Inuit leaders dismayed by protests from southerners over narwhal cull

"Arctic_Menace" said
Fair enough, but please don't lump me and many other Liberals in with these ignoramuses.

The fact that people buy into this and hate the Inuit for this, is sad and depressing.

"ShepherdsDog" said
Streaker?

"A lot of kids who are (usually) eating chips and drinking pop are eating healthy," Richards said. "It's a lot better than craving Chiclets and gummi bears."

"Eisensapper" said
I wonder if I could get a clearence diver buddy to scuttle the Sea Shepard.

Narwhal not the issue
Thu, 12/04/2008 - 21:41 — brent
by Tim Querengesser -- The most gruesome memory from my summer in the Canadian army happened in the mess hall. One morning, I and several other soldiers-in-training stood waiting for our breakfast. As we obediently queued for food, we peered into the mess's normally closed-off kitchen, watching a haggard woman in a white coat covered with ketchup fry pre-cracked eggs by dumping them on a skillet from gallon-sized jugs. Nearby, a dozen trays of deep-fried sausages sat on racks glistening and congealing, while teetering mountains of pre-buttered toast threatened to collapse at any moment. "This is f**cking disgusting," said one of my colleagues, who happened to be from the suburbs. "Seriously, I can't eat after seeing this."

I'd worked in several restaurants and knew that food delivered to the restaurant table is prepared in a medley of fats, odors and greasy fingers. But my soldiering colleague, evidently, had never thought about what mass food-production might look like. He hadn't pulled back the curtain on what is an every-day part of Western life. I realized our culture depends on, even fosters, such moral screens, likely so that it can hum serenely along without questioning itself. Without them, our proximity to unsophisticated, savage practices all around us, ones that allow, for instance, people to buy processed chicken made into cartoon-character shapes, would become unbearable. But once in a while we encounter cultures without this distance. And often, their comfort with the savage and brutal parts of survival mixes with our reluctance to look at our metaphorical mess-hall kitchens to create a lot of misdirected rage.

I think the culling of hundreds of narwhal about to be trapped beneath freezing ice on north Baffin Island is one such event. It has aroused the sensibilities of many Canadians: Passionate blogs are being written, angry opinion pieces pumped out and, surely, dinner-table conversations inspired by articles like Paul Watson's in the Pacific Free Press.

And so I feel it's only fair to inject a view from the other side, from up here. From where I stand in the North, this debate isn't about narwhals, the unicorns of the sea. It isn't about ice-breakers or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or ivory markets. Instead it's about two cultures that usually exist in blissful ignorance of each other, but are now discovering, yet again, that they don't understand one another. One side has a lot to say in these instances; the other barely has a voice.

The cultural encounters between Inuit and the rest of Canada seem to be sparked by the killing of wild animals -- something Inuit have done for thousands of years -- without first seeking southern Canada's moral okay in the matter. Today's narwhal controversy is yet another example of this. A report that describes the killing in lurid, almost fetish-like detail -- "a torrent of violence that has spewed the hottest of blood into the frigid seas of the high north," was how Watson described the narwhal cull -- awakens the world to the not-so-noble-savage side of Inuit life. And then the world reacts with outrage.

But let's be big enough to call this what it clearly is -- a moral curtain. And let's consider the folly of debating it in the media, where one side of the story has little chance of winning.

The Inuit are a people of the land who are moving, some would say being forced, into the information age. Outnumbered and unprepared, they're bound to lose a media fight for hearts and minds over the fate of the narwhal, possibly because they have more pressing things to worry about. Inuit often live in overcrowded, disease-fostering conditions – the worst in the developed world, in fact. Let's not pity them; they don't ask for it, and I'm not writing this to encourage it. But let's honestly ask how often the Canadian media spreads word about the Inuit's intensely human and constant crisis? And when they do, how often do Canada and the world raise the flag of indignation as high as it does when narwhal or polar bears are threatened?

Everything is about perspective. I don't blindly support the actions of the Inuit. I've never seen a narwhal, eaten muktuk, shot a rifle at a living thing or even been to Pond Inlet. I would prefer the narwhal to survive another day. There are blind-spots to my experiences, for sure. But I think it's incumbent on all of us to identify ours in the debate as well, before we chime in.

