{"id":92037,"date":"2025-05-11T06:21:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T06:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/92037\/"},"modified":"2025-05-11T06:21:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T06:21:09","slug":"stop-hunting-polar-bears-video-by-tourists-sparks-outrage-among-inuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/92037\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Stop hunting polar bears\u2019 video by tourists sparks outrage among Inuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two tourists from Turkey were in Arctic Bay to document the effects of climate change and to photograph polar bears in the Nunavut territory recently, but wound up in hot water with the locals when they condemned the hunting of polar bears. <\/p>\n

As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a>, S\u00fcha Derbent and Murat Uslu, both photographers, produced a since-deleted Instagram video in Arctic Bay saying they didn\u2019t know the hunting of polar bears was permitted there and complaining that hunters prevented them from going to see polar bears. They also criticized the hunting of polar bears.<\/p>\n

“Some hunters are chasing them to kill as a sport,” Derbent said in the video. “We believe it is an unacceptable injustice. Be the voice and spread this message with everyone that you know. Please, stop hunting polar bears.”<\/p>\n

The CBC reposted the video on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The video did not sit well with the Nunavummiut (the Inuit people and other residents of Nunavut).<\/p>\n

“For these people to come up and say this is wrong,\u00a0they don’t even know what they’re talking about,” Paul Irngaut of Nunavut Tunngavick Inc. told the CBC. “They should ask questions first before they make comments like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CBC reported that polar bear tags are given out in small numbers each year to local hunting and trapping organizations who can then choose whether to use some of them for sport hunting.<\/p>\n

Irngaut told CBC that sport hunting is carefully regulated, adding, \u201cThe whole community, it gets the benefit in terms of the seamstresses that need to make all the clothes for the sports hunter, and then the meat is utilized by the whole community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another local, Nooks Lindell, told the CBC, “We’ve lived here for so long. We’ve lived with the environment. And being told, you know, [you]\u00a0have to conserve nature and you have to respect nature \u2014\u00a0that’s how we lived. This is still how we live.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then if there\u2019s any issues, that\u2019s for Inuit to decide. That\u2019s not for outsiders that don\u2019t live here. That\u2019s not for them to decide on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Mitchell of Arctic Bay Adventures told the CBC that the hamlet of Arctic Bay has rules that state tourists cannot go close to hunters, so when the photographers wanted to get close to the ice floe, they were told to leave.<\/p>\n

\"Generic<\/p>\n

Generic image of a polar bear.<\/p>\n

The CBC was at the airport in Iqaluit when the two tourists came off a flight from Arctic Bay. The tourists apologized.<\/p>\n

“At that time, it was hunters, and us. And photographers. We didn’t have any rights,” Derbent\u00a0told the CBC. “Hunters did. And that was the reason we said whatever we said. It was nothing to do with anything whatsoever with the culture of Inuit.<\/p>\n

“We\u00a0have huge cultural respect to the past, current and future Inuit. I apologize personally if we have offended them, but it was not our intention.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u00a0were given some promises to see the polar bears and they did not keep the promises.”<\/p>\n

Photo of a polar bear jumping on floating ice by Arturo de Frias Marques\/Wikipedia Commons.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on For The Win: \u2018Stop hunting polar bears\u2019 video by tourists sparks outrage among Inuit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two tourists from Turkey were in Arctic Bay to document the effects of climate change and to photograph…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[43561,43562,43560,40146,4870,70,16,15,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-92037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-arctic-bay","9":"tag-canadian-broadcasting-corporation","10":"tag-nunavut-territory","11":"tag-photographers","12":"tag-polar-bears","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114487760918544176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}