Original subtitles

It may look all white to everybody else,

but I can look down and pick out features.

I'm returning to Kavik River Camp,

which is based on the North Slope of Alaska.

I'm the camp's sole caretaker and it's how I make my living.

My closest neighbour is about 350 miles south

and for nine, ten months of the year

I live completely alone out here.

The camp's been abandoned for about three months

while I've been down having ankle surgery in Fairbanks.

80-mile-an-hour storm coming in tomorrow and it's gonna last a week.

So, this is my window. Today.

There is a concern that there's a bear

that ended up in my home and I'm about to find out.

SUE: We gotta get this unloaded

and get him on his way.

You good to go? All right, Bob.

(BOB SPEAKING)

SUE: I will.

All right. Let's go see who's sleeping in my bed.

We're about 40 below zero, but that storm is coming in.

Other than me, you got 83 grizzlies tagged

that have the possibility of walking through camp.

There is no food source on the North Slope

in the winter for a bear, except for me.

These are bigger tracks.

(PANTING)

That's a bigger track.

And here.

Right here and here. Big old tracks, right by the door.

Actually, it's pretty slack down there.

This is taut, that is not.

Compromised somewhere by something.

You know, a few years ago, I got attacked by a grizzly.

When you have a bear and he's got his jaws on your throat

and you're laying there and you don't know if he's going to chew on you,

you don't want it to happen twice.

I don't know what I'm looking at going in there.

Load it, light,

and let's see who's home.

(KNOCKING ON DOOR)

Yo!

(KNOCKING ON DOOR)

(LAUGHS)

Anybody here?

Yo!

Somebody has been here.

Humans.

Yo! Hey!

(EXHALES)

Okay, nobody's in this part, this part checks out.

There has been somebody here.

Garbage is moved, garbage is half-full,

water bottles left out, cooler inside, magazines out,

bandages down.

Somebody's been in my house.

But it looks like maybe the two-legged variety.

This is my sign.

Says, "Welcome to Kavik, I am not here right now.

"Please respect my home and my belongings. Do not take my things.

"If you use the heat or fuel,

"please leave me a note on the amount and date. Kavik Sue."

Nobody's left me a note, somebody's been here.

I did see the building was slack over here,

and it still is.

(BANGING)

You know, it's a little slack.

(THUD)

I think we're good to go.

It's real obvious somebody came into my camp,

used the premises,

and my .30-06 rifle with the scope is missing.

There's paw prints, there's people prints, there's stuff out.

There's things that I don't use here.

So, first thing I need to check

is how much fuel do I have.

I had a bunch delivered in barrels and put out,

and I may not have it, so I gotta go check.

CHIP: There's just so many things that can go wrong.

We can't prepare for all of them.

You just take it as it comes.

You never know what's gonna happen.

We're in Noorvik, Alaska along the Kobuk River.

We're kind of an isolated village,

like most of them in this region are.

Most of what we do to make a living is hunting, fishing,

trapping and gathering.

Hunting on this side of the river right now is pretty poor.

Before I walk across that river, it's got to be frozen solid.

I've had friends and family killed doing that.

Well, we're looking at open water that refroze,

open water that's refreezing,

and then I can see some other lightly, lightly coloured ones

which indicate thin ice over here

that I wouldn't go on, I'm not gonna go on.

(SIGHS DEEPLY)

We're waiting for the female caribou,

they're coming from the north.

They're held up on the north side of the river

because they're also waiting for the river to freeze.

It's dangerous,

but to take a vehicle or a heavy load, like a load of meat over this,

would be inviting disaster.

It's better to stay at home, then we can be productive.

(ENGINE RUNNING)

It's that time of year.

It's freeze-up and we're kind of stuck in our home,

and this crazy weather doesn't allow us to predict anything

and it doesn't allow us to make a plan.

It's been a pretty tough start off to winter so far.

We'll be digging into the food that we worked hard for

and saved for this time of year.

(DOGS BARKING)

Let me smell him.

Yeah, this one's good.

I wanna make sure that while this one was freezing

and thawing several times, that he didn't spoil.

And he's got a little bit of a high smell to him,

but that's aged meat, it's not spoiled meat.

It's my job to go get caribou, to bring them home,

and the women, it becomes theirs once it's in the house.

It's theirs now, it's a cultural thing.

It's a way of partitioning out work.

-There's the kill shot. -(CHUCKLES)

Now we need to clean this up,

and she can start butchering it.

AGNES: Right now, let me sharpen up my ulu real quickly.

This was my mother's knife. It's a woman's knife.

I take the sinew off

and then I take the backbone off,

then the brisket,

and then I flip it over on the other side,

and then I go ahead and do the same thing.

