Churchill at a Crossroads: A traditional way of life clashes with 'last chance tourism'

Canada’s National Observer: his piece is the second in a series on conservation in Northern Manitoba. Read the first part here.

Canada’s National Observer: Chapter 4: The harvest of a whale, the hunt for a sighting of a bear

Johnny Mamgark and his late cousin had pulled their freshly harvested whale up on the beach when two zodiacs arrived, filled with tourists hunting for a glimpse of a polar bear.

The angry tourists shouted at Mamgark and his cousin as they silently worked on their whale. Eventually, the tourists passed by, leaving Mamgark and his cousin with the stress and tensions of navigating an encounter between two worlds.

Mamgark understands the encounter wasn’t jarring only for him.

“It was bad for us; for both sides I guess,” he reasons.

Johnny Mamgark at Hubbart Point, one of the most abundant hunting grounds for Inuit in the region. Photo courtesy of Aaron Janzen/Ocean North — *Johnny Mamgark at Hubbart Point, one of the most abundant hunting grounds for Inuit in the region. Inuit harvesters have used Hubbart Point for generations. Photo courtesy of Aaron Janzen/Oceans North*

There is a distance between the ancestral practices of harvesting country foods (an essential component of Inuit well-being), and a public hungry for sightings of increasingly threatened Arctic wildlife.

The encounter between Mamgark and the tourists is where the real and practical world of the North confronts an idealized and romanticized Arctic. It’s an imaginary Arctic, part of an image sold for southerners’ consumption.

That tension is underlined by an increasingly common phrase: “last chance tourism.”This phrase refers to the threats posed by the rapid ebbs and flows of the Anthropocene. As for Churchill, the term could mean a tourist’s last opportunity to see the Arctic as it is now, before its iconic wildlife is gone, a relic of a colder era.

However, Hubbart Point is practically eternal for Inuit harvesters like Mamgark. The space has been used by Inuit for hundreds of years marked by its reliable abundance of wildlife. It’s perhaps the most productive hunting grounds that Mamgark knows, ripe with whales, polar bears, grizzly bears, caribou, seals, and more.

“It’s like a supermarket where we go to get our meat,” Mamgark said. “When you go there, you get what you want.”

Mamgark himself has returned to Hubbart Point as a hunting ground for decades, just like his ancestors have returned for generations. Christopher Debicki, Vice President for Ocean North, said his organization co-sponsored an archeological digat Hubbart Point to understand and showcase the human connection with the marine mammals there. Items found in the dig date carbon-date back over a millennium, pointing to an abundance that has lasted for countless generations of harvesting.

In recent years, the region 70 kilometres north of Churchill has become an adventure tourism destination. But without a cultural and education component, it’s tourism predicated on the natural world as a “terra nullius,” a Latin term for “nobody’s land” that was used for centuries to justify colonization — including here.

People visiting a place they expect to be empty of humans and bursting with wildlife may be understandably shocked to see locals butchering that wildlife to bring home to their families.

Mamgark felt the alienation firsthand that day on shore. “I was even thinking, like, ‘have they ever seen us? Do they even know us?’”

*A group on a whale-watching expedition stops to enjoy an icefloe on the Hudson Bay. Photo by Matteo Cimellaro/Canada’s National Observer*

Conservation, in that context, becomes fraught: if the idea is to protect a landscape from humans, what happens to the humans who are enmeshed with the landscape? The question is no longer academic in Churchill. The town and the Indigenous communities up and down the Hudson Bay coast will be the ultimate decision-makers over plans to establish a new National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) in the coming years down the west coast of the bay.

Consultation is still a long road ahead, and many tourism operators in town are skeptical about what federal regulations passed down from Ottawa bureaucrats will mean for their livelihood.

Currently, Manitoba’s north coast tourism remains unregulated and unmanaged in any systematic way. Conservationists like Debicki argue that a “management table” under the auspices of an NMCA can ensure that the tourism industry in Churchill has longevity, sustainability, and good practices.

Without regulation, there is a risk of over-tourism as companies jump at the chance to serve consumers a sighting of a polar bear or beluga whale. The risks of tourists crowding out local people and culture, alongside the abundance of biodiversity (western Hudson Bay and its three estuaries house the world’s world’s largest population of beluga whales), makes Debicki think the NMCA is a no-brainer.