When's the last time you heard the Inuit judging your ways? They predominately eat animals that live wild and free; you likely eat or have eaten animals that lived on a feedlot. Their culture, older than ours, is being threatened by the spread of your culture. And when they have challenged us, about climate change and the threats it poses to their existence, what have we done? Have we changed our culture to suit theirs? If not, then why should they?

This is not intended to be a feel-bad-for-the-Inuit argument. It's just to be honest about our moral curtains. What I can assure you is that hundreds of narwhals will die this winter, trapped under freezing ice in some uninhabited place in the North few Canadians could place on a map. No one will see it. And we will rest easy, ignorant of it, or accepting of it because nature has its wisdom. Just realize that the more you pull back the curtain in the debate over the narwhal cull, the harder it will be to find outrage.

A mass cull of narwhals trapped in sea ice near Pond Inlet, Nunavut, continues to spark criticism from animal-rights groups, but federal fisheries officials say one group's proposal of freeing the Arctic whales with an icebreaker simply was not practical.

As of Wednesday, an estimated 629 narwhals have been harvested from the ice near Bylot Island, about 17 kilometres from Pond Inlet, since Nov. 20.

Local hunters have temporarily halted the cull, so that hunt captains can use sonar detection to determine how many whales remain under the ice.

Residents in Pond Inlet, located on northern Baffin Island, found the whales trapped in a number of breathing holes, or shrinking areas of open water in which the whales can surface.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans agreed with local elders, who advised the hunters to conduct a "humane hunt" or else the whales would otherwise die of starvation and lack of oxygen as the ice shrinks the breathing holes further.

But Michael O'Sullivan, executive director of the Humane Society of Canada, said the department should have considered sending an icebreaker to Pond Inlet to break up the ice and free the whales.

"Why not ask them to save animals instead of kill them?" O'Sullivan told CBC News on Wednesday.

"We offered $10,000 towards the cost of getting an icebreaker up there, and we're still waiting for a call back …10 days later from the minister's office."

In Ottawa, DFO spokesman Phil Jenkins said it would not have been practical to send an icebreaker from southern Canada to north Baffin Island.

Jenkins said it would have taken four days to prepare an icebreaker for an Arctic voyage, followed by another seven days of sea travel.

As a result, Jenkins said it would not have been possible for the vessel to reach Pond Inlet on time to save the whales.

"It's a very emotional response, but even if you start to look just a little bit of scrutiny, you'll certainly find out that it's just not a practical solution," he said.

Jenkins added that harvesting the whales was the most humane, practical and cost-effective way to deal with the situation in Pond Inlet.

"The hunt is one that has been designed to deal with these trapped whales in the most humane way possible," he said.

"No one likes to see this kind of thing happen. We believe that the actions that we've taken jointly on this particular situation is the most humane way to go, and so that's been our role so far."

The Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organization is currently busy cutting and storing meat and muktaaq — the skin and blubber — from the narwhals.

Organization officials say they will have more information Thursday about when the narwhal hunt will end.

They will also announce plans soon on how they will distribute the abundance of muktaaq to other Nunavut communities

The Day the Beer Dried Up
Fri, 06/27/2008 - 18:00 — Anonymous
By Randy Freeman -- After the Second World War, miners and prospectors flocked to gold-rich Yellowknife and drained the town’s most precious commodity. What ensued was a uniquely Northern crisis.

Duke DeCoursey was new to Yellowknife when, in May 1945, he launched the town’s first proper newspaper, News of the North. In his first few issues, he prompted readers to submit story ideas – good local topics that would get them reading. It turned out DeCoursey didn’t have to look far. After all, this was the frenzied post-World War II goldrush era, when a sudden influx of prospectors, miners and all manner of opportunists were exhausting the town’s supply of housing, services, and – most critically – beer.

Alcohol and mining stampedes have always gone hand in hand, and when gold was discovered on the shores of Yellowknife Bay in the autumn of 1934, the situation was no different. Within four years the area’s population had grown from a few scattered Dene to 3,000 mostly male, mostly single newcomers: miners, prospectors, geologists, surveyors, labourers and the like. It was a free and easy time; people were making good money and spending it on what apparently really counted: lots and lots of beer.

