Leader of more than a hundred expeditions and founder of Sedna (1), Nicolas Dubreuil is one of the leading specialists in the polar worlds. He is the author ofAventurier des glaces (2) and Akago (3). In the course of his adventures, "Niko", as he is known to his Inuit friends, has forged unique ties with bear, seal and narwhal hunters. Meet Niko.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
For 30 years now, I've been travelling the polar regions as an expedition guide. I take sportsmen and women, travellers, scientists and film crews with me. Initially, I guided polar expeditions in parallel with my studies and my job as a teacher-researcher in computer science at the University of Strasbourg. Following an accident on the ice floes in 2001, during a ski expedition north of Greenland, I decided to leave university and live my life as an adventurer. After several years exploring the Arctic and Antarctic, I decided to buy a small house in the village of Kullorsuaq, in North Greenland at the foot of the famous Melville Bay.
How did you get into hunting?
By accompanying the indigenous populations. I've always hunted and fished for food or to make clothes - the only purpose of killing an animal, in my view. I've taken part in every possible hunt (bear, narwhal, caribou, musk ox, seal, walrus, partridge, etc.). Fundamentally, it's the only way to survive in these regions. You only have to spend a few days in Greenland to understand that the only way to live there is the one that has existed for thousands of years.
What's life like in Kullorsuaq?
Kullorsuaq is the most extreme village. It takes more than 4 different planes and a helicopter, and in the best conditions, at least 3 days to get there. Kullorsuaq's isolation has enabled it to maintain a life that is as traditional as it is connected. The main jobs are hunting and fishing, but everyone has a mobile phone so they can use social networks to communicate.
Settling in Kullorsuaq gave me the chance to discover a way of life close to the stories of Jean Malaire and Paul Emile Victor. When I arrived in Kullorsuaq, there were hardly any snowmobiles, only dogs and sledges. In this village, bears and narwhals are hunted in the traditional way. Bears are tracked by sled and narwhals are harpooned from traditional kayaks, often made from wood salvaged from pallets and covered in sealskin. Today, sealskin has been replaced by nylon or even plastic, but the kayak is still built to suit the body shape of the kayaker and the animals it will be used to hunt.
What is the Inuit relationship with nature?
What struck me most when I arrived in Kullorsuaq was the Inuit's relationship with their environment and access to resources. Even though they are almost all Protestant, animism is still very much alive and the relationship they have with animals is different from anything I had known in Europe. As Philippe Descola says, there is no such thing as nature here. Everything is nature. And as Charles Stépanoff (4) explains, there is no Western dichotomy between the pet animal that is treated like a child and the resource animal that is consumed. Here, the animal is treated as the equal of man in a 3rd version, undoubtedly much more respectful.
I remember one moment when this particularly struck me. It was late September, the snow was starting to settle and the temperature was dropping. After the excitement of summer and the constant daylight, life was returning to normal. I was in the only little shop, doing my shopping and chatting quietly to everyone, when someone came running in, shouting "... I've got to get out of here! Qilalukat ! Qilalukat !... " - Beluga, Beluga!
At the same time, everyone in the shop drops their bags, stops talking and runs out. Even the cashier abandons his post! Something particularly important is happening. When I leave the shop, an incredible frenzy has taken over the village. Everyone is running around, rushing to the little jetty, jumping into the boats and starting the engines. Ole, my best friend, walks past me mimicking the movement of the belugas, grabs me by the arm and urges me to come with him.
I jumped into his boat and he handed me the harpoons, the rifle and some rope. I started the engine and about ten small boats set off towards the open sea. Someone from another village had just sent a Facebook message saying that they'd seen herds of belugas heading towards Kullorsuaq. After the deafening noise of the engines, there is complete silence. We all end up in the same place, in the middle of the sea... Everyone communicates by gesture from one boat to another. It's impossible to talk about anything. They either have their eyes glued to their binoculars or their hands on their harpoons, scanning the horizon... Now it's a waiting game... everyone is looking for a whiteback amidst the drifting patches of pack ice. The cold is much more biting and the wind is picking up. Everyone is dressing more warmly... People are talking in low voices, a sort of anxiety is floating around. No-one dared say the word beluga until a gasp woke everyone up. After several hours of stalking, 3 boats managed to capture a beluga, and there was food for everyone.
Back in the village, the single tractor reassembled the beluga and set it up right in the middle of the children's playground. The whole village is there, from the 4 year olds to the elders, the same frenzy grips the inhabitants, knives in hand. The skin is cut off, the famous matak and you get to taste this highly sought-after, vitamin-rich delicacy live. The animal is stroked and a piece of skin is cut off. You eat directly from the animal, which allows you to absorb its power.
