Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 25/02) - In talking to elders in Nunavut, Solomon Awa is finding that wasting meat is more than a passing concern. And that's not all that worries them.

After a day of hunting and travelling, Solomon Awa buids an iglu to sleep in for the night. The newly hired hunter education co-ordinator learned his hunting skills from his father and wants to pass them on to other hunters. - photo courtesy of Solomon Awa

All too often in his interviews, Awa hears stories about meat and skins getting left behind and only the antlers or choice parts of the animals are taken.

Through his work as the hunter education co-ordinator at the Department of Sustainable Development, Awa is trying to change such irresponsible hunting practices.

While he was also brought into the department to help develop culturally appropriate wildlife legislation and to help implement the wildlife provisions of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Awa is tasked primarily with educating Nunavummiut about hunting.

In past decades, Inuit used all parts of the animals they hunted.

In fact, because so much of an animal was used, modern society's notions of conservation didn't even exist. And neither did a vocabulary for the concepts of animal preservation.

"There was never a need for that," notes Awa.

"We have a very easy life nowadays. There are no dog teams to feed, rifles kill instantly, we have faster transportation," he says. "People are not learning any more how to hunt properly. A few are but not all, not like before," he said.

The idea of sport hunts or hunting for recreation may contribute to an increase in meat wastage.

Peter Irniq, an Inuk who has witnessed tremendous change in his culture during the last five and a half decades, says he doesn't think wastage is as much about the erosion of harvesting skills as it is about hunting and killing animals for fun.

"I think animals are shot sometimes just for the fun of it," says Irniq. "It shouldn't be."

When travelling by snowmobile, Irniq says he regularly sees dead caribou and seals left to rot. Some have even been left wounded, but not killed.

He says just as his father taught him to hunt and butcher an animal responsibly, other Nunavummiut needed to be educated.

Through the production of posters, videos and pamphlets, Awa says he hopes to spread information about the need to be more careful when harvesting.

"I'm not going to go out with the young hunters and show them how," he says.

"I'm going to provide them with information ... anything that makes them think and learn."

He adds that wildlife officers in the territory gave him a list of 16 other recommendations for educational projects.