting rules of the Togiak people.
In pan, older hunters at Togiak attribute the loss of some traditional skills and values to restricted opportunities to hunt walrus at traditional haul out sites. One man said, "There's a few of us 'ex-trainees' left from past traditional walrus hunts at Round Island, and since the closure of our traditional hunting site, we have no one specific and guaranteed harvest site to take our young men to train during the traditional walrus harvest seasons. We do take our children now for them to observe our mishaps with walrus at sea, but this is just not true hunting. This is harassment to the point of kill, and many times the kill is not (even) retrieved."
As a result of these changes, Togiak residents report that there are fewer walrus taken for subsistence use in Togiak than 30 to 40 years ago, although quantified data to demonstrate the scope of such a decline are not available. Reduced harvests have also resulted in less walrus to share with other villages in the Bristol Bay region, despite the fact that traditional networks for sharing other marine mammals products such as seal oil remain strong. On the other hand, interest in harvesting and using walrus in accordance with traditional methods and values continues in Togiak. This interest is the basis for the proposal to the Board of Game for a managed hunt on Round Island.