Content area
Full Text
THE LAST OF THE EARLY MORNING MOON glows above the vast horizon as a dozen young, Inuit men gather on the river ice near Inukjuak in northern Quebec. Most in their early 20s, they gun their snowmobiles to life, head south across the frozen Innuksuac River and then east, deep inland. Over the next week, with supply sleds loaded, they will roam up to 250 kilometres a day in pursuit of caribou. Each is clothed to survive temperatures below -35 degrees C. One wears a caribou skin parka, another polar bear pants, a third has mittens lined with wolf skin. They also don an odd leather belt high on their waists, a wide strap pierced with multi-coloured grommets housing three wooden-handled knives. The longest blade is hefty, about 30 centimetres of high-grade steel. These are largely ceremonial tools, the imported implements of Saami reindeer herdsmen, last of the European nomads who still roam Scandinavia. After several weeks of training under a Saami teacher, the Inuit wear their knives as a kind of badge, with pride. These Inuit are not heading out on this February day to hunt caribou the way their ancestors have for millennia. Instead, they are using all-terrain vehicles or snow machines, electronic navigation tools and newfound skills to locate migrating caribou and coax thousands of them across the wilderness to a new multi-million-dollar ranch and commercial slaughterhouse. About three million caribou roam North America, more than one million of them in northern Quebec. Throughout history, their numbers have ebbed and flowed from near extinction to figures so high that disease and starvation have taken serious tolls. Quebec biologists and elders are warning that another crash is imminent because of overpopulation. JOBIE EPOO began dreaming of making caribou herding part of a commercial harvest in 1990 after witnessing a successful Saami reindeer herding exercise while on a trade mission in Norway. Born into public life -- his father negotiated Inuit rights in the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement -- Epoo knows how to get things done. He has served as treasurer of the Inuit development corporation, Makivik, as president of Air Inuit, and was elected mayor of Inukjuak several times. Now he heads the year-old, $2.5-million Ipushin Ranch. Three years ago, the...