THE ESKIMO FREEDOM

April 1999

DUR 21’

AERIAL HELICOPTER SHOT

JH LOOKING OUT OF WINDOW

EMPTY SNOW/SEA

PILOT/COCKPIT

PLANE COMING IN TO LAND

DISSOLVE TO MAP – SHOW NUNAVUT, IQALUIT, CORAL HARBOUR

STATUE AT DAWN

EARLY MORNING DOG

EARLY MORNING CORAL HARBOUR

C/U MIKITOK AND JH DOWN HILL

SHOT MIKITOK WALKING

MIKITOK IN VISION

W/S FROZEN SEA

BOAT ON ICE

CROSSES IN GRAVEYARD

PAN CROSSES WITH CORAL HARBOR IN B/G

STEINHAMMER INTO VISION UP SLOPE ON SKIDOO

TRACKING STEINHAMMER

HUSKIES

VIC THROUGH TOWN

KIDS IN SCHOOLYARD, PLAYING ICE-HOCKEY

VIC ON SKIDOO

VIC TWO SHOT OR CONT. SKIDOO

VIC TO CAMERA

Reverse question

VIC IN VISION

VIC IN VISION

SNOWMOBILE CONVOY ACROSS SEA ICE

ON SLEDGE

ARVALUK TRACKING SHOT

WIDE SHOTS THROUGH SEA ICE

JAMES AND BEN POINT WAY THROUGH ICE

JAMES RESTARTS SKIDOO

JAMES TOWARDS CAM ON SKIDOO

JAMES IN VISION

JAMEMS POURS SOUP INTO POT

W/S PICNIC SCENE OR PAN FROM SLEDGES

JAMES AND JH TALKING

JAMES STARTS CHOPPING

MORE JAMES AT PICNIC – w/s etc. others eating

JAMES IN VISION

W/S IQALUIT

NEWPSPAER EDITOR

LOOSE PAN NEWSPAPERS ON WALL

JIM BELL IN VISION

W/S CONVOY PULL OUT TO REVEAL ACROSS HUGE SPACES

CARIBOU

JAMES DRIVES UP, UNSLINGS RIFLE

JAMES SHOOTS, DOG RUNS AFTER CARIBOU

DEAD CARIBOU, JAES SHARPENING KNIFE

JAMES AND JH SKINNING CARIBOU

COME TO JAMES IN VISION

CARIBOUR IN DISTANCE

JAMES ON SKIDOO

APPROACHES FOX TRAP

JAMES RECOVERS ARCTIC FOX FROM TRAP

MRS BRUCE TREATING FOX SKIN

MRS BRUCE IN VISION

CUT TO TEACHER IN SCHOOL, W/S CLASSROOM, VIC COMES IN

STEINHAMMER WITH SCHOOLKIDS

VIC AND HANDCUFFS

KIDS WITH VIC

STAY ON KIDS

JIM BELL

HUDDLE AROUND MAP

FROZEN FACES, JH LOOKING ON W/S GROUP AROUND MAP

W/S SKIDOOS

TIGHTER SHOT SKIDOO

SKIDOOS AT NIGHT

JH OUT OF BIVOUAC IN MORNING, PUTS ON JACKET

IGLOO, JAMES APPROACHES

KATALUK OPENS DOOR, JAMES GOES IN

JAMES AND KATALUK IN IGLOO

INTERIORS/EXTERIORS IGLOO

KETTLE STEAMING

SHOT OUTSIDE IGLOO

JAMES IN VISION BY IGLOO

JONATHAN REVERSE Q

JAMES

DEPARTURE SLEDS (END OF HUNTING TRIP)

BERNARD IN BULDOZER MOVING SNOW AT CAMP

JIM BERNARD IN VISION

JH REVERSE QUESTION

STAYS ON JONATHAN

JIM BERNARD IN VISION AFTER CUT

REFUELLING SEQUENCE

BERNARD IN VISION

KIDS IN SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

JIM BELL

JAMES COOKING

JAMES IN VISION

JAMES PUTS FOOD ON TABLE, LITTLE BOYS, MARION

JAMES IN VISION

NODDY AROUND

JH REVERSE QUESTION

ARVALUK IN VISION

JAMES AGAIN

JAMES AND FAMILY ON WAY TO IQALUIT – ACROSS APRON, BOARDING AIRCRAFT

MUSIC – THROAT SINGING FROM CEREMONY

Two million square kilometres, and a mere twenty-four thousand souls.