Christopher Debicki, Vice President for Ocean North. Photo submitted

“This area has been highly productive over a very long time scale,” Debicki said. “So I think that also really reinforces the case for a protected area.”

But a NMCA is not guaranteed to succeed unless the people of Churchill, including its tourism operators, decide it is in their best interest to move forward with the project.

Chapter 5: Melting ice or the end of the polar bear

At the local bar in Churchill there is talk of a news report from a few days before. Shouting to be heard over the din of the bar, one of several locals originally from Newfoundland tells Canada’s National Observer the polar bear may only have 15 years left in the southern Hudson Bay. Researchers note in the journal Nature that it may already be “inevitable” that global heating will rob the ice-dependent polar bears of their means of survival in places like this, where ice freezes later and later and breaks up earlier and earlier in the year.

Kt Miller is a researcher and worked with Polar Bear International for over a decade. She describes how stark the change has been in the Hudson Bay for polar bears since the 1980s. Even 50 years ago the bears had about a month longer on sea ice each year than they do today.

“On average, polar bears in that region are on land, not on sea ice, for one day longer every year, and that’s global warming,” Miller said. “Less sea ice, thinner sea ice.”

Strong, thick sea ice is essential for the well-being and sustainability of polar bears. It provides abundant hunting and breeding grounds that are important for the sustainability of the species. But strong and thick sea ice is threatened by the planet’s warming waters.

“By the end of the century we’re predicted to lose most of the world’s polar bears if we don’t rapidly address carbon emissions,” Miller said. “And by mid century, we’ll lose two thirds of the world’s polar bears, so they’ll only remain in the highest parts of the Arctic where there’s still sea ice for them to hunt on.”

Sea ice continues to dissipate each year from the southern Hudson Bay. On average, there is one less day of sea ice each year on the southern Hudson Bay. Photo by Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer

Miller sees the impact of climate change not just on polar bears, but on the culture and identity of those that live alongside them.

Churchill’s mayor, Michael Spence, sees it too among his constituents. Many peoples’ jobs, and cultures, rely on the environment here.

“I think overall people are stressed by all this,” he said.

As news of the new Nature study spreads through the noisy bar, there’s a tone of concern in the voices; many in that bar, and in the town, work in tourism.

Maxwel Burke is a young Churchill resident and not one for bars, but he is a keen ear at the NMCA consultation. He has picked up work in nearly every industry in town. During polar bear season, he will work in tourism. He’s also worked in the town’s rich research economy, assisting with archaeological digs of the pre-Dorsets.

Work depends on the seasons: In the winter, the town’s port would always shut down. January is for the northern lights, spring is for birding, summer is for whale spotting, each carrying their own type of guests, each providing their own gigs.

But one time of year is all-hands-on-deck: polar bear season. Each fall, hotels are booked to the brim, and both Burke and bar regulars and everyone in between work with tour operators to facilitate glimpses of the threatened polar bears.

The carnivalistic polar bear season, and the murals and other bear iconography around town, has already laid Churchill’s claim to be the “polar bear capital of the world.” There is even a polar bear jail where bad bears are imprisoned if they continue to pose a threat to locals and tourists.

But what happens to a polar bear capital when the polar bears are gone? Do the jail and murals become reminders from a past era, like the frescoes of Pompeii?

*Michael Spence, mayor of Churchill. Photo by Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer*

Spence sees the unknowns and opportunities in these globe-scorching times. On the one hand, he worries about “the bear factor,” or the threat the polar bears may one day be gone. He pauses after the phrase. He thinks and talks about the wildfires and floods all over Manitoba and Canada, about the unseasonably warm weather across the country and the world. Things are changing everywhere as global temperatures swelter and extreme weather events cause havoc.

Still, Spence sees some opportunity; a longer summer season can mean more tourists flocking to see belugas in the summer, or perhaps an earlier season for birders in the spring.

But sea ice, which protects whales from their predators, is even essential for the well-being of belugas, Debicki said. That’s why conservationists are pushing hard for an NMCA — to funnel more resources into understanding how climate change is affecting the Arctic mammals that are the hallmark of Churchill’s tourism economy.

