Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Film explores changes to life in North

A group of elders pulls the seal skins taut over the wooden frame, carefully binding the pelts together as they construct a traditional kayak on the shoreline of one of Canada's most northern communities.

The gathering in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, sing and eat as they talk about changes they've witnessed over the last several decades that have warmed their distant region and altered their native food sources.

The conversation is the focus of one of two Canadian documentaries being presented this week in Copenhagen, along with other videos showcasing the effects of climate change on indigenous populations around the globe.

Pamela Anne Hakongak Gross, a 24-year-old student from Cambridge Bay, spent weeks making the kayak video and hopes it will open people's eyes to the dramatic and subtle changes brought on by a warming world.

"I think people should understand that it really is happening and it's happening in the North more drastically," she said Thursday from outside Copenhagen, where world leaders meet next week to hammer out the framework of a proposed Kyoto 2 treaty.

The 15-minute video, called Building A Qataq To The Future, features interviews with Inuit elders who discuss how meat is becoming scarce as traditional food sources, such as caribou, migrate in search of cooler temperatures.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 4, 2009 A17

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