Press Release from
National Geographic

SIGHTINGS
The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON—Two award-winning writers chart the mysterious 10,000-mile migration of the Eastern Pacific gray whales from their Baja California birthing waters in Mexico to their summer Arctic feeding grounds in a new release from National Geographic Books.

SIGHTINGS: The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey (National Geographic Books, ISBN 0-7922-7989-1, July 2002, $26) is by acclaimed novelist and naturalist Brenda Peterson and celebrated Chickasaw poet and writer Linda Hogan. After seven years of following the whale’s marathon annual journey, they share with readers what they have learned about these mysterious great mammals and their migration routes, as well as Native stories about gray whales and recent natural history discoveries.

The book is a multifaceted portrait of the human-whale bond, written in two voices. Hogan’s lyrical and traditional Native American point of view weaves with Peterson’s visionary voice for an endangered natural world. The result is a passionate dialogue about both Native and animal rights that reveals a new 21st-century conflict: fragile coalitions of Native and non-Native environmentalists are seeking to protect whales, while some coastal tribes who revere whales still hunt them.

Hogan’s voice resonates with indigenous knowledge that includes tribal literature and song as well as Native science. She traces the role of whales in tribal history and mythology, and the ancient historical and spiritual bond between whales and humans.

Peterson, who has studied and written about whales for two decades, provides a dramatic narrative, focusing on animal-human relationships and bringing their mystery and beauty into the world of science.

The authors document the dramatic challenges facing gray whales. These include climate changes that affect their food supply — the possible cause of a record-high die-off of gray whales in 1999 and 2000 — and political lobbying led by Japan and Norway to lift the 1986 international ban on commercial whaling.
SIGHTINGS also tells the story of the people whose lives are linked to the gray whale — from tribal communities, researchers and fishermen to eco-activists, businessmen and historical whalers — and offers insights into current disputes between Native people, the tourism industry, scientists, environmentalists and whaling nations.

The book is a revealing, often haunting, amalgam of science, history, anthropology and powerful storytelling.

Peterson has studied and written about marine animals and the environment for the past two decades. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning memoir “Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals,” selected as a Best Spiritual Book of 2001, and “Duck and Cover,” a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She and Hogan co-edited the best-selling, three-volume series “Women and the Natural World.” Peterson lives in Seattle.

Hogan, author of 10 previous books, received an American Book Award for “Seeing Through the Sun.” “Mean Spirit” won the Oklahoma Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hogan is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Five Civilized Tribes Museum Playwriting Award. She lives in Colorado.