Synopsis of People of a Feather

Through seven Arctic winters, this startling doc takes you into the world of the Inuit and Eider ducks on the Belcher Islands. Traditional and modern life are juxtaposed, as the Inuit and the Eiders face the challenges posed by changing sea ice and ocean currents disrupted by the massive hydro dams powering North America. A devastatingly beautiful picture of two species living in symbiotic union and their changing way of life. Arctic water life as never before seen.

“The ice is harder to understand now. Hunting is more dangerous.” A family of Inuit sit in front of a television, watching footage of ice formations crashing apart when new water comes racing in from the dams, listening to a description of how critical the situation is, looking concentrated and worried. “Maybe we won't be able to hunt anymore,” someone says, and another replies with a chuckle, “maybe only by boat.”

As the film weaves through time with recreated scenes and modern footage, we can see that the Inuit have always been deeply connected to the Eider ducks whose thick down, the warmest feather in the world, is key to their survival of the harsh winter season. The Eider ducks, however, are struggling. Through beautiful time-lapsed sequences and underwater footage of the ducks, it becomes clear that their existence now requires a daily fight. One man says that when the currents got weaker from the damming, “the first question we asked is what's going to happen with the eider ducks?” So, when huge numbers of Eiders died in the early 90's, the Inuit contacted the Canadian Wildlife Service for help.

Biologist Joel Heath arrived, set up camp, and started observing the ducks. He worked with the community and learned from the elders that the hydroelectric dams were dumping fresh water from the reservoirs into the area at the opposite time of year. “The deeper I dug, the bigger I realized the scale of the issue,” he said. “We're working against the seasons of our hydrological cycle… things are getting a lot noisier, and less predictable.”

The animals and people of the land rely on currents to bring food. Because the ecosystem around Hudson Bay and the Belcher Islands is shifting, the Inuit community and the animals they rely on are facing many challenges. The film shows the unique contrast of their traditional lifestyle with changes that are both internal and influenced by the worlds outside their community. We see young Inuit rapping, playing poker, and dancing in the snow and a young girl wailing for her seal meat and Pepsi alongside the Inuit trying to help conduct research on the currents and to help the struggling Eiders, in evidence of their coexistence. “If we don't help them, they're all just going to die off.”

The film examines the position of the Inuit in an ever-changing environment. With exquisite footage of the land and a view of the Arctic that has rarely been seen before, it demonstrates the delicate balance needed for our existence. The film is at once both an exciting, novel adventure in the arctic and a poetic, contemplative look at man's role in nature.