MUSIC

MUSIC

PILOT TALK-BACK

Over this waste of frozen sea and ice-bound land, there are no roads at all.

MUSIC

CHANGE FROM THROAT SINGING TO DRUMS

It’s more than four thousand years since the first humans crossed from Asia to occupy what’s now the Canadian Arctic.

DOG BARKING

The little town of Coral Harbour on Southampton Island is a lot younger than that.

It was constructed in the 1950’s on the initiative of the white man’s government in Ottawa.

Long before that, says old Mikitok Bruce, there were people living here on Sallit, as the Inuit call the island. The Sallitmuit had been here time out of mind.

His grandparents used to visit them, before Mikitok was born.

SUBTITLES:

Before they died, the people who lived on Sallit were very friendly.

They always have plenty of food to share, according to my grandparents.

START MUSIC AGAIN

BRUCE V/OVER (SUBTITLED):

But then one summer, that’s when the people started dying.

In the year 1902, a Scottish whaling ship, the Active, overwintered on the shores of Southampton Island.

From a crewmember, the Sallitmuit contracted a virulent form of gastro-enteritis. Within months, all but one woman, and three children, were dead.

Since then, plenty more Inuit have died.

SNOWMOBILE NOISE

These days it falls to Constable Vic Steinhammer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to enforce the law in Coral Harbor.

He’s an amiable fellow. You can’t imagine him doing what the Mounties did thirty years ago in the new settlements across the North – shooting the Inuit’s dog teams to stop them returning to stop them returning to their nomadic ways.

It was done for the best of motives, of course:

How else could schools, and health services, and welfare cheques, be brought to the stone-age Inuit?

All too often, drink, and drugs, and despair were imported too.

Though Coral Harbor, says Constable Steinhammer is a policeman’s paradise compared to many Inuit settlements.

Very good leaders. They’ve chosen to make this a dry community, a prohibited community for liquor, and that eliminates so many social problems that the police usually have to deal with.

So what sort of problems did you have in the last place you worked?

In the last place, lots of violence, a lot of complaints regarding violence, uh neglect, lots of children, child neglect with parents, that was just such a common occurrence.

Have you any idea why that is?

I suppose it could be the isolation, the mere fact that down south you never experience isolation like this… there’s no other way out other than by air.

SNOWMOBILES fx

Of course, that isn’t strictly true. If you’re taking a weekend to hunt for caribou, you can be out on the sea-ice beyond Coral Harbour in five minutes.

What Vic Steinhammer meant was that to European eyes, it’s five minutes to the middle of nowhere.

But that, says James Arvaluk, hunter, politician, and long-time champion of the idea of Nunavut, is just one example of how differently Europeans and Inuit see things.

JAMES V/OVER

It’s beautiful, it’s really beautiful.

It’s water, it’s food, it’s the land, it’s the beauty, ah peace//peace where you become part of it rather than trying to fit in between the houses.

CHAT ABOUT WHICH WAY TO GO IN INUKTITUT

The Inuit, says James, are used to isolation. This empty landscape holds no terrors for them.

It was when they were forced into settled communities that so many of them lost their way.

James himself was born in a nomadic hunting camp. His father moved into a township only reluctantly.

My old man said //forty years ago, that there will be increasing crime or there will be increasing frustration, and not being able to get along as well, because traditionally Inuit never knew how to live in larger centres, they are not equipped for that.

FX

What’s that James?

Caribou soup.

It’s one of the last weekend hunting trips James Arvaluk will be making in a while. Next week he heads for Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, to take up his duties as Coral Harbor’s Member in the new Assembly, and the territory’s first Minister of Education.

Meanwhile he’s got his hands full educating me.

JH: What is this?

JA: This is aged walrus meat… it doesn't freeze because it’s aged.

JH: How old is it?

JA: It’s aged to a month.

JH: Mature walrus meat – can I try some?

JA: Sure.

JH: First time for everything… got a really rich taste this.

JA: Yeah very rich… it’s not as rich or as strong as blue cheese.

JH: Yeah well I’m more used to blue cheese I suppose.

The creation of Nunavut was the outcome of a twenty-year struggle and for Inuit leaders like James Arvaluk, the fulfilment of a life-long dream.

It’s not really a dream, it’s more of a necessity – it became a necessity to look back about the past and say, “look, something is very wrong here”. People in their own homes are being alienated, they’re being run through colonial rules.