The Second World War brought the good times to a screeching halt. Men heeded the call of king and country, signed up for active duty and left the North. By 1942 the once-bustling town of Yellowknife had shrunk to barely 500 people. War-time rationing meant remaining residents had to make do with less, and that included less alcohol.

Yellowknife’s annual allotment of suds came in on the summer barges. The shipments were split among the vendors – in this case, between the community’s one and only liquor store and the “beverage room” of the town’s only hotel. During the war there may not have been lots of beer, but it always seemed to last until a fresh stock arrived on the first spring barge. Sure, the system had problems: Come May, a miner might have had to opt for a Bohemian Maid or Lethbridge Pil when his favourite brand, Black Label, had run out. And there was always the problem of skunky suds that had gone way past their best-before date. But that was the nature of wartime, and people made sacrifices.

Early in 1945, with talk of peace in Europe, Yellowknife began to wake up. The men and women who’d vacated to serve the wartime effort began filing back north. Optimists predicted the town’s population might double by summer; pessimists claimed it would triple and Yellowknife would be crushed by overpopulation. It turned out to be much worse than that.

In June 1945, two months after his newspaper had debuted, DeCoursey wrote and published an open letter to the government noting Yellowknife’s population had increased six-fold, back up to 3,000. There were 2,500 new prospectors, mining-company representatives, diamond drillers, geologists, surveyors and labourers in town. These extra bodies, he wrote, were straining Yellowknife’s housing supply: Cabins and shacks built for two people were housing six, tents were springing up everywhere, and packing crates were being converted into dwellings. All of which was bad, DeCoursey wrote. But worse, he said, was that all of those newcomers were thirsty. Like the proverbial plague of locusts, they had made short work of Yellowknife’s meagre beer supply.

The first barge to cross Great Slave Lake that year had arrived at the Yellowknife dock in the early morning of June 22. It was packed with mining equipment, building supplies, food and beer. The liquor store’s shelves were quickly restocked, but within two days they were empty again. The hotel faired only slightly better. To help conserve the beer, the owner decided to open the bar for only a few hours each Saturday night. That summer it became common to see thirsty Northerners milling around the hotel on Saturday afternoons, anxious for the bar to open. By 7 p.m., when it did, the lineup would often span blocks. Arrive late and chances were you’d go home sober.

DeCoursey’s News of the North editorials didn’t just rail against the beer shortage, they suggested it was a threat to law and order. On July 21 he wrote, “Because of the fact that so many follow the urge to get as much as possible of a rationed commodity, Yellowknife has not been the well-behaved town Saturday nights it was during the pre-ration days. In fact we are quite certain that during the past four weekends, the RCMP have been very busy.”

Bootlegging, public drunkenness, and loud and often violent shack and bush-parties kept local police unusually busy over the summer of 1945. DeCoursey and many others in Yellowknife blamed the government for not only failing to prepare for a post-war boom in the North, but for doggedly setting Yellowknife’s beer quota according to outdated population statistics. It was the government’s fault that Yellowknife had become, at least on Saturday nights, an unruly and crime-ridden town.

A reasonable person might assume that Ottawa, in the aftermath of the war, had bigger fish to fry than Yellowknife’s beer quota. But DeCoursey was persistent. His column continued the attack, suggesting that the gold-mining town was the only community in Canada where beer was in short supply, and claiming there was no other licenced hotel in Canada that was selling beer for fewer than 15 hours a week. He wrote that the North wasn’t “asking for as much beer per capita as in Quebec – nor even Manitoba. However, if we should receive three times the quantity which we are now allocated, there would be only half as much beer per capita as there was in 1942.”

Ottawa wasn’t quick to respond, but it did eventually recognize there was a problem. At an August meeting of the Yellowknife administrative district board (the equivalent of a town council), the agenda included road grading, extending the water-delivery system, garbage pickup – and beer. The board’s secretary had some good news. Word had been received from Ottawa that the annual beer allotment had been substantially increased.

While far short of what was needed or asked for, the increase did allow the hotel bar to stay open between 7 and 10 p.m. every day except Sunday. And the really good news was there was still time to get that extra beer into Yellowknife before freeze-up, so residents didn’t have to face the prospect of a dry winter.