Bernice Clarke

How whale blubber is fuelling this soapmaker’s Inuit pride

Bernice Clarke puts whale oil in her soap to celebrate her Inuit heritage, and it’s helping her reassert her identity and understand the medicines of her ancestors. But is it understood by the wider world?

This is part five of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Bernice and Justin Clarke’s home, with its open kitchen, cozy wood stove and enormous TV, could just as well be in Saskatoon or Halifax were it not for the heaps of maktaaq on the kitchen island.

Friends and family are gathered around taking slices of bowhead and narwhal blubber with their crescent-shaped ulus, carving off bits of frozen caribou, and picking at a whole Arctic char. It’s mid-morning on a quiet Saturday in Iqaluit, and Bernice is in her element.

“We’re very much still tied to the food and the land here,” she says. “It’s very healing when we’re eating together. It brings us close together.”

Bernice has been on a journey the last several years as she’s rediscovering the power of Inuit traditions. A new chapter began when she started making body butter as a hobby and giving it away to her friends. Meeka Mike, a family friend, suggested that she incorporate bowhead whale oil into the products, and took it a step further by delivering a bin full of blubber to her front door.

“I think Justin was a bit hesitant at first,” Mike laughs. But she explained to the couple that there was a long tradition of Inuit using the oil to clean their skin, and that her own grandmother had used whale oil to make soap.

Word got out quickly, and when Uasau Soap arrived at craft fairs, their products would sell out almost immediately.

“I think she came back with about $450 profit,” Justin recalls, still impressed, of Bernice’s first craft fair.

Both Justin and Bernice were convinced. The company now sells products across multiple lines, many of which incorporate whale oil, and some of which use blubber from bearded seals and plants from the tundra around Iqaluit.

It’s a bold idea in a world where marine mammal products  — even those from limited Indigenous hunts — have been treated harshly by activists and governments. Yet Bernice says reactions to her using whale oil in her products has been mostly positive.

“I’ve even had vegans tell me it’s a beautiful story,” she says.

“I haven’t had anyone come to me that wasn’t happy with me using the [oil]. They’ve actually been really supportive. And if I do come across anyone that is against me using the oil, that’s their belief, and I’m not going to try and change their mind. I’ll explain my story. They have their beliefs and I have mine — and I’m very strong in mine.”

The business has grown, but it has also allowed Bernice to feel pride in her culture, one that was deliberately and systematically oppressed through colonization. She and Justin both have jobs outside of the soap-making, but are working on building their business so that it can grow and spread to support other families.

“It’s accidentally given me so much vision and strength, and a drive to really get deeper into my culture,” she says.

“And that’s through —” she smiles, and tilts her head, “blubber!”

Threats to our environment are often hidden from public view.
So we embarked on a little experiment at The Narwhal: letting our investigative journalists loose to file as many freedom of information requests as their hearts desired.

In just six months, they filed a whopping 233 requests — and with those, they unearthed a veritable mountain of government documents to share with readers across Canada.

But the reality is this kind of digging takes lots of time and no small amount of money.

As many newsrooms cut staff, The Narwhal has doubled down on hiring reporters to do hard-hitting journalism — and we do it all as an independent, non-profit news organization that doesn’t run any advertising.

Will you join the growing chorus of readers who have stepped up to hold the powerful accountable?
Threats to our environment are often hidden from public view.
So we embarked on a little experiment at The Narwhal: letting our investigative journalists loose to file as many freedom of information requests as their hearts desired.

In just six months, they filed a whopping 233 requests — and with those, they unearthed a veritable mountain of government documents to share with readers across Canada.

But the reality is this kind of digging takes lots of time and no small amount of money.

As many newsrooms cut staff, The Narwhal has doubled down on hiring reporters to do hard-hitting journalism — and we do it all as an independent, non-profit news organization that doesn’t run any advertising.

Will you join the growing chorus of readers who have stepped up to hold the powerful accountable?

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As The Narwhal turns five, I’m thinking about the momentous outpouring of public generosity — a miracle of sorts — that’s allowed us to prove the critics wrong. More than 6,000 people just like you donate whatever they can afford to make independent, high-stakes journalism about the natural world in Canada free for everyone to read. Help us keep the dream alive for another five years by becoming a member today and we’ll mail you a copy of our beautiful 2023 print magazine. — Carol Linnitt, co-founder
Keep the dream alive.