Footage of the eider duck and Nunavut’s Sanikiluaq community in it spans over seven winters
A Ph.D project to create an underwater camera system to view the eider duck diving below sea ice was the inspiration for SFU grad student Joel Heath’s award-winning documentary People of a Feather. Evan Warner and Jocelyne Chaput, both graduates from SFU’s film program, were involved in post-production of the documentary, and film professor Colin Browne was a key consultant in the project.
“Film is the ultimate medium of communication,” said Heath. “We figured the underwater footage we were already getting from the project could be turned into a way to let people know about life in the Arctic and see the changes that we were seeing.”
Beginning in 2002, Heath followed the Inuit living on Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, and learned far more than just the ecological knowledge he had been seeking through his work and research. Hydroelectric mega-projects near Hudson Bay have upset the ocean currents and sea ice ecosystems in the area, and the Inuit have been worried over the habitat changes that have led to increased winter die-offs of the eider duck, since they do not migrate south in the winter, as they can dive for food in ice-free areas. The pivotal role which eider ducks play in the Sanikiluaq community, which relies on subsistence hunting, is chronicled in People of a Feather.
Heath’s first-hand experience of the area and the growing environmental and cultural divide that has gone largely unaddressed moved him to begin documenting the relationship between the Inuit people and the eider ducks. “In many ways I risked my academic career to make this film, but I knew it would be worth it, and now I am sure,” said Heath. “Through the whole process I understand much more about Inuit ways of knowing, and it has affected my perspective on everything in life.”
People of a Feather has already received rave reviews and awards, and made the top-10 list for Most Popular Canadian Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival. People of a Feather portrays the detrimental effects of our lifestyle on the environment, but also places it into a cultural perspective, and shows how distressing this can be to traditional communities such as the Inuit community seen in Heath’s documentary.
People of a Feather is showing at the Rio Theatre until March 10.
