Nowhere Land

When Bonnie Ammaaq was a little girl, her parents packed up their essentials, bundled Bonnie and her younger brother into a long, fur-lined sled called a qamutik, and left the government-manufactured community of Igloolik to live off the land as had generations of Inuit before them. For eleven years their home was not just the small shack called "Outpost Camp," but the whole territory, vast, wild and beautiful, that lay outside its door. Nowhere Land is a quiet elegy for a way of life that exists now only in the memories of Bonnie, her brother and parents, and the few others still living who experienced it. For them, the wild open tundra was not just somewhere to live, it was Somewhere, and the settlement of Igloolik, their home ever since, with its dinning snowmobiles, flat and snowy landscapes and relative hustle-bustle, is strictly Nowhere.

A man threads rope through runners and slats, expertly tying the knots that hold them together. Meanwhile, a woman and her child cut up cardboard, shaping and decorating the pieces to create their own stylized sleds. Family Making Sleds is an homage to the skill of building sleds that also captures the sheer joy of using them to race downhill.

A dog team pulls an Inughuit family across the vast sea ice of Greenland. But with the terrain melting beneath them, the dogs break through the surface, plunging into frigid polar waters. Navarana, an elder and one of the passengers on this sled, is coming to terms with the unprecedented changes facing all Arctic peoples. In the 1860s, Navarana's visionary ancestor-a shaman from Baffin Island, Canada, named Qitdlarssuaq-embarked on a legendary and epic journey, leading an Inuit migration to Greenland. It was this shaman's quest that introduced vital bloodlines and technology to Navarana's beleaguered forbearers. Over 150 years later, Navarana travels to her ancestor's homeland to connect with her distant Canadian cousins. Navarana accompanies families from both regions on their annual hunting journeys. She witnesses how these two genetically-linked groups of Inuit have adapted differently to outside influences and to the inescapable changes that affect their hunting traditions. Through her experiences, she hopes to find the key to making the right choices for her people's survival. Navarana draws inspiration and hope from the ties that still bind these two communities, as well as from the legacy of her intrepid ancestor, at a time when circumpolar peoples are facing the greatest social and environmental challenges in their history.