Close to a hundred years ago, after having viewed the film "In the Land of the Headhunters", director Edward Curtis' cinematic portrayal of "full-blooded" Kwakiutl life on the North West coast of America, one film critic wrote in his column: "The Indian mind is, I believe, constitutionally incapable of acting; it cannot even grasp the meaning of acting as we understand it [..] They are natural in every move [..]"

Since then, the idea of constitutional sincerity of the native mind has stood the test of time. One more proof of the power of this idea over the mind of the general public was screened in the Polar Cinema theatre of the recently completed Oslo Science Conference (OSC), i.e., in the form of the feature film "Inuk" by filmmaker Mike Magidson.

Or rather, in the form of the reactions of the audience to the preview of the film that will officially open at the Inuit Circumpolar Council's upcoming General Assembly in Nuuk. According to the official weblog of the OSC, “powerful and authentic” was the response of a packed cinema.

During the audience questions session following the OSC Polar Cinema preview, director Mike Magidson, screenwriter and anthropologist Jean-Michel Huctin, and lead character Ole Hammeken played along with the commonly held belief in indigenous incapability of pretense, dissimulation, and acting anything other than what we are.

“We wanted to tell the real story”, Jean-Michel Huctin said to the audience. Paradoxically, this ambition of the filmmakers meant turning from documentary to the feature film format or to this particular format in which being what you are and acting it imperceptibly blend into each other. The result is a hybrid that at the same time is deemed authentic and real.

The real story, as it is, centers round a long dog sled trip on which Inuk, a 16 year old boy who is taken away from his alcoholic mother and placed in an orphanage, gets teamed up with seasoned bear hunter Ikuma. Ikuma helps him get to grips with the negligences of a low-life upbringing and get back in contact with his true origin in the indigenous hunting culture.

About the fact that there are no professional actors in the film, Mike Magidson told the audience in Oslo: “They are ordinary people playing roles close to their real lives: teenagers from a home for neglected Inuit children and local seal hunters. This illustrates just how authentic the film is.”

There is also something about the location of the film, Uummannaq and surrounding nature in North-West Greenland, something peculiar, authentic and yet fictitious. The story of Uummannaq and its inhabitants acting themselves goes back at least to 1933 when German director Arnold Fanck shot the search and rescue drama “S.O.S. Eisberg” in this area. Half a century later, in 1986, the Danish film “Tukuma” was also shot on this location.

Since then, a number of films, several of which features Ole Hammeken as a local hunter, have been set in Uummannaq and surroundings. Besides “Inuk”, a drama-documentary entitled “Silent Snow” directed by Jan van den Berg was also pre-released at the OSC Polar Cinema. Hammeken and one or two others play roles “close to their real lives” in both films.

Moreover, impacts of climate change are staged by both productions. In “Inuk” the discourse on climate change is suggested via a flashback scene from Inuk’s early childhood that shows him experience his own father fall through treacherously thin ice and drown. Later in the film, the same thing is about to  happen to Ikuma, however, now Inuk is big and strong enough to pull the unfortunate bear hunter back up on the ice and bring him to the shelter of a hunting cabin.

Yet, one of the really great merits of the film “Inuk” and its makers is that it puts climate change and aboriginal culture into perspective by linking both to the social challenges, the facts of child neglect and substance abuse, that make up the true story of many a modern day Arctic indigenous community.

As, moreover, it is beautifully shot and well edited, and as members of the non-professional cast, despite constitutional incapabilities, manage to pull off some pretty convincing performances and stand out fotogenically from the silver screen – in particular Hammeken and Gaaba Petersen as Inuk – this film appears as one of the grand clous of the OSC, not only with regard to indigenous imprints on the conference, but altogether.

This is all the more remarkable as indigenous people, to the extent that they appeared at all, did so as objects of social scientific scrutiny rather than as participants. Social science itself had barely managed to carve out a niche for itself at the natural science dominated conference. And whereas scientist of whatever sort have funding secured to go to conferences, the organizers had not managed to get space agency funding in place for indigenous participants.

True, a sizeable Saami delegation had pitched laavu tents in front of the conference venue and organized panel debates and food tasting events. Professor Ole Henrik Magga of the Saami University College and Mr. Sergei Kharyuchi of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) both adressed the 2500 conference attendants during one of the morning plenaries. And, rounding of indigenous contributions in Oslo, the Association of World Reindeer Herders as well intervened, they too with a film that got presented by the association’s chair, Mr. Mikhail Pogodaev.

The Arctic Council Senior Arctic Officials together with some 90 delegates of the Arctic states, Permanent Participants, and accredited Observers  have completed two days of meeting, 28-29 May 2010. The meeting took place North of  the Arctic Circle in the West Greenlandic town of Ilulissat prominently located next to the UNESCO World Heritage listed Ilulissat Icefjord.

On the agenda were ongoing programs and concerns of the Arctic Council Stakeholders thematically arranged under headings such as Climate Change, Biodiversity, Monitoring, Oceans, and the Council's communications and outreach plans.

Outside the panoramic windows of the meeting venue overlooking Ilulissat with its lively colored houses scattered out over a rocky landscape, the Disko Bay filled with giant icebergs. These icebergs is produced by the worlds most productive glacier, the Sermeq Kujalleq ("Southern Ice") in the bottom of the Ilulissat Icefjord, from where they gently sail out to sea.

The icebergs reaches heights of up to 50 meters. Yet, the meeting participants were informed, in former times true monsters stretched up to 3 times as high into the air.  This information emerged during a dinner hosted by the Greenland Government on the first evening of the meeting.