CHIP: Looking good.

Are you gonna give this away? Is this going to somebody?

Uh, we probably could have that for like, dinner, maybe.

CHIP: That's what I was thinking.

Here it's legal to barter caribou meat.

And I'm going to trade some of this meat for ammunition

or I'll trade it for gasoline or I trade it for parts.

There's other people that we will trade this to

and they'll give us fish, or they'll bake bread for us. There's always an exchange.

Then we can employee ourselves full-time with the materials around us

to make the things that'll make cash,

that'll buy the stuff we can't buy with meat.

AGNES: I am getting the hooves.

We use these parts for mukluks.

CHIP: Mukluk is a general word for boot.

And it can be any kind of boot.

AGNES: They have the toughest skin. CHIP: The hair don't shed.

So, they make great boots

for walking through snow and ice with.

AGNES: It takes six caribou legs to make a pair of mukluks.

We take these front legs

and we put them on the front there

and then we try and sew them together.

When you're setting traps, it's best to have a pair of mukluks on your feet

so that the animals don't smell the exhaust from your snow machine

or the other things that go along with boots.

The mukluks let them think you are caribou. (CHUCKLES)

(DOGS BARKING)

ERIK: There are many different dangers

associated with living in a location like this.

If you're that worried about it all the time, you shouldn't live here.

So, I just go about my business

and try not to think about those kind of things too much.

Ever since I was a little kid,

I always was really into the outdoors

and really into hunting.

It's something that was just born into me.

My strategy to get through the winter

is just subsistence hunting, trapping,

and just kinda living off the land.

I brought my .22 here, so I keep a hot magazine

and an empty chamber.

So if we come across any ptarmigan,

that's the rifle I'll be shooting.

I'm also going to bring my AR-15 in which is a .223.

This is the rifle that I'll shoot

if I come across any fur bears at a distance.

There's a good chance I'm gonna see fox,

potential for lynx or wolves, even wolverine.

(ENGINE STARTING)

Give or take, in a year I harvest half a ton of meat.

Everything in Alaska is dictated by the weather

and when the conditions are right

and the season is open, I head out to get my meat.

Wild game meat has many advantages.

There's a lot of people that don't understand

how healthy the meat is, it's very lean.

I harvest these animals while they're alive.

I know the animals' health.

I kill the animal, I butcher the animal,

I package the animal and then I eat the animal.

You don't have that luxury or that peace of mind

with store-bought meat, or as I call it, government meat.

Fresh set of fox tracks headed into this willow bar.

I'm gonna grab the .223 here

and see if we can catch up with him.

I'm just gonna poke along real slow and quiet

and see if I can get up on him.

(WHISPERING) There's the fox right there.

(GUNSHOT)

Got him.

All right.

Good day out here in the Brooks Range.

Got a nice, healthy-looking prime fox.

Beautiful pelt here, nice animal. Good deal.

In the winter I trap for supplemental income.

Animals can be used to make mitts,

or parka roughs or hats,

and they can also be sold.

This fox here is worth $30 to $40 on the fur market,

and up to $100 for a tourist or collector.

Look, a fox right there!

This was a subsistence-shot animal.

I shot that animal for the meat.

I'll also utilise the hide.

Every part of that animal was used on myself.

Got two nice fox, happy about that.

Saw a lot of ptarmigan tracks

while I was in there getting those fox.

I'm going to leave the AR behind here

and head back in with the .22.

See if I can't pick up a ptarmigan or two for dinner.

ANDY: It's not ignorance that's death.

It's non-preparedness that's death up here.

You have to think ahead.

(HOWLING)

ANDY: You gonna be a lead dog? Huh?

I think you're gonna be a lead dog someday?

That would be nice.

That would be nice.

Is this for Prancer or is this for Jack?

KATE: That's for Jack.

ANDY: Hey, Jack, chow, chow, chow.

This is my family here. Kate and my dogs.

-(DOGS HOWLING) -ANDY: Who wants chow?

We have 24 dogs right now.

If you add on Jack, we have 25 right now.

Iceberg is one of my main lead dogs.

He's got a bit of a mind of his own.

But that's one of the things about all these sled dogs.

Each dog has his own personality.

They all have their strengths and they all have a weakness.

A lot of people have moved on to snow machines,

but I still prefer the Alaska bush way of doing things.

We spend a lot of time working with these dogs.

We spend a lot of time fishing and providing for these dogs

but they provide for us, too.

They provide all of our wood for heating,

they haul all of our water for drinking.

It's a real symbiotic relationship we have with them.

You need a little more? You're kind of skinny.

These dogs take about 2500 to 4000 calories a day just to maintain 'em.

