Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 14/02) - It would be like searching for a needle in a hay stack if it didn't stick out so much.

Joyce Rabesca and her pilot Ron Lee were flying over the tundra straddling the NWT/Nunavut border near Contwoyto Lake about a month ago when -- against a red backdrop of caribou moss -- a ghostly white shape was seen moving across the barrens.

"We were taking a drop off (guests) at another location, and I happened to see just white, a very, very bright white figure on the landscape there," says Rabesca, who runs a pair of caribou hunting camps about 375 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

"It was not a huge caribou. It had a nice-sized antlers on it, but what was unique about it was that the antlers and the body itself were totally white. You couldn't distinguish between the two."

Rabesca says she has never seen anything like it in all her years. As a hunting lodge operator -- called Camp Ekwo, which means "caribou" in Dogrib -- she has seen thousands of caribou roam across the tundra, but never one quite like this.

"I mentioned to RWED (Renewable Resources, Wildlife, and Economic Development) and both our camps to be on the look out for it and not to shoot it if they see it, but just leave it alone," says Rabesca. "No one told us to say that, but that was just sort of our gut feeling not to do that."

Rabesca wondered if she would ever see the animal again. The Barrenlands, after all, are massive and unforgiving. It seemed improbable considering that no one in her 11 years running the hunting camps had ever seen an all-white, pure albino caribou, but ...

"Since then our little Forehead Lake camp has seen it, and lots of the guys have seen it now," says Rabesca.

"And we just happened to have a travel writer up there and a photographer from the United States, and they got a lot of photos of it, supposedly."

Debate continues

There is some debate, however, whether the caribou captured in the photograph by Chuck Wechsler is indeed the same caribou Rabesca saw, or another albino, or not an albino at all but simply a caribou with a very white coat.

Rabesca believes her caribou was a young bull. Wechsler believes he photographed a yearling cow.

Nonetheless, Wechsler wrote back to News/North saying it was still "a remarkable sight."

"I saw one that was absolutely pure white," says Rabesca. "I mean, that (Wechsler's caribou) could be it, but I don't know if it is or not."

Rabesca believes there may be legends among the Dogrib involving a pure white caribou. She has since asked around, including several elders, but either no one knew or no one wanted to answer.

"It could be just one of those things people don't want to talk about," says Rabesca.

Legends abound in other areas of the circumpolar world, however.

Some Laplanders -- the people who live in Scandinavia's Far North -- believe white caribou have magical powers.

One of the most famous legends about white caribou comes from Nunavut. An old folktale tells of a young woman named Tyya who was tricked by an evil shaman and turned into a white caribou.

She was later rescued by a caribou hunter named Etasak, who recited the magic spell and returned her to human form. Ever since, Inuit hunters have refrained from killing white caribou, believing they may be persons trapped under a spell.

As for a scientific explanation, albinos can be found among just about any species of animal, including humans. The cause is a lack of skin pigmentation in the skin and hair. The eyes often appear pink or yellow.

Caribou biologist Anne Gunn says albino caribou are rare but not unheard of. She saw one once at Pelly Bay back in the mid-1980s.

Survival rate low

What makes them even more remarkable though is that few can survive under the North's harsh environment.

"It's unusual for them to survive," says Gunn. "Quite often they tend to get snow blindness because there's no pigment in the eye to protect it."

Gunn says if one encounters an albino caribou they should do their best to avoid disturbing it because they may stress easily.