Many city teens in Alaska, whose ancestors survived on seal meat for generations, like to cook and eat the stuff but haven’t a clue about how to handle it themselves. An afterschool program run by the Alaska Native Heritage Center hopes to change that. The program teaches teens how to butcher, prepare and cook seal meat.

Native Alaskan Brianna Mike, a high school sophomore in Chugiak, AK, spends her summers with family members chasing seals with harpoons. Prior to the program at the Heritage Center she’d never butchered one herself.

“It’s a fun thing to learn,” she told Jill Burke and Stephen Nowers of the Alaska Dispatch, “because you don’t really get to see this in the Lower 48. You only see this in Alaska.”