New video uses poetry, Inuit culture to promote marine park

The short film on Lancaster Sound, or Tallurutiup Tariunga, hopes to share with southern audiences what makes the region so important to Inuit.

A new short film hopes to convince Canadians that Nunavut’s Lancaster Sound deserves protection.

Oceans North Canada just released a four-minute film filled with sweeping views of the body of water that separates north Baffin Island from Devon Island, an area known for its rich biodiversity and abundant marine life.

Oceans North, along with many Inuit in Nunavut, have for years pushed the federal government to create a national marine conservation area in the region, which would protect the sound’s oil-rich seabed from resource extraction.

Lancaster Sound is called Tallurutiup Tariunga in Inuktitut, after the tattooed chin of a woman said to be visible in the surrounding cliffs.

Narrated by Jeannie Arreak-Kullualik, the film is set to poetry by Laakkuluk Wiliamson Bathory, written to reflect what the region means to its people:

“The land is now branded with place names
Of Englishmen who saw only emptiness
Shivering in their buttoned-up pea coats
They lay claim
Pond, Bylot, Baffin and Lancaster
But our home has always been a peopled place
When we hunt in our boats
Seals bob up in the spaces between waves
The animals feed us
While she dances in raucous celebration
Was it here, Nuliajuk, that you were born
In fury and in awe?”

Chris Debicki, Nunavut project director at Oceans North, said the organization sought a new approach to the decades-long struggle to ensure protection for the region.

“It’s always a challenge to find a way to talk about ocean conservation in a way that resonates… both in Nunavut and with southern audiences,” he said.

“We felt that in order to reach hearts, we had to be able to come from the heart.”

The timing wasn’t intended, but worked out just right, Debicki said, as the release coincides with a new federal government in Ottawa.

Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s outgoing government announced proposed boundaries for a national marine conservation area in 2010, that process stalled in recent years.

Now the new Liberal government has pledged to protect the area. That’s a promise that Debicki hopes to see through in the near future.

The film has already succeeded in part; it was named as a finalist at the Banff Film Festival, where it screened Nov. 7 and Nov. 8.

Tallurutiup Tariunga is home to a number of species at risk, including the narwhal and polar bear, along with about a quarter of the world’s beluga population. It also supports the largest seabird colonies in the Canadian Arctic.

But the sound’s seabed is said to contain 13 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 4.5 billion barrels of oil, making it a target for development.

You can watch the film in Inuktitut or English here.