Boundaries of Life and Stillness: The Inuit Seal Hunt
Synopsis:
On Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, the Inuit people have lived a nomadic hunting lifestyle for nearly 5,000 years. In a region devoid of significant plant life, hunting is synonymous with food, clothing, shelter, and cultural identity, and no animal is as singularly important as the ringed seal. A non-migratory mammal, these seals can be hunted year-round, and their raw meat provides the rich nutrients the human body needs in the Arctic. Even today, their skin is essential for crafting the clothing necessary to endure the elements, and no part of the animal is wasted.In the past decades, the Inuit subsistence hunt has been largely confused in public imagination with the commercial hunt for harp seals in Canada, and many Inuit feel that their hunting culture - the core of their identity - is widely discriminated against, a deep source of pain and confusion for many. This project aims to challenge these perceptions, portraying the beauty and importance of a practice that is widely misunderstood, and the positive impacts of keeping the traditional subsistence hunt alive.
Statement:
On a starlit expanse of ice, in the indigo of a December noon, a blistering gunshot broke through the winter silence. After a long and patient wait, a single breath had been heard within the ice: the sound of life.
The sun had not risen for forty-six days. The landscape around us, a splintered, lunar maze, had been still as hibernation, resting under the weight of the North Star. The star hung fixed above the horizon, rendering thoughts of life improbable, nearly impossible. Yet the hunter before me reached into the ice, conjuring the massive and steaming body of a ringed seal. We stood not upon earth, as it seemed, but upon the ocean. The sea had become a barrier between life and stillness, between the heavy silence of a winter's day and the dream "“ the elusive promise - of bountiful marine life below.
On the north of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, the Inuit people have lived a nomadic hunting lifestyle for nearly 5,000 years. In a region devoid of significant plant life, hunting is synonymous with food, clothing, shelter, and cultural identity. From October through June, the frozen sea forms an expansive highway between otherwise distant regions, creating a platform for travel, hunting, and life itself. For elders, the nomadic lifestyle remains within living memory: the last families moved to settlements, established by the Canadian government, in the 1960s. Even for those who do not hunt, the ice - and the opportunity it provides for travel and exploration - is an essential component in the fabric of life.
Of all the animals harvested by the Inuit - primarily marine mammals, caribou, and fish - none are as important as the ringed seal. A non-migratory mammal, these seals can be hunted year-round, and their raw meat provides the rich nutrients the human body needs in the Arctic. Even today, their skin is essential for crafting the clothing necessary to endure the elements, and no part of the animal is wasted. Unfortunately, the Inuit subsistence hunt has been largely confused in public imagination with the commercial hunt for harp seals in Canada, and many Inuit feel that their hunting culture - the core of their identity - is widely discriminated against, a deep source of pain and confusion for many. This project aims to challenge these perceptions, portraying the beauty and importance of a practice that is widely misunderstood.
Inuit communities currently navigate drastic cultural shifts to a wage-earning society, one where hunting no longer remains necessary to survive. For the culture to continue, however, it is critical. Research suggests that furthering traditional hunting practices may be an antidote for the rampant depression plaguing indigenous communities across the Circumpolar Arctic, much of which has been attributed to loss of cultural identity. What's more, the traditional foods provided by subsistence hunting are high in vitamins and nutrients - essential in a region with astronomical grocery prices, where nutritional awareness is poor and about half of the population lives in food-insecure households.
For Inuit culture and traditional knowledge to persist, so must human relationships to the land, the sea, the ice, and the animals. As temperatures rise globally, the futures of the Arctic regions grow increasingly uncertain. This is a portrait of some of these relationships which endure.
This series was photographed in and around Arctic Bay, Nunavut, where I spent four months photographing on a Fulbright grant in the winter of 2014-2015. I am applying to this grant with the goal of returning to Arctic Bay for the spring and summer of 2018, where I will document the experiences of women and children as they camp on the sea ice and learn to hunt for the first time.