Then comes the rigorous cutting: the tail fin and left pectoral fin for the person who saw it, the flanks for the person who harpooned it, the head for the person who killed it, and so on. All the skin is cut off with surgical precision and divided between all the villagers. Matia, one of the elders, opens the beluga and invites the children to come and have a look. There was blood everywhere, and Matia plunged his hands into the animal's entrails and pulled out each organ, explaining its function to the children. It was the best biology lesson I've ever had.
Inuit: Hunting as a means of transmission?
Yes, a completely mind-boggling anatomy and biology course in the middle of the village. Here, animals are revered for what they bring to the whole community. It is respected, killed and eaten to the last morsel. This communal hunting is necessary and shared by all. It's a relationship with the animal that I didn't know.
The isolation of this village means very few resources. The last supply ship to pass through Kullorsuaq and replenish the shop's reserves is scheduled for early November, the next one for July, 7 months later. In the meantime, the bad weather, the polar night and the ice will completely isolate the village and its inhabitants from the rest of the world. Without the use of local resources, it is impossible to provide food for its 400 inhabitants. And it's not the jobs at the school, bank or shop - the only businesses in the village - that will ensure economic survival for everyone. Fishing and professional hunting, paid for by the sale of meat and skins, are the only source of income for many of the inhabitants.
The remoteness of the village and the harshness of the climate made the use of sealskin, bear skin, caribou skin or musk ox skin essential for survival! Today, no Goretex in the world exceeds the waterproofness of sealskin or the breathability of caribou skin. No ski trousers are as warm and practical as polar bear skin trousers.
At Kullorsuaq, the permafrost is outcropping, the trees are smaller than the mushrooms, and virtually nothing grows in this soil. For 4,500 years, the Inuit have adapted to finding all the elements vital to their survival in the various animals they hunt.
In Greenland, hunting is essential for the most isolated villages, and if you don't have a sustainable income, you'll be dependent on this traditional form of hunting. Of course, people with full-time jobs (shop, school, bank, etc.) can apply for hunting and fishing licences anywhere in Greenland, albeit with a strong restriction on the game they can hunt. But they interfere a lot with the full-time hunters and fishermen, because of the noise from the boats and the lack of regard for the traditional hunting ethic (which is also noticeable among the new generations of hunters and fishermen, unfortunately).
Is there a "Danisation" of the local Greenlandic population?
Since 1953, Greenland has been a province of Denmark. So, to gain economic independence from Denmark, the urban Greenlanders gave priority to the country's wealth. They rushed to develop the economy and infrastructure and to centralise wealth and development in the big cities in order to achieve economic growth that the rest of the world would consider sufficient and in which it could invest. This image of Greenland reflects the vision of most people living in the big cities. They focus on their families and their well-being. There is competition for jobs and for better housing. The richest companies and individuals are rushing to invest in as many flats as possible, ahead of the opening of transatlantic airlines from Nuuk and Ilulissat. Yet there are so many unmet needs in health and housing, both for families who don't have enough income and for those who are forced to move to bigger cities because they have no way of earning money in the uninvested towns.
So there is a slow, forced centralisation that is transforming traditional hunting cultures into leisure activities in the big cities. I get the impression that part of the soul of the proud Greenlanders I met a few years ago is being lost in the process of selling the experience of hunting as a business to the highest bidder, rather than hunting as a necessity of life, where the animal is shared with the community.
In this age of intertwined social democracy and capitalism, you don't hear many voices from the small villages where hunters and their families should have access to better health and the means to develop their villages independently.
How do you see the future of these isolated villages?
The survival of small villages in the Arctic depends on the survival of hunting. I wouldn't say that hunting is useful in the Arctic, it's simply essential!
Without traditional hunting in qajaq (kayak) and in qimusseq (sledge) in the villages, there would be no villages at all in North Greenland. The Inuit of North-West Greenland have always lived as nomads, following the animals and coordinating the seasonal hunt with, of course, the help of SilaThe weather.
Interview by Brigitte Postel
Photos : Nicolas Dubreuil
1- Sedna, the goddess of nature for the peoples of the Arctic, is a company set up to work with indigenous peoples and scientists to organise expeditions that make sense and meet the needs of both. https://sedna-explore.com/
2 - Aventurier des glaces, Nicolas Dubreuil, Michel Moutot, 2012, Ed. de la Martinière.
3 - AKAGO Ma vie au Groenland, Nicolas Dubreuil, Ismaël Khelifa, 2016, Ed. Robert Laffont.
4 - Charles Stépanoff is an anthropologist, director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and a member of the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale at the Collège de France. His publications include Travelling the invisible (2019, 2022), Shamanic imagination techniques (2019, 2022) and The Animal and Death (2021).
