Fishing at the Stone Weir

Filmed over a period of three years, from summer 1963 to the late winter of 1965, and released in 1967, the Netsilik series is about the traditional lifestyle of Netsilingmiut living in the area around Kuugaruk.

In this episode, it is full summer. The skin tents are up, and it is time to fish.

Part 1 (30 min)

Full summer, and the tundra is bare; skin tents are up and it is time to attend to the fishing as the fish move upstream. The men are in the river, lifting stones and placing them to form enclosures to trap the fish. A woman skins a duck and then braids her hair in the old way, stiffly around sticks. From a bladder she makes a balloon for the child. The men are fishing with the three-pronged leisters, spearing the fish and stringing them on a thong, until it is as much as a man can do to drag his catch from the water. The woman works quickly, cleaning the fish, and then all enjoy bits of the fresh raw fish.

Part 2 (27 min)

There are many men fishing now and even the children on shore imitate the motions of the men. Rain sweeps over the tundra but the work goes on, the men splashing through the weir, furs hitched high, seemingly little affected by the cold water. The haul is large. A man makes fire with a bowdrill and soon there is a blaze under the stone cooking pot. Fish are stewed and eaten, the men staying in their own group. There is a little play at cat's cradle while stories are told, and then the women return to cleaning fish and the men to building stone caches to store and protect the plentiful harvest for the leaner days to come.

Films in the Netsilik Series

At The Autumn River Camp

At The Caribou Crossing Place 

At The Spring Sea Ice Camp

At The Winter Sea Ice Camp

Building a Kayak

Fishing at the Stone Weir

Group Hunting on the Spring Ice

Jigging for Lake Trout

Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice

About the Netsilik series

These films reveal the live reality of traditional Inuit life before the European acculturation. The Netsilik of the Pelly Bay region in the Canadian Arctic had long lived apart from other people and had depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year. 

The filming was done during the summers of 1963 and 1964 and in the late winter of 1965 under the ethnographic direction of Dr. Asen Balikci of the University of Montréal, assisted by Guy Mary-Rousseliere, O.M.I., both anthropologists of wide Arctic experience. Quentin Brown was Producer-Director, and Kevin Smith the Executive Producer for the series. A minimum of cultural reconstruction was required during the filming; the Netsilik families readily agreed to live in the old way once more and showed considerable aptitude in recalling and representing the earlier ways of life. 

Note on Term "Eskimo":

The films in this series make use of the name "Eskimo." While once broadly applied, it is a perjorative term and considered offensive. While the inception of the word is a matter of debate, it is no longer used or applied in our film catalog. The context in which the term appears in this series is an acknowledged relic of a colonial past, presented in its original version. DER apologizes for any offense caused.