Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Gjoa Haven (June 10/02) - As the chair of the Hunters and Trappers Association in Gjoa Haven, Louis Kamookak knows first-hand the hardships his fellow community members suffered when wildlife officials in the territory banned all polar bear hunting in the area. He's working hard to help offset those hardships, but it's tough.

Louis Kamookak works full-time and sits on several different boards and associations in Gjoa Haven, including the community's Hunters and Trappers Association. - Kerry McCluskey/NNSL photo

News/North: After the polar bear moratorium was called, did the guides and hunters in Gjoa Haven suffer real hardship as was predicted?

Louis Kamookak: A lot of guides and hunters interpreted the announcement to mean it was going to affect the sport hunts. It was not that. It was that there was no polar bear hunting at all. We had radio shows and the input from the community was could we at least ask the government if we could do domestic hunts so we could continue eating polar bear and having the hunters go out.

N/N: Do you feel the government handled that properly as you look back on it?

LK: I think we feel we were treated the same as the sport hunters. A lot of people didn't accept that. Lots of people and myself felt we'd listened for 15 or 20 years to the government about how many polar bears we could harvest. They told us for those years we could catch bears and then one day they tell us no more polar bears. People had confusion about that.

N/N: It must have come as a real shock.

LK: It was a shock. We were able to get 14 bears I think and then it went to 12 (altogether for Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak and Cambridge Bay) and then down to nothing.

N/N: How did the guides make it through the winter without that extra money when a sport hunt generates around $10,000?

LK: It affected the people who were guiding. Some of those guides were also guiding for caribou hunts around Yellowknife so some of them were okay. But some of the older ones couldn't get another job.

I got on as chair of the Hunters and Trappers Association just before the moratorium was announced. Before that, there were talks about polar bears and some of them got pretty ugly.

N/N: Within the community?

LK: Within the HTO and the Department of Sustainable Development. So my first plan when I got in was to work on solving problems. We've come a long way. We've made good with the government. One of the plans we came up with to try was to have people involved with managing wildlife. We don't want moratoriums or things like that to happen any more so we came up with the idea of doing polar bear IQ (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or Inuit traditional knowledge study) in the community.

N/N: That finished this year?

LK: It's finished now, but we're working on the report. Everybody is anxious for that report. When we first had the proposal, it was very small. But when we brought up the idea, more departments got interested and the idea got bigger. The IQ was not only on polar bears, but on global warming and weather changes.

N/N: Do hunters and guides and elders in the community believe it's the weather changes that made the bears move elsewhere?

LK: Yes. Polar bears migrate to different areas. The IQ will come up with some answers about what's really happening. It's not the way the government put it -- that we over-hunted. We want to prove it was not over-hunting, that there was other stuff involved. We think when we come up with the report, we could work closely with the biologists. In the future, we hope to be in the decision-making of setting and then managing the quota. If we set up a ceiling on the quota, locally we'll have the experts there, the hunters, who some years say there's lots of polar bears this year and not lots another year. We could manage the quota and if there's less polar bears, we'll put the quota lower and other years go back to a higher limit.

N/N: Do you think the community could more responsibly manage the quota than the government?

LK: Yes. The community knows what's happening. Like I always say, they live with the polar bears. They know their movements.

N/N: When is the final report due?

LK: I'll say October, but it could be earlier. We got funding for the study from DSD, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, Nunavut Tunngavik and the Bathurst road and port project. We got a lot of people interested in the report.

N/N: What else are you working on at the HTA to try and develop economic activity?

LK: With that polar bear money that was announced, that $200,000, the three communities decided to break it up into three equal parts. We got $67,000. We came up with plans to improve the muskox hunts and maybe set up a commercial sport fishing industry. Recently with our outfitter, we signed a contract for spring and fall hunts. The fall hunt would be a combined caribou and muskox hunt.

N/N: What's the biggest problem facing Gjoa Haven?

LK: The lack of jobs. We have people getting educated, but there's no jobs in the community. We recently had guide courses offered at Nunavut Arctic College. We had 12 students. We plan to do another one this fall -- guide level training part two. We had 30 names for that course, but we could only pick 12. It's the only way to improve things. People are interested in getting jobs, but there is not much being offered to them. There is interest from people willing to make a living off the land.

Another idea we have is to do a proposal on seal hunting. We have to educate the younger hunters on how to clean and process the hides. One of the things we're thinking of is try to use 100 per cent of the seal. About 40 per cent of the seal is edible. We're looking at processing it into dog food. A lot of people in Gjoa Haven are getting dogs for hunting and people get their dog food from the South. If we do a seal harvest, we could use hides and meat for people and the other parts for dog food. The community likes the idea.

N/N: Do you miss bear hunting?

LK: I haven't hunted bear for a while. When the three bear tags were given to us last month, people were asking if I was going to put my name in. I wanted to give other people a chance to go. It's been less than 15 years since I went bear hunting.

N/N: Why haven't you gone out?

LK: I'm working full-time. I like to give other people the opportunity. I know when they come back I'm going to have polar bear meat. Because I have a job, I feel like other people need that income.

N/N: You're at housing?

LK: I've been with housing for 17 years. I'm the director of housing and public works for the hamlet. I'm also involved with boards.

N/N: You must be busy. How many kids do you have?

LK: Four kids. My oldest is a boy going on 20, my daughter is going on 18, I have another son who is 14 and the youngest is going on 11.

N/N: Four teenagers must be a full-time job.

LK: It is. It's getting harder to buy stuff for them too. When they were kids, I could go to a cheap store and buy them a no-name brand. Now they want brand name items, which cost four times as much. That's part of being a parent. When they were young, it was expensive raising them and feeding them, but when they're older, I think they're more expensive.

N/N: Did you teach your oldest son to polar bear hunt?

LK: I haven't. It all goes back to giving other people a chance to go. I take him out seal hunting, caribou hunting, muskox hunting.

N/N: What's your favourite animal to hunt?

LK: Not fishing. I really enjoyed polar bear hunting. My first bear hunt was with my grandfather and another elder. I was about 13. It was by dog team. I could almost say it was the last dog team hunt in Gjoa Haven. After that, it was by snowmachine. It was the traditional way of hunting. It was very fun and challenging.

N/N: Did you get a bear on that trip?

LK: No, my grandfather did. I just watched. When we sighted the polar bear, we tracked it for half a day. They sighted it and let some of the dogs loose. I was left to follow.

N/N: That meat must have tasted good.

LK: It did.