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Traditional Inuit Ice Treks Guided From Space
Roland Piquepaille writes "When the Arctic floe melts at spring, the Inuit are going for thousands of years to its edges for fishing and finding game. Now, they are helped by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its satellite which provide accurate maps of ice and its extent. These maps are also useful for tour guides and to improve safety. "The ESA-backed Northern View Floe Edge Information Service provides regularly updated ice maps of inlets around Lancaster Sound, part of Baffin Bay within Canada's Nunavut Territory. Users can access maps from the Floe Edge service directly via a dedicated website, or else consult printouts posted for the public by the local Parks Canada Office." This overview contains more details and references. It also includes an image generated by the Northern View Floe Edge product showing ice conditions."
When the Arctic floe melts at spring, the Inuit are going for thousands of years to its edges for fishing and finding game
In the future, the Inuit are now going to the edges of the Arctic ice floe. That's hard enough to wrap my mind around, but then you tell me that they are now going for thousands of years. I guess they really do need that ESA help--imagine how long they'd be going to that floe edge without some satellite maps!
Seriously, though, this is very cool. Melting ice is rather dangerous to be on, no matter how many years of experience you have walking on it. It looks like these maps might help save some lives.
~UP
Eat the Path.
... at a MOCA (LA) exhibit ...
...
About 4 or 5 hours of footage from an Inuit family, on the ice. I don't think it was edited too much - loooong shots of the entire days work, hunting on the ice, preserving each precious bullet, skeeting across various ice sheets in odd conditions. It was shot in what seemed to me to be extremely close digital, and it was a beautiful work. Very blue.
I'll never forget it, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was called, or who did it. But the Inuit lifestyle out there on the Tundra is deeply moving. If you've ever dreamt of going to Mars, make sure you've been to the Arctic circle first
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Not much fishing to be done there! Polar cod are tiny, and about the only fish I've seen the Inuit go after are lake trout and char, anyway.
Hunting at the floe edge is pretty good, though, usually for seal and walrus. Tons of fun.
Take me back to my childhood in Resolute and on Hudson Bay...
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
At the point where you start using satellite data, doesn't it really cease to be a "traditional" Inuit Ice Trek?
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"Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a subsistance hunter!"
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"When the Arctic floe melts at spring, the Inuit are going for thousands of years to its edges for fishing and finding game."
"Have been" rather than "are". Could someone just give these submissions ONE editing pass? Please? It really does encourage sense, and it makes this place look a lot less like a fly-by-night garbage pit.
Bad joke, I know ... hence, anonymous!
Because it implies the Inuit as living in an untouched, pure, primal state (or something of that nature). The Inuit have always had a practice of incorporating new technologies into their practices, if it worked.
/. finally.
Just as American Major Leagues baseball is considered traditional, even though technologies and rules have changed since its incept over a hundred years ago, the Inuit Ice Trek is still an Ice Trek if the Inuit continue to call it that.
Once they start calling it "Ice Trek, the Next Generation" or "Skidoo" then arguments could be made about if it is traditional or not.
Of course, I would really wonder if this technology is really used by the Inuit, considering that a lot of information about ice flows and such is passed verbally from fellow hunter.
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