Seal Hunt Means More Than Meat

BYLOT ISLAND, Canada — Moses Kasarnak crouched over the hole in the ice where the seals come up for air.

He had been standing silently for nearly half an hour in a hunched position, knees bent just so, clasping his rifle in both hands, squinting through the top of wire-rim bifocals at the finger-sized opening in the small ice dome at his feet.

Seals breathe air, just like people. Kasarnak must not move or make a sound, or they will know he is there.

From far away comes a muffled drone. Kasarnak’s son, Elisha, is driving his snowmobile in wide circles, trying to drive seals swimming under the ice toward the hole.

Kasarnak knows that eventually a seal will surface, but inside his caribou boots, his 52-year-old toes are beginning to stiffen in the cold-- iki, the Eskimos call it. The temperature is minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The Inuits (Eskimos in Canada) really don’t have any choice but to hunt,” according to anthropologist George W. Wenzel of Montreal’s McGill University. “They can buy their carbohydrates at the store, but about 80% of the protein entering the Inuit communities comes from hunting.”

Many Eskimos still honor their hunting traditions, which emphasize strong family ties, respect for elders and peaceable resolution of conflicts. They believe this will help protect them from evils that have befallen their people since they were exposed to Western culture. Suicide, crime, substance abuse and family fights are especially prevalent in southerly communities such as Iqaluit.

“Hunting is a cultural anchor,” Wenzel said. “It helps them cope with a strange world that has been thrust upon them.”

For thousands of years, seals have come to the tip of Bylot Island, near the edge of the ice floe and the open waters of Baffin Bay. Kasarnak’s forefathers relied on seals--and musk ox, caribou, char and polar bear--for meat, clothing and shelter. Before outsiders began hauling wood to this treeless place, Eskimos made their sleds from antlers and frozen fish.

Although there is a grocery store in all but one of the 13 established Eskimo communities on Baffin Island, food is expensive. A quart of milk costs $3.23 (U.S.), hamburger is $4.25 a pound and potatoes are $1.22 a pound.

The combination of high prices and scarcity of employment encourages Eskimos in the high Arctic to fall back on their hunting heritage.

“That’s the only way you can live well,” said Jacopie Awa, head of the Pond Inlet Hunters and Trappers Assn., an Eskimo council that regulates and coordinates hunting. “We only kill what we need, what we have to eat.”

Elisha Kasarnak has parked the snowmobile and taken up a crouched position over another hole he has spotted in the ice. Minutes tick away as father and son stand within hailing distance of each other, as still as soapstone sculptures, waiting for seals.

Then, a rifle blast.

“Moses got one!” says Elisha. He throws his rifle on his sled and rushes over on his snowmobile.

Moses has hooked the seal with a gaff to prevent it from sinking. Elisha quickly enlarges the hole by chopping with his knife, and they pull out the seal.

Moses pulls out a large hunting knife and sharpens it on a steel rod. He hands it to Elisha, who sets about skinning the animal, beginning with a long incision down the belly. The blood instantly freezes on his bare hands every time he withdraws them from his work.

“Iki,” he half grins, half grimaces at one point, clenching his reddened hands. It is the only time during the trip that he complains about the cold.

“How do you feel when you shoot a seal?” Elisha is asked.

“Great!”

“Do you have any feelings for the seal?”

Elisha shakes his head as he gently lays the liver on the snow, where it gives off steam in the frigid air. Moses, whose feet are warming because he is moving around again, has decided to save the liver to make a special stew when they camp for the night.

“The seal is in heaven,” Elisha says.