“NMCAs are required to have a monitoring program; there will be a baseline established, and then there will be a standardized monitoring program put in place,” Allison Stoddart, manager for National Marine Conservation Area Establishment in the Arctic for Parks Canada, said. “So that does help in terms of providing indicators for climate change and that does help with our enhancement of research.”

A Beluga surfaces for air as whale watchers head out in kayaks on the Churchill River in Churchill, Manitoba, Wednesday, July 4, 2018. The closure of the port and the rail line has resulted in economic hardship in the community. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

Carley Basler, Stoddart’s colleague on the ground in Churchill, agrees. She has lived in the North for years and knows significant changes will happen in the coming decades. She says an NMCA would provide a valuable mechanism to bring everyone at the table together over decisions around shipping, tourism, and whatever else arises.

Basler knows a conservation area will not stop climate change, but it may contribute to a healthier Hudson Bay, and more importantly, “will put people in a position to make their own decisions around adjusting to the things that are happening.”

Chapter 6: Indigenous tourism as a path forward

When Mamgark was harvesting, he did not want conflict. He stayed silent, focused on the job at hand. Harvesting a whale is hard enough; teaching aggressive tourists about the importance of that harvest is an almost impossible multitask.

Mamgark says tourism operators must play a greater role in conversation with Indigenous harvesters to avoid acrimonious collisions between northern harvesters and southern tourists.

“They have to know who we are and what we do, and they have to be taught in Churchill,” Mamgark said.

Mamgark worries about a continued growth of tour operators arriving from the south. They do not know Inuit and their way of life, particularly the importance of Hubbart Point to the annual harvest, he says.

Debicki believes an NMCA’s management table will ensure local and Indigenous operators have a formal place to voice their concerns about the industry.

Churchill tour operators say their audience want more Indigenous cultural components in their visit, and Debicki sees that trend continuing to grow. The trick is finding a means to connect Indigenous harvesters with Indigenous operators, he added.

“A well funded conservation regime can provide platforms for doing that and for promoting them.”

*Darcie Guarderas, director and client strategist at Indigenous Tourism Manitoba. Photo by Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer*

Darcie Guarderas, director and client strategist at Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, is passionate about the benefits of Indigenous tourism as a tool for reconciliation. Indigenous tourism operators have the ability to tell their own stories from their history, past and family.

Guarderas also runs her own consulting company that helps Indigenous tourism operators refine their products. She travels across Canada helping operators develop their business. She’s in demand — for Indigenous tourism, business is booming. About a quarter of Canadian tourists, and a third of international tourists, are requesting Indigenous tourism experiences.

“People want to learn, and they want to understand: they want to know the history,” she said.

That’s why Guarderas believes that it’s “awful” when outside operators descend on a place and crowd out Indigenous operators who can be the land’s storytellers through tourism. It does happen, she said, pointing to the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

But in Churchill, the tourism industry continues to Indigenize.

“Indigenous tourism is starting to play a bigger role in the area,” Spence, the mayor, said. “So our local folks are now seeing an opportunity to be involved.”

Spence is among them. He and his brother operate Watchee Expeditions, a tour operating company that shows tourists the region through Indigenous eyes and perspectives. Watchee translates to “a hill covered with trees in the middle of the tundra,” pointing to the mosaic of ecosystems in the region.

*Johnny Mamgark looks out towards the horizon at Hubbart Point. Photo courtesy of Aaron Janzen/Oceans North*

Spence is adamant that an NMCA and any rules and regulation around the tourism industry, will be decided by the North.

“We’ll have input, and we’ll have strong input, and we’ll decide, you know, how it’ll look at the end of the day,” Spence said about a NMCA.

In the end, Mamgark hopes a bridge can be built between tourism and harvesters that includes direct lines of communication with tour operators and tourists themselves. Education on the realities of life in the North is a must moving forward, he says. He does not want to be embarrassed when harvesting and practicing the things that lead to his community’s well being.

“We have to let them know that we are going to be hunting in that area every year; they have to understand that.”

This story was made possible in part by an award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.=

Matteo Cimellaro, Journalist