And that's gonna cost me somewhere between $4,000 to $6,000 a year

in dry dog food.

What gasoline is to an engine,

salmon and dog food is to our dogs.

We're getting down on the dog food,

I miscalculated on my, uh...

How much dog food I needed to bring down here this year.

That's all I got left.

So, I got half a bucket of dog food.

This is my last feeding of dog food.

This year, the river jammed up really bad

and it created a major obstacle for me

to get around to my resupply point up in Eagle.

We're definitely not going out on the ice. It's just not safe.

(DOGS BARKING)

These dogs are everything to us in the winter.

So if I don't figure out something real quick,

it's going to be a big problem.

(DOGS BARKING)

KATE: You're all dressed?

-Yep. I gotta get going. -Where you going?

I just got off the horn with Jake

and he said that he would be able

to bring a plane in

to bring in a load of dog food today for us.

-Why do we need that? -We're out.

We got today's feeding and that's it.

-Jesus. -Yeah, I screwed up.

I just didn't bring enough down in the fall time

and I wasn't expecting this long protracted freeze-up.

-I can't go up the river right now. -I know.

The trail to Eagle is blocked off. So that's out.

So I'm gonna get smoking. I'm gonna hook up some dogs and go get that.

-This is gonna cost a friggin' pretty penny, isn't this? -I know.

I gotta take care of the dogs, man. The dogs are number one.

If we don't have them we don't have anything out here.

Well, I'm not gonna complain about spending money on the dogs, you know that.

(DOGS BARKING)

This year I bought a new type of dog food.

It's a much higher quality dog food.

I wasn't really sure how much to feed 'em.

I'm feeding more than I probably should have.

Getting this dog food in is going to cost us a bunch.

Most years I spend anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 on dog food.

This is going to add probably another quarter or third more cost to that,

but that's the way it goes out in the bush sometimes.

You can't plan for everything.

You do the best you can but sometimes you screw up.

The only place I can land a plane right now is on Ford Lake,

about a half mile away.

It's dangerous coming in and landing

in a remote spot like this.

Landing on a flat lake and flat light,

they don't have any depth perception where the lake begins.

And the worst thing for a bush pilot

is to come in for a landing and hit a hard drift.

They could flip the plane, you know, it could be disastrous.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Everybody stay.

Gee, gee!

Howdy, partner. How's it going, man?

Good, how are you?

-JAKE: Yeah? Got some hungry dogs? -Yeah.

ANDY: So, the plane landed safely,

brought eight bags of dog food.

So we're good for about another three weeks or so.

It was kind of a shock this morning for Kate

and she's a little bummed out about the extra costs.

But she understands and for both of us

our dogs are the primary concern.

Tighten up, team. Let's go, girl.

Attaboys.

We live on a limited budget out here

and we try and keep it as tight as we can,

and this was a big mistake.

But we'll get through it.

SUE: I live by my ears.

You listen for every sound that doesn't belong,

you listen for the footsteps.

Not everybody worries about bear attacks. But I do.

It's real obvious somebody came into my camp,

used the premises.

So, first thing I need to check

is how much fuel do I have.

I had a bunch delivered in barrels and put out,

and I may not have it, so I gotta go check.

The cover that's on it?

That protects the fuel from the weather

and it's being weighed down by the snow.

So I gotta dig the snow off

so I can peel it back and take a measurement.

I ordered in and had delivered a certain amount of fuel

based on how many days I needed till I can get more.

If they used it, there is no recourse.

Out of a 300-gallon tank, I got maybe 200.

So, 100 gallons missing.

If I can't get more fuel,

it's not just that I'm uncomfortable

or I gotta go to Aunt Betty's for a week.

It's that my life's on the line.

I got 20 other buildings that I might have problems with.

I haven't been to any of the other buildings yet.

This is something that never even crossed my mind, you know?

Animal problems, yeah, not human.

Yeah, that's fucked up.

Oh, my God.

I did not leave the fuel pump in and the hose unattached.

That's just not how you would do it, you know?

This tank, when it's full, holds 300 gallons,

and I left it right there, 300.

I left it full to the brim,

so we have it dry, dry, dry.

Dry, dry, dry.

Oh, my God. There's where our fuel is.

So, my fuel line is right there.

So, I'm gonna say I have maybe 80 gallons of fuel.

I brought in 600 gallons.

At least 100 is missing out of the front tank.

220 gallons is missing out of here.

I have 280 gallons left.

This is a 200-gallon tank.

(LAUGHING)

Not even worth gauging.

I have one inch of fuel.

Uh, yeah, so, there's 195, 190 gallons gone there.

