The Inuit community of Inukjuak in northern Québec has long fought to preserve the traditional culinary practices that define them, but clim
The Inuit community of Inukjuak in northern Québec has long fought to preserve the traditional culinary practices that define them, but climate change is a threat unlike anything they've faced before.
by Craig LaBan, March 6, 2025
INUKJUAK, Nunavik— The choppy gray waters of the Hudson Bay are numbingly cold in the days before the season’s first snow in the Canadian Arctic. As our speeding canoe slams against the rolling waves, sending frigid sprays of salt mist across my face, I grip the wooden seat bottom with all my might.
“I used to be afraid of canoe surfing, too,” says Willia Ningeok, 40, the captain and leader of this mid-October hunting expedition. He stands in the stern of the 24-foot motorized canoe, opposite two young hunters with rusty rifles and harpoons. As he weaves between the maze of shifting swells toward nearby Harrison Island, where the waters teem with beluga, walrus, seal, and arctic char, he breaks into song. “It’s the most wonderful time … of the year!”
There is palpable excitement this week in Inukjuak. This Inuit community of about 1,800 in Nunavik, the northernmost region of Québec, is preparing to celebrate the premiere of A Century After Nanook with a village feast. The film is a collaboration between residents and Kirk French, an assistant professor of anthropology, film production, and media studies at Pennsylvania State University. It looks at how life has changed in Inukjuak since the world’s first feature-length documentary, Nanook of the North, was filmed here in 1922 on the frozen banks of the Ungava Peninsula...