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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. --
The romantic story of Wendell and Cass, tuxedo-clad life partners, as told by their keeper
By Suzy Hansen
March 8, 2002 | NEW YORK -- The 32 African black-footed penguins on display at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, have been through a lot together. Last year, for instance, stray cats cornered and then threatened to attack the two-foot-tall, tuxedo-clad birds. Aquarium workers hired an exterminator to deal with the problem, and animal-lover chaos ensued. Most enraged in the skirmish were the pro-kitty locals whose hand-outs kept the felines skulking around the boardwalk -- and the beachfront aquarium.
And then there are the tensions that arise among penguins anywhere, tensions that flow from the pursuit of love and, in a penguin sort of way, marriage. Inside this little man-made concrete exhibit -- designed to simulate the rocky islands off South Africa from which they originate -- philandering female penguins angle for better nests; jilted lovers pick up and move after a love-interest freezes them out; and love triangles are inevitable, complete with messy fallout and recrimination.
For many years, the keepers of the Brooklyn penguins believed that these romantic trials and tribulations took place only between the male and female penguins in the exhibit. Recently, however, they discovered that one more variation on the love theme was represented in the mix -- and had been there for years. A blood test revealed that Wendell and Cass, an inseparable pair of 15-year-olds known for a tidy nest and enduring lust, were both male. It didn't surprise the aquarium folks, but the media got excited and recently outed the adoring and oblivious couple.
On a recent chilly afternoon, there wasn't much to see in the penguin enclosure. It was bedtime, and only stragglers loitered in public view. A lonely bachelor scoped out the scene, and a couple waddled around together, perhaps going for a stroll before hitting the sack.
Wendell and Cass already had curled up together for the night, and they weren't coming out of their cozy burrow anytime soon, according to penguin keeper Stephanie Mitchell. Living monogamously in a high-rise nest above the rest of the crew, the guys tend to ignore the sexual high jinks going on down below.
Same-sex relationships in the animal kingdom are more common than most people think. In fact, in his 1999 book, "Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity," biologist Bruce Bagemihl catalogs the unconventional sexual behaviors -- including bisexuality and transvestite tendencies -- of almost 200 different animals.
For this reason, says Mitchell, the aquarium staff wasn't particularly shocked by the revelation about Wendell and Cass' union. Other humans, however, seem endlessly curious about the relationship. In an interview at the aquarium, Mitchell talked about why Wendell and Cass are so devoted to each other, what the she-penguins on the prowl have to say about it, and how the whole affair went unnoticed for so long in the first place.
So do the female penguins seem to sense that Wendell and Cass don't want anything to do with them?
The females don't show an interest in all of the males; it's just a few of them that they like. Right now, we've got three out of 10 girls -- Ezmerelda, Gomez and Clarice -- who are experimenting with the availability of other males. That's 30 percent, which actually matches up with statistics that say that 30 to 40 percent of females will try to leave their mates and try to find other mates.
What happens?
Well, Gomez is a big flirt, and she just goes and visits with all these other males, and that causes Giovanni, her mate, a little bit of consternation. Ezmerelda has a little bit more of a situation with Old Man and Curly. Sometimes Old Man and Curly would fight with each other, but Curly's actually moved, so he's not really dealing with Ezmerelda anymore. I think he's given up.
That's actually Curly over there. [She points at a little penguin
They've got the technology to send satellite imagery and ice floe data down to the trackers, but the trackers don't seem to have the technology to get the fuck out of that god-forsaken wasteland.
For some it's called culture and heritage. To me, it's just idiocy and backwardsness.
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?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a subsistance hunter!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"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.
First use of my Anthro major on
Window shades?
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