(LAUGHS)

This is so fucked up.

I mean, whoever has stolen my fuel has stolen my lifeline out here.

They just don't fucking get it.

Without my fuel, I cannot survive.

I only have 10 more days of fuel.

After that, I'm struggling to survive.

It does hurt my feelings

that somebody was so thoughtless

for my welfare

and what somebody else owns.

That they took what, you know,

it takes me a whole year to save up the money

to get the fuel to make it through the winter.

Um, it hurts my feelings

that somebody abused the privilege

of what I have out here.

I absolutely think it's detestable

that somebody feels they have the right to come in

and change my world without asking.

Survival just got a little bit tougher.

You didn't make it impossible, motherfucker,

you just made it difficult.

And I like challenges. Booyah.

ERIK: Everything in life is give and take

but to me, the give is worth the take.

Got two nice fox, happy about that.

Saw a lot of ptarmigan tracks

while I was in there getting those fox.

I am going to leave the AR behind here

and head back in with the .22.

See if I can't pick up a ptarmigan or two for dinner.

(BIRD SQUAWKING)

(CLICK)

Got him.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

(CLICK)

There are a couple down over there.

A couple ptarmigan for supper.

Been walking all day, looking around for some ptarmigan.

Finally found a bunch, they've been pretty skittish.

Got a couple ptarmigan, and foxes like ptarmigan, too.

We came across two foxes today.

So we have a little bit of dinner

and a couple of fox hides.

So, all in all, it was a good day.

(ENGINE REVVING)

I have a lot of respect for all the animals that live here in the Brooks Range

and harvesting them is a part of my life.

They're very important to me.

I do eat these animals and I do use these animals' fur

and sell these animals' fur.

That's subsistence living.

CHIP: I think the mind is the most fragile thing out here for the human being.

I think people can convince themselves they're gonna lose or they're going to win.

And it's all in their mind.

While I'm stuck in around town

while it's freezing up

and the ice conditions are improving,

I'm trying to get a hold of foxes that they don't want here in town.

(ENGINE STARTING)

I think with the dump and with the high water that went on this last summer,

foxes have just generally prospered and there's a lot of them.

We've had a rabies outbreak before,

so, right now, the city is offering $40 a fox.

So for every skin I get, not only do I get to keep it and sew it up,

but I can take the carcass and get an extra 40 bucks.

The other day, Rodney mentioned there were a lot of foxes uptown.

Basically, he left me with an open invitation to come up here

and get the foxes from him.

Since freeze-up is taking longer than I can handle

I want to start trapping.

I'm gonna be trapping along here in town, that's kind of what my thought is.

Keep me busy until I can get down to camp.

Maybe a couple over here and a couple down below by the edge of the cliff.

Is that a good idea?

Yeah.

They run all over the place here.

-Yeah. -I have them come up to my door

-and look in my window once in a while. -(LAUGHS)

Besides, we can split the dough. (LAUGHS)

-Thank you, Rodney. -Yep.

Nice thing about setting iron traps

by a big chunk of iron,

then you can smell it.

Predators, they go to the high points,

and this is a trail up to the high points,

and they'll be able to look out over the river and do their hunting.

Hopefully, on their trail up here, they'll smell this

and they'll decide to have a look

at the little pieces and little bits of smell that they've got going on,

some of these little white fish eggs I've got just laying around.

And they'll come over to this, over here, to the bigger piece.

It should be just fine.

So, Mr Fox is pretty freakin' smart.

I'm gonna set a trap off to the side where the trap is.

At the same time, you can out-think them.

Put your time to it, your mind to it.

We're all just kind of stuck here on this little chunk of land right now.

And getting up a bunch of foxes to start off my year would be nice

but I just gotta keep being persistent.

ANDY: It's just like so many things out here.

You have to be thinking ahead of what potentially might happen.

If you just go blindly doing things, it'll bite you real quick.

This year I didn't get a moose or a caribou so we're running low on meat.

So, now that I've got the dogs all fed up,

it's time for me to head out and get some meat for Kate and I.

All right. Good boys.

So, we're out on 6-Mile Lake

and I found this beaver house here.

This is a new house.

It looks like it's gonna be a good one for harvesting some beavers.

Poor beavers, everybody likes to eat them.

Including me. This is a good discovery.

The beavers probably have a tunnel from either right here

or right here coming out.

A lot of times, if you know you're going to trap,

you want to do this in the fall time,

you'll be able to see where their tunnels are.

This is going to be kind of a blind luck.

(WHIRRING)

So, that's good, the ice isn't very thick.

That'll make it easier for me.

Let's see how deep it is.

Okay, I'm touching bottom right there.

I've got