In April, on the north-west coast of Greenland, the sun no longer really sets. In Kullorsuaq, four hundred souls on the shore of Melville Bay, the Inuit have a bank account, an internet login, a Facebook username. A few, though, still prefer hunting to the supermarket. Ole harnesses his dogs and sets off across the pack ice with three companions, for as long as it takes, to find food for their clan. Beneath the sledges, ice that shrinks as the climate warms, and oil that others already covet. At the dogs’ pace, the film lets these last traditional hunters say what they think of the world down below.
The village is cut off from the rest of the world only a few months a year, and the young, like everywhere else, hope for “happiness on Facebook”.
At eight o’clock, the village wakes up: people go shopping, set off for school, or decide to take “the road of truancy”.It is four in the morning, minus 25 degrees, and Ole sharpens his harpoon, watching through the kitchen window for the moment the sun will be comforting enough to go out. Going hunting, he says, is a bit like setting off on an adventure: something unexpected always happens, and you bring back food for the whole family, sometimes whale, narwhal or polar bear. The kit comes down to very little: a sleeping bag, a stove, a tent, a harpoon with a float, the rifle you never forget because a bear can appear at any moment, and what you need to repair the sledges, ropes, nails and a hammer, because “it can save our lives”. Ole has had two snowmobiles; he much prefers the dogs, which at least “don’t break down”. Tied to their chains, they wait for the first crack of the whip, like the wolfdog that never could choose between the collar and freedom. At the edge of the village, Martika, Aqqaluk and Adam are waiting for him. They will stay on the pack ice two days, three days, a week perhaps. Due west, to reach the silence as quickly as possible.
In the middle of the harpoon, a float: “it’s to be sure of getting it back”.
“The climate is warming, the pack ice is shrinking. The world is changing faster than the seasons.” And the new generation may soon no longer have the chance to set off like this.After five hours on the sledge, the dogs begin to creep forward like wolves. Three seals are basking nearly a kilometre away. Martika slips on a white smock, borrows Ole’s rifle and sets off alone: according to Inuit belief, the seal holds a spirit that must be won over for it to offer itself to its hunter, and no weapon can replace a pure heart and a soul at peace. The first dives into its hole, the second does not get away. Martika killed his first seal at nine. Ole puts it his own way: “The seal for us is like the pig for you.” Nothing is wasted, its meat feeds men and dogs, and without it his people would already have disappeared. The world judges them bloodthirsty without knowing that they hunt first of all to eat. The pack ice is shrinking, he knows, but he cannot get used to the idea that the seals might disappear. He has already tried to make a living working on land, and it was too different: as long as there are seals, he will do what his people have always done. A few generations ago, most Inuit were still nomads. Today they are settled, “stuffed with frozen pizzas and burgers”.
In spring, the seals basking in the sun “shine” on the ice: they are then much easier to spot.
“Hunting is part of our culture,” says Martika: the seal’s meat is eaten, and its skin is sold, “sometimes for a lot of money”.At eight in the evening, at minus 25 degrees, the convoy stops at the foot of an island. The dogs eat first, the men afterwards. The sledges drawn together make the floor of the tent, the tarpaulins the mattress: you know what the temperature is when you lie down, never what it will be when you wake. Ole and Martika set nets in a crack in the ice, which the seals follow to reach the shore. In the morning, it is minus 30 and the nets are empty. At the end of a halibut line hangs a Greenland shark, unfit to eat; to protect the halibut, the Greenlandic government pays a bounty to anyone who sends it a shark’s heart. Then the wind rises, and at minus 40 they must stay under canvas. Martika remembers the day when, as they were preparing the meal, the pack ice split in two: the dogs, though tied up, clung on with their claws before being carried off by the sea. He comes across more and more oil prospectors; a survey team he accompanied claimed to be counting bears, narwhals and seals, with GPS supplied by the company. Ole measures what his people weigh against these billions. Let those who lecture them about seal hunting not impose quotas on them, but rather include them in their search for oil, “so that we are not left behind”.
It is not unusual to lose several tens of degrees in a few hours: the night is spent huddled together, “out of economy of movement”.
“The seal is not a hunting trophy. It is a gift offered by the ocean.” And in the tent, no one speaks while eating.
“The pack ice is the heritage of our ancestors.” From the top of the iceberg, they watch for the bearded seal, thought to be nearby.Once the wind has dropped, Aqqaluk, the youngest, adjusts the sight of his rifle on a packet of Chinese soup: next time, it is his turn to bring back the seal. This time, it is Adam who sets off, creeping like a wolf, without a word, until the stamp of the heel that cuts short the animal’s suffering. Then Ole climbs up to the hut of the explorer Knud Rasmussen, “Danish and half Greenlandic”. There he recounts the policy that “ended up being called G60”: the Inuit were moved, set down in the village with the promise of a clinic and a school, taught to fish for halibut, and some of them lost their minds. Yet, despite the past, despite the risks of pollution, he cannot see how his people could refuse the chance to develop at last: “How can we say no to development?” Ole and his band eventually came home. In the village, the children play on the swings, a bearskin is drying, and nearly four million people live north of the Arctic Circle. It is for the young generation to choose, says the film, “between Twitter or seals, Facebook or dogs”.
How could they not seize “the gold, the diamonds, the oil hidden beneath the pack ice”? So, say yes, “but at what price, and how?”
The hunters are told that one day they will no longer be able to set out, so much will the land and the climate have warmed.
Before they were settled in the village, Ole says, his people “lived exclusively by hunting seals and polar bears”.“To leave the pack ice is to lose one’s identity. Today, history is repeating itself with the oil companies.”Ole