L.A.-based filmmaker Jakob Owens is facing criticism from the Inuit community for his short film “The Qallupilluit.” (Photo from Instagram)
Horror short film based on Qallupilluit faces cultural backlash
American filmmaker Jakob Owens criticized for cultural appropriation
A mythical Inuit creature stalks a pair of camp counsellors from the camp’s outdoor pool.
The young man shares a swig of liquor with his female friend. They are about to kiss, when the creature makes its presence known.
The Qallupilluit, filmed and produced in the U.S., is about “a campground built on Inuit land” becoming “the hunting grounds for the vengeful Qallupilluit looking to reclaim the stolen land,” according to its YouTube description.
Before its official release on Oct. 26, the five-minute movie received backlash when it was promoted on social media.
The film was directed by Jakob Owens, who is based in Los Angeles, Calif., and is his own submission to his annual horror short film contest.
This year’s submissions had to include a “mythical or folklore creature, monster, or character” and implement the creative use of water.
“When he first came out with the film, there was no mention of Inuit or Indigenous collaboration,” said Cassiar Cousins, a student at Algonquin College in Ottawa, who started a Change.org petition calling for the film to be taken down or for a formal apology from Owens.
As of Monday afternoon, 713 people had signed the online petition titled “Stop using Inuit stories for personal gain.”
“The story of the Qallupilluit is supposed to warn kids who play on the floe edge when the ice starts to break up in the spring and summertime, as there’s a risk of drowning,” said Cousins, who is Inuk and was born and raised in Iqaluit.
“The way he took the story made it seem like Qalupalik was a creature in the water that takes children who are misbehaving and ‘feeds on their youth,’” she said, quoting a phrase from the film.
The film’s description on YouTube states that “creative liberties have been taken to tell this story.”
“Creative liberties have to be done with our own stories and our own storytelling,” responded Emily Laurent Henderson, the Inuk associate curator of Indigenous art and culture at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont.
“From an Inuit perspective, this is not just a story or mythology. It has a distinctive place in oral history, child rearing and spiritual beliefs,” she said.
Other discrepancies include the setting — a fictional summer campground surrounded by trees on what appears to be a balmy night. The Qalupalik in Owens’s film emerges from the camp’s swimming pool.
“It is described as a campground on Inuit land but anyone who knows Inuit Nunangat knows that’s not Inuit land, and there’s no allusions to where it’s located,” said Henderson.
Bronwyn Szabo, who is half-Inuk, also took creative liberties with the story of the Qallupilluit in her upcoming web series It Doesn’t Show, set to be released on APTN Lumi.
Szabo was inspired by the children’s story A Promise Is a Promise, by Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak and Robert Munsch, and how the Qallupilluit in the story were able to enter the little girl’s home.
“I live in Toronto, which is all Indigenous land and well within their territory,” said Szabo.
“In my version, they’re swimming behind the walls and the floors of the main character’s home and appear through cracks in the walls, similar to how they appear from below the ice.”
“I’m sure there will be some Inuit who are not happy with me relocating the story for my purpose. I chose to keep the rules that the Qallupilluit abide by in the new world they’re in, and involve as many Inuit voices through the production as possible.”
In contrast, she found Owens’s use of the creature as “an added element to make the film seem more exotic.”
“It perpetuates the harmful stereotype that Inuit are an ancient peoples that lived centuries ago rather than existing right now,” she said.
On social media, Owens has made clear that the short film was not made for profit.
“It is all done to promote the film arts, work on my craft as a filmmaker and challenge other creatives in the film industry to do the same,” he said in an Instagram comment.
Owens declined to comment when contacted by Nunatsiaq News, citing the “hostile, and threatening messages, comments and harassment” he has received so far.
The truth is, Canadian-style “cultural appropriation” is generally laughed at by our American counterparts.
Honestly someone could fart in Nunavut and there would be complaints on Facebook it didn’t stink enough.
Bored population that sits home not working all day.
Is this irony? Someone complaining about people complaining. Was it on purpose?
Do you know the difference between a complaint and an observation?
