Nunavut Inuit and Polar Bear : The Cultural Politics of the Sport Hunt

bear for the Inuit of Nunavut.Not least, this continuation relates to the way(s) the economic environment of Nunavut has undergone change-from one defined by the application of knowledge and energy in the pursuit of fbod to one requiring a spectrum of resOurces, including money, in order to hunt.Not suxprisingly, therefore, the subsistence role ofpolar bear has also changed.Among the parameters of this new system are that Inuit now live in a very different spatial and demographic arrangement from that ofbarely fifty years ago, having been incorporated into a "globalized" political-economic complex, and having to necessarily assume international obligations which were originally negotiated without their input.Thus, after some four millennia in which polar bear could clearly be called an Inuit cultural resource, today this species has assumed, through the activity of outfitted sport hunting, an economic role in the lives of Inuit that may be larger then at any time in the past.That is the product of a process that began because of non-Inuit interest in polar bears in the nineteenth century, accelerated through the northern fur trade, and evolved into the present situation fbllowing the 1983 European Union sealskin boycott.The focus ofthis paper is on two aspects ofthe contemporary relationship between Inuit and polar bears.The first is the unique subsistence contribution ofpolar bears to small Nunavut communities, particularly fbr Inuit who lack direct access to the non-transfer monetized (i.e.' ' cash) component ofthe modern subsistence economy.The second is the several levels ofconfiict affecting optimal subsistence use ofthis resource by Aitznavummiut.Here optimal use is assumed to be the designating ofa portion ofa communitY's annual legal harvest allocation fbr sport hunt purposes.To this end, three case studies are presented to illustrate the kinds of intra-community and inter--cultural conflicts that afifect effective subsistence use ofthe polar bear sport hunt for many Ntznavummiut. NA7VUe AND PRE-MODERN INUITAs already noted, Inuit have been intimately involved with polar bears in ecological and ideological terms fbr millennia.However, until perhaps a century ago, the subsistence role of the bears was likely much more circumscribed than it is today, not least because the tools available to Inuit for use in face-to-face confrontations (e.g., harpoons, spears and smaller projectiles) were relatively modest from a technological perspective.In addition, large, conical ,traps constructed from boulders and believed to be for trapping polar bears have been reported from Ellesmere Island [ScHLEDERMANN 1977], and western Hudson Bay [McCARTNEy, personal communication].Various early ethnographies (see, e.g., BoAs [1888]) also note the use offrozen baleen and fat Cchokers" to kill polar bears (and wolves) and it is presumed here that the same method was employed prehistorically.It is also clear, however, if the faunal inventories recovered from Palaeoeskimo and Neo-Eskimo sites (see SAvELLE [1994]) are an accurate indication, that polar bear was a relatively rare item in the overall subsistence efforts ofpre-modem Inuit.Perusal ofhis summary tables covering twenty-six Eastern Canadian Arctic site complexes shows that polar bear remains comprise barely seven-one hundredths ofthe total specimens identified to at least the level of genus (9191127,758).Further, in those collections in which a minimum number of individual ' bears (MNI) could be determined, only two, the Thule sites at Skraeling Island [McCuLLouGH

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