You know, if you had to be ruled on the daily basis, on your own land without any constitutional relationship, then –

JH: Ruled by the police effectively?

JA: Yeah exactly, ruled by the police.

That’s a view that almost everyone in Nunavut now accepts, whether they’re Inuit out on the land or whether, like the editor of Nunavut’s leading newspaper, they’re a European in an office in Iqaluit.

I mean if you’re familiar with the history of the Nunavut in the past 40 to 50 years, you’ll know that the Inuit have been subjected to rapid, unrelenting change that has come from the south that has totally turned their lives upside down//

And of course al these changes, many of them well-intentioned, //

ended up creating a bureaucracy that the Inuit themselves have always found very very oppressive.

Way back in the early 1970’s, the Inuit filed a claim to native title over the whole vast expanse of the Canadian Arctic north of the treeline. And the Federal Courts accepted that it had validity.

Ever since, the Inuit have been negotiating the terms on which they’d agree to the extinguishment of their native title claim.

One of their first demands was the right to harvest the wildlife across all two million square kilometres of tundra, strait and ocean.

In the pampered West, we get our meat butchered and wrapped on the supermarket shelf.

But for the Inuit, says Arvaluk, hunting is both an economic and cultural necessity.

JAMES V/OVER

In reality very very few can actually afford to keep themselves going from the store only. It’s very expensive, it’s not fresh. Everything is shipped in by barge and you still eat it nine months later. In order to have some fresh meat for your family, this is the only way to go get it.

From the cultural standpoint, it’s in your roots. It’s in your history. This is how you manage because you are not a farmer or cattleman.

Inuit organisations now control the management of wildlife in Nunavut. Each community has strict quotas for the rare species, like polar bear.

But the caribou population on Southampton Island is already too big, James told me.

As for the Arctic foxes, fewer and fewer Inuit bother to lay traplines any more. At a mere twenty-five dollars a pelt, it’s not worth the trouble – and the fox population is almost out of control.

Meanwhile, back in Coral Harbor, Nunakay Bruce was spending the morning dressing fox pelts, to be made into gloves and the trimmings for parka hoods.

But fewer and fewer young Inuit want to learn the old skills, she says.

SUBTITLES:

We thought the lifestyle of the English people was great.

Today out children want to live that way, they prefer to live that way.

This is where the big changes came. The Inuit way is not a priority for the younger generation in school.

VIC: Hi

KIDS: Good morning Vic

VIC: How’s everybody?

KIDS: Good!

Vic Steinhammer spends at least an hour a week in the Coral Harbour primary school, assiduously playing the role of the friendly neighbourhood cop.

This is a bulletproof vest; it will stop most bullets going through. O.K I brought my handcuffs so I can handcuff a few if you went

Right now, it’s innocent fun.

But in a few years these young Inuit will be facing a harsh economic reality, which will be much harder to escape.

KID ESCAPES

Unemployment in some Arctic communities is as high as 60%. Addiction and suicide rates, especially among young men, are soaring.

They’re intractable social problems. But most Inuit expect the new government in Nunavut, somehow, to come up with solutions.

Thank you Vic.

You’re going to see a group of 19 MLA’s who have all the weight of the world on their shoulders right now because no one knows what the expectations are more than they do, they will be working around the clock to meet those expectations, and they’re going to fall short, they’re going to make mistakes//

CONTINUE V/OVER they can’t perform miracles, they’re flawed human beings like you and I.

Even on their own home ground, James and his friends are not infallible.

It was the end of our first day on the hunting trip. The temperature was plummeting, the fog was closing in.

In this featureless wilderness, the map was of little help.

For another five hours, we roamed in circles through the foggy darkness.

There are those who fear that the new government of Nunavut may soon find itself just as lost.

LOSE JIM BELL GRAB

But things always look rosier in the morning.

The bivouac had been thrown together by the light of a Coleman lamp. It hadn’t been luxurious. But it had been surprisingly warm.

But not as warm, James Arvaluk assured me, as the igloo that one of his hunting companions had made for himself in the night.

JAMES SPEAKS TO KATALUK THROUGH IGLOO

SUBTITLES

Was it warm last night?

Very warm.

As soon as I lit the Coleman stove it got really hot.

If a blizzard had sprung up, we might have been in trouble. But John Kataluk would have been snug and secure.

