Taissumani, July 2

KENN HARPER

Lancaster Sound, I see, is back in the news. The federal government wants to have it both ways, touting it as a potential marine park because of its tremendous biological richness, while also wanting to explore its oil and gas potential.

No conflict there, they say, we’ll never exploit any oil and gas that we find. We just want to know what’s there. If you will buy this argument, then I have some swampland in Florida that I’d like to sell you too.

In 1979, having left my one year and six days of employment with the Government of the Northwest Territories as Hamlet Affairs Officer, a job for which I was probably more unsuited than anyone on the planet, I spent a few years working as a consultant.

One of my first projects was to work with the federal government on its “Green Paper” exercise, the Lancaster Sound Regional Study.

At that time, oil and gas companies were seriously interested in the potential that they believed lay under Lancaster Sound, gateway to the Northwest Passage. Consolidated-Magnorth-Oakwood Petroleum, if memory serves me correctly, was the proponent, but the High Arctic communities in closest proximity to Lancaster Sound were concerned about the impacts of potential development. Strange as it may seem, this apparently rugged and intimidating landscape is extremely fragile.

The federal government was persuaded to launch a study, one which would be “quick and dirty” in the parlance of the times. It was to last about six months. I signed on to act as liaison between the government and the four communities of Arctic Bay, Pond Inlet, Resolute and Grise Fiord.

Far from being a quick study, the project took on a life of its own, as federal projects will. I worked on it for parts of four calendar years and left before it was officially over.

One part of the project was to compile a data atlas of the region. It identified the habitat of various species. And it attempted to identify critical habitat for them.

The technique was simple (and flawed in my opinion.) Over a base map, a number of clear sheets were overlaid on which was recorded information from the other maps, the areas where various animals were found in reasonable abundance.

And so there would be an overlay for walrus, and one for narwhal, and one for polar bear, and so on. When all the overlays had been applied, it was easy to see the areas of overlapping habitat, and this was deemed to be the most critical area for marine wildlife.

One of my tasks was to take this atlas, in draft form, to the four communities and meet with the hamlet councils and the hunters and trappers organizations to discuss the findings of the biologists who had put the material together.

The communities took this exercise seriously. They wanted to make sure that what was recorded was correct. They knew that potentially serious decisions could result from the Lancaster Sound Regional Study, and they wanted the data in the atlas to be as correct as possible.

I remember one particular meeting in Resolute. The council and the hunters pored over the maps for a very long evening. They asked for clarification on many maps, and provided information that they asked me to take back to Ottawa to correct errors they identified.

One map had a title something like “Distribution of Caribou in Summer.” The hunters studied it carefully. Then they began to question its accuracy.

Why is there no indication that there are caribou in this particular area, a hunter would ask, pointing to an area on the map. And everyone knows that there are caribou in this area in summer, another hunter would remark, while pointing at a completely different area.
Many areas were identified where the biologists’ information was lacking or incomplete. In the view of the Inuit, this map had serious errors.

Finally one wise and elderly hunter put it all in perspective. Having listened to everyone else’s input for some time, he said calmly, “This map has the wrong title. It doesn’t show the distribution of caribou in summer. It shows the distribution of biologists in summer.”

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.