One is observing a population that is easily outraged and bored compared to the article where people are actually up in arms.
Significantly different.
cool, how can I watch it??
youtube
Cultural appropriation is a tempest in a teapot. The vitriol it inspires is foolish. A distraction for simpler minds.
In breaking news, storyteller does what all storytellers in human history, including Inuit, have done. People express outrage.
Get serious, people.
He also posted that he “Identifies” as an Inuk. Zero respect.
Link?
If you have to lie then your position is probably pretty shakey.
In healthy, mature societies, no one is charged or convicted of cultural appropriation; culture flows
To suggest otherwise is racist, aggressive and antisocial. Those are baizou behaviors.
“Stop using Inuit stories for personal gain.” Yes, 5 minute long horror movies, that’s where the big money is.
Setting aside pecuniary matters, you can’t pin down myths, legends and stories, whether it’s qallupilluit or a story about forbidden fruit and talking snakes. Once it’s out in the culture, it’s fair game.
That said, it is tacky and distasteful to do what this guy did, and I probably wouldn’t watch it for that reason, not because it’s immoral or unethical.
Also, in what kind of Inuit homeland is it warm enough to have an outdoor pool?
https://youtu.be/mmerK7h8RkA?si=4k0QJPYN96bSbGfU
It actually wasn’t bad.
It’s an issue when the culture that is being ‘shared’ or ‘retold’ is incorrect to the actual reason and story that makes it so significant. Also if there are people apart of that culture that you can consult and choose not to interact with them, then call them aggressive that’s the issue
But folklore are not cultural appropriation, its really public knowledge. For eg, the story of Krampus, it is bavarian folklore, but there was a movie that came out a while ago and i am sure the team was not bavarian nor did they contacted any bavarian for it. While i know about the qallupiluk , I did not know of this “nobody” from LA. I do now and watched the short film on youtube due to curiosity. Now thanks to you, this guy is getting a lot of traffic for his short film. And if this contest was based on “likes”, he might actually win, thanks to you? Who unknowingly advertised his short film.
Who gets to define the “correct” version? If I wanted to make a horror film which had Sedna as the main antagonist, if I portrayed her as the giant daughter of the god Anguta who Anguta tried to kill because she tried to eat her parents, is that the correct version? Or is it the one where her father is a normal human and tries to kill her for dishonouring him by marrying a dog instead of the men he picked? Or is it the one where she’s an orphan who the villagers try to kill? Or is it the one where she’s a beautiful maiden abducted by/or tricked into marriage by/voluntarily went into marriage with a birdman, with her father attempting a rescue but then trying to kill her to save himself? Or the one where she’s an ordinary girl whose parents believed was responsible for the storm they were caught in and so tried to sacrifice her?
All of them can’t be “the correct” story, there’s no one to claim ownership to say what it is. Humans tell stories, that’s what we do, and when we do, we change, adapt, outright steal, or manipulate preexisting stories, some of them not from our own culture.
Slash/Back was a story told by Inuit that incorporated very non-Inuit themes such as aliens and spacecraft. Did people get up in arms that those ideas were “stolen” from primarily primarily English-speaking writers and fimmakers?
The Hebrew bible’s Noah/flood myth “appropriated” the flood myth in the even older Gilgamesh story.
Some speculate that the ancient Hebrews “appropriated” the story during the Babylonian captivity.
The Hebrews may have been the virtuous Indigenous victims in ancient times and thus justified in their appropriation, but since they are now colonizing oppressors shouldn’t they give it back (and as second hand recipients, presumably the Christians should as well)?
Obviously this is all absurd.
This article is clearly an ad for this short-film. Some of you may complain but a lot of you will end up watching it which was the real purpose of this article.
Plausible, but I think the ‘real purpose’ of this article is to get outraged eyes on the page.
https://youtu.be/mmerK7h8RkA?si=4k0QJPYN96bSbGfU
The link for anyone onterested in forming their own opinion.
I ll wait till it comes out on VHS and rent it from my local BLOCK BUSTER RENTAL.