Netsilik Eskimo Series III At the Spring Sea Ice Camp

Two Eskimo families travel across the wide sea ice Before night falls they build small igloos and we see the construction in detail The next day a polar bear is seen basking in the warming sun A woman lights her seal oil lamp carefully forming the wick from moss The man repairs his snow goggles Another man arrives dragging a polar bear skin The boy has made a bearshaped figure from snow and practices throwing his spear Then he tries his bow Now with her teeth the woman crimps the sole of a sealskin boot she is making The men are hunting seal through the seaice in the bleak windy weather The wind disturbs the telltales made of eider down or a hair loop on a bone that signal when a seal rises to breathe A hunter strikes kills and drags his catch up and away At the igloo the woman scrapes at a polar bear skin and a man repairs a sled In the warming weather the igloo is topped with furs and a snow shelter is built to hide the sled from the sun