Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice – Quentin Brown & Asen Balıkçı (1968)

Diverse ways of sustenance on the frontiers of the world fascinate us about Human adaptability and effective resource use. Stalking for seals on sea ice is one of the best documented hunting technique which employs quite exceptional behavioral deception tactics. The hunter uses a cognitive ability called “theory of mind” to overcome behavioral tripwires for prey to escape. The hunter projects the world from the view point of the prey and adjusts own behavior to a successful intercept. The hunter pre-calculates errors a prey can fall into and sets up traps accordingly. Here, we witness a series of acts performed to mimic the actions of a seal. Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice (1968) by Quentin Brown captures one of the most successful Human resource acquisition strategies that have evolved in the Arctic.

The Netsilik Series is a continuation of a documentary filmmaking tradition that has started with Robert Flaherty’s 1922 film Nanook of the North. The series is very successful in documenting the lives of Netsilik Inuit people in the Arctic region of Canada. The Netsilik Inuit call themselves “the people of the seal” and have adapted to survive in one of the most extreme environments on our planet. Series was directed and produced by Quentin Brown in 1967 under grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation (U.S.) and by Education Development Center, Inc. of Newton, MA (U.S.), in association with the National Film Board of Canada. Under the ethnographic direction of Dr. Asen Balıkçı of the University of Montréal it became one of the ethnographical masterpieces belonging to a genre called visual anthropology.