Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change: Jaipitty Palluq on Polar Bears

Japitty Palluq from Igloolik speaks about polar bears.

I grew up at Kapuivik and bears never came to our camp. Over the years, as I grew up, not very often a bear was caught in this area. Bears were very far away and we had to travel great distances to hunt them. Now, it's unthinkable, bears are everywhere. Last summer, I moved permanently back to my camp, after living four years in Igloolik. When I came back, every night bears came, and they ate all our food that left outside the cabins. That's how it is now. Different, very different from the past.

Back then, between 1950 and 60, there were no polar bear in the area I was born. In the winter, when someone would find polar bear tracks, it was very surprising. Being from a hunting family, when think back, bowheads, ravens, seagulls, geese were in few numbers. Today, they're a lot more abundant. What causes it, I don't know.

Due to climate change, the floating ice is melting, and the bears are being forced to move on land. Bears are now visible everywhere on the land. Even the main land. This was not like this before.

I've noticed female bears, which should have cubs, but don't. There's less males around. It's because the government tells us to only hunt males and we're only allowed to catch a few females. We haven't balanced our hunt of males and females. Females that should have cubs don't have any and end up eating other bear's cubs. That's how it is now. As a hunter, I don't talk about this, but I've seen it.

Polar bears when they shouldn't be skinny, some of them are.

We can't cache walrus meat in places where we used to. Starting in July, we would hunt walrus, and we would have many caches for the meat on an island. In the past, no bears would break in. There were no bears around. Today, I only cache walrus meat right outside my cabin, so I can guard it. If I cache it away from my camp, the bears would take it before freeze up. There's so many bears around.