In connection with the dinner, hunter and fisherman Johannes Mathæussen made a presentation on climate changes as experienced by someone subsisting on the living resources of the Disko Bay area. Johannes explained to a fascinated audience that, while he had in fact experienced the arrival of new fish, wildlife, and insect species in the area, he did not find that the quality of traditional food sources had as such deteriorated due to climate changes.

However, one of the weirdest and most unpredictable effects attributed to climate change, according to Johannes Mathæussen, was the fact that the length of the arctic night had shortened. The sun, he elaborated, according to observations of  Ilulissat inhabitants, nowadays returns to the  sky one day earlier than it used to on this particular latitude within the Arctic Circle. Local residents assume  that this phenomenon is connected to a possible shrinking of the surrounding Inland ice sheet.

Discovering the Arctic is the name of a web learning facility developed and recently launched by the Royal Geographical Society. It is aimed at the secondary school level (14-16 year olds) in the United Kingdom. According to the Royal Geographical Society, it is intended to be a resource to be dipped into depending on specific curriculum needs and priorities.
The Discovering the Arctic website seems biased toward what, according to a widespread view, constitutes the quintessential Arctic, viz. the high North of Greenland and Canada, and thus gives preference to the Inuit whereas peoples and places of Arctic Russian Federation get comparatively less coverage.

While tending to over-expose the Inuit, at the same time the information rendered about Inuit is rather superficial and sometimes incorrect. For instance, the website makes no attempt to correct the common misunderstanding that Inuit is a noun in the singular that becomes Inuits in the plural, whereas Inuit is in fact plural of the singular Inuk. 

Bearing in mind that the main target group is non-Arctic secondary school children and that, consequently, the knowledge presented should not be too specialised or complex, even so, or even more so, the Royal Geographical Society's learning facility should correct rather than reproduce common misrepresentations of this sort. Hopefully, it will do so in its future versions. Otherwise, this resource appears well conceived pedagogically and deserves the chance to evolve, perhaps by incorporating in its updated versions mechanisms that allow interactive feedback from advancing pupils or from expert circumpolar youth. Such feedback could help the website improve itself and eventually become truly state of the Arctic.

As the climate in the Arctic changes and the Greenlandic Ice sheet and sea ice melts at a more rapid rate and scale than expected mean model projections, the Ministers of the Arctic Council member states have established a task force on short-lived climate-forcing agents (SLCF's) in a meeting in Tromsø in April, 2009. The mandate from the Tromsø Declaration reads: "Decide to establish a task force on short-lived climate forcers to identify existing and new measures to reduce emissions of these forcers and recommend further immediate actions that can be taken and to report on progress at the next Ministerial meeting" Black Carbon is one of the short-lived climate forcing agents (tropospheric ozone and methane are SLCF's too). Black Carbon is an air pollutant composed of very fine particles of carbon that can be released into the air in aerosol form. Black Carbon is created by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels (diesel and coal particularly), bio-fuels, and biomass. Carbon dioxide (CO2), on the other hand is the most well-known greenhouse gas, but is not as such a toxic substance. In fact, plants utilize CO2 in the photosynthesis. The problem with CO2 is its accumulation in the atmosphere and its ways of heating it up. When Black Carbon from the atmosphere in Arctic areas is deposited on ice and snow it makes the ice and snow packs darker, reducing the Albedo effect (the ability to reflect sunlight). The effect it has on snow covered sea ice is much more pronounced because as the snow melts, the Black Carbon accumulates on the ice surface in high concentrations. That makes snow and ice absorb more heat and thereby accelerates melting in summer months, which is the kind of feedback loop that practically defines the climate change problem. Black Carbon has another characteristic which has drawn attention in the climate change debate. While CO2 has a life of up to about 40 years in the atmosphere, Black Carbon remains in the atmosphere for a matter of weeks. Black Carbon is considered responsible for having an important impact of the Arctic melting. Due to Black Carbons short life, it is expected that emission reductions can rapidly reduce the rate at which Arctic ice is melting and therefore presents a unique opportunity to have an immediate impact on climate change. Debates are taking place in the international forums on the benefits of respectively reducing the emissions of Black Carbon and mitigating CO2 emission. Black Carbon reductions have more certain and immediate benefits, while reductions in CO2 emissions through CO2 mitigation will probably also have positive effects on climate change however it will only be realized over the longer term. However action on Black Carbon is not seen as an alternative to action on CO2. bvh

Human health and wellbeing of Arctic populations were discussed at a recent international scientific and practical conference on Prevention and Management of Emergencies under the auspices of the Arctic Council’s Working Group on Emergency Prevention, and Preparedness and Response (EPPR). The conference took place in Anadyr, Chukotka, in August 2009, and was hosted by EMERCOM (Ministry of Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters). At the conference it was pointed out that northern residents and especially the Indigenous Peoples’ health and wellbeing are being challenged by climate and environmental changes and by man-made and natural disasters as well as by increased economic development. PCB and DDT are accumulated in the Arctic and constitute a risk for human health and wellbeing. PCB’s and DDT are found in abandoned barrels and substances buried in the ground that get released as permafrost thaws. This situation calls for new issues to be included in emergency planning, Mr. V. Chashchin from Northwest Centre of Science Hygiene and Public Health explained. Introduction of new diseases, such as vector borne diseases from invasive species (e.g. ticks), is of concern as are other risks introduced to the northern areas due to climate change and global warming. Sound and quick emergency responses to these challenges are important if human health and wellbeing are not to be undermined – such was the general message proceeding from the EPPR event.

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