76
Arctic Yearbook 2013
Communicating Climate Change
after, Zacharias Kunuk joined IBC in Igloolik, having acquired a small format video camera in 1983.
Funding was limited at IBC but for the most part Kunuk felt that management was open to his ideas
(White, 2005: 57).
However, by the time Kunuk left in 1990 he was highly critical of the organization‘s management
practices and creative constraints. He said: ―I saw IBC as a dogteam. Inuit producers as dogs, the
sled as the Ottawa office and people who sit in the sled as the board of governors. I didn‘t like what
I saw so I broke away‖ (as quoted in White, 2005: 58). That same year, he and fellow IBC coworker
Paul Apak started Igloolik Isuma Productions along with Norm Cohn and Pauloosie Qilitaliq
(White, 2008: 58).
Yet it was new technology that spearheaded a spatially expansive extension of Inuit-created media
content. New technology and Inuit political activism, which flowed through a wide variety of
political and cultural avenues, fomented what was to become a vibrant community of Inuit
filmmakers. According to Ginsberg, Kunuk had the vision to turn these technologies into vehicles
for cultural expressions of Inuit lives and histories‖ (Ginsberg, 2008: 134). Indeed, Srinivasan (2009,
2013) interprets Ginsberg‘s analysis to suggest that indigenous new media use represents
―entrepreneurial, organizational, social, or political initiatives that incorporate technology authorship
into their larger missions‖(209).
By the turn of the twenty-first century, Web 2.0 and digital video had added a new layer of
communications technologies, opening the way to increased circulation of self-produced content.
For cultures that had been marginalized, there is no doubt that technology could provide the tools
for community and individual content control. With that in mind, in 2008 the Isuma partners
created the first Inuit-owned multi-media website Isuma.tv. The website explains: ―Isuma's mission
is to produce independent community-based media – films, TV and now Internet – to preserve and
enhance Inuit culture and language; to create jobs and economic development in Igloolik and
Nunavut; and to tell authentic Inuit stories to Inuit and non-Inuit audiences worldwide‖ (
Isuma
:
About us). Today, the Isuma website hosts a wide variety of indigenous content including over 5,000
films in 50 plus languages. Kunuk has produced numerous films including
The Fast Runner for which he
received numerous awards including the coveted Cannes Camera d‘Or award in 2001. In 2010
Kunuk and Ian Mauro produced
Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change
, which the Toronto
Globe and Mail described as ―groundbreaking‖ (Dixon, 2010).
Arctic Indigenous Narrative: Qapirangajuq Inuit Knowledge and Climate
Change
Southerners don‘t want to understand Inuit ways. They‘re ignorant about our culture, don‘t consider our
opinion and treat us like we know nothing. Inuit culture is oral and we keep knowledge in our minds. Even
without text, our culture is full of wisdom. It brings me joy when Inuit gather and I listen to them. I hear
Inuit are rising slowly, but there‘s a long way to go.
- Rita Nashook of Iqaluit in Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change