Nothing modern technology has produced serves as well in the north as an Inuit snow house.

But igloo building, says James is a skill that must be learned – and practised.

If you don’t practise it then it becomes difficult to build so it’s like anything else, like driving a car, you have to continue, you have to apply.

JH: So as Minister of Education of Nunavut, are you going to be making sure that igloo-making is on the curriculum?

JA: Exactly. This is a part of – uh…the school education, the whole purpose of education is survival; survival in this society, survival in this world. To live here, that is part of the survival, they should know that.

But the Minister knows that survival for Nunavut’s next generation will require far more than maintaining traditional skills.

MUSIC

A few hundred kilometres away, on the mainland coast of Hudson Bay, the fuel for another summer’s drilling for gold is trundling across the tundra.

Time’s running short. In a month or so the snow will melt, exposing a fragile landscape of lake and peat bog. Not a single vehicle, wheeled or tracked, will be allowed to move across it then.

The land belongs to the Inuit. The tanker belongs to a company that's used to harsh environments – but hotter ones. The Meliadine gold project is a major exploration by Australia’s Western Mining Company.

Logistics Manager Jim Bernard is preparing the camp to receive forty geologists, drillers and technicians.

Mining royalties are the best hope Nunavut has to reduce its almost complete dependence on southern taxpayers.

This year, Western Mining will decide whether full-scale production at Meliadine is viable.

We’ve very optimistic that this is going to go the whole way. We have an outline, it’s just been released, that we have 6.5 million ounces defined that is within the property – in a very small area as well.

So what does 6.5 million mean – is that big?

That’s means really good, yeah//

that amount of gold in such a short period of time, and we’d be very optimistic that we’ll find more.

But mining in the Arctic is an expensive enterprise, and commodity prices are low.

Only two mines are currently in production – and Meliadine is one of only four exploratory projects that look promising.

Even if Meliadine does get the green light, only a modest proportion of its least skilled jobs are likely to go to local Inuit.

At this point probably 20 to 25%, then working with Inuit people to get to the point where they can take on more than just labour jobs.

Education levels in Nunavut are way below the Canadian average. It will take another decade to overcome a dual legacy of the past: the schools’ low expectations of their Inuit pupils, and Inuit parents’ deep mistrust of the schools.

In the early years the experience the Inuit had with education was, this was a system that steals our children, teaches them a foreign language, alienates our children from us, we send them happy children and they come back embittered and abused – I mean there was a lot of sexual abuse in the early schools too – um this is a horrible system and we don't want anything to do with it.

Nunavut’s new Minister of Education, back from the hunt, can steam caribou ribs to perfection.

But his recipe for lifting the educational performance of the territory is vague to the point of blandness.

V/OVER JAMES

I would like to see Nunavut//

having a more serious attitude to education//and make the//children and teenagers feel

I don't care what anybody says, I’m going to get myself educated because I want to go somewhere.

James Arvaluk seems to hope that he can lead by a mixture of rhetoric and example.

He and his wife Marion have two children themselves, eighteen month-old twins Apik and Nuk.

But though his family life now, in the grog-free haven of Coral Harbor seems exemplary, James’s past is well-known in Nunavut.

In the city of Yellowknife, not long ago, he sexually assaulted two women during a drunken binge, and did time in prison as a result.

When we commit a crime, we commit a crime and we also become victims//

frustration, alcoholism, unemployment, alienation… being in your own home but not being able to control your own life, ultimately your own society.

You are speaking to some extent from…

From personal experience, yes. I was in that situation and I refused… I refused to be defeated or be a victim of imported problems, and instead of blaming it I said “Look, I will make my own life change,

//I will//rise again//

to use my own experience to make improvements for other people.

But not everyone in Coral Harbor feels it’s right that a man with James Arvaluk’s past should be going to Iqaluit to represent them.

And many in Iqaluit feel he’s quite the wrong man to be the territory’s first Minister for Education.

I think it’s premature for him to have been given that appointment. He has been elected by his constituents and that’s fair enough, they have a right to be represented by who they wish, however in electing him to the cabinet and also giving him the education portfolio, the largest in terms of budget, it has the largest number of employees, and also obviously has an enormous impact on young people, at this point in our history, sends the wrong signal.

DRUMS

For James Arvaluk, and for Nunavut, the past has been difficult, and the future won’t be easy. But just to have got this far is a feat well worth celebrating.