Angry Inuk / A film by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, 2016.

 “How can a culture that exercises understated anger and finds peaceful ways to resolve conflicts compete with animal activist groups “asks the Inuk Film-maker, Arnaquq-Baril, documenting the devastating impact the latest EU-Seal Bans have on her people and potentially on the whole environment of the arctic.

 Showing the total ignorance and arrogance of animal right groups, “still picturing the Eskimos in igloos with no need for money” the documentary pictures life in the arctic, hunting, sharing food and even follows a small group of Inuit hunters, seamstresses, and young media-savvy Inuit students all the way to Europe trying to explain that even the so called “Inuit-Exemption” from the ban is destroying their lives.

When again dealt another blow, the head of the hunter’s organisation heartbreaking response is: “I am so upset, that I cannot even smile.”

 This movie is a powerful indictment of the extremely misleading anti-sealing campaigns, that ignores facts like: seals, especially the ones hunted in the arctic, are neither an endangered species, nor white (as pictured on most campaign photos). Most seal-hunters are Inuit, Inuit need the commercial seal market to hunt for their food and it is not possible to live vegan in an environment devoid of agriculture, where a cabbage might cost you CAD $28.

 Maybe it would have been helpful to explain to the wider audience the last 60 years of enforced changes to the Inuit life; from residential schools, forceful relocations, to the 1983 mass-slaughter of sled-dogs by the Canadian government; to fully understand the bitter irony of telling Inuit that they are still allowed to hunt for their own traditional lifestyle.

 “Angry Inuk” was produced by the National Film Board Canada in Coproduction with EyeSteelFilm and Unikkaat Studios, and can be purchased through the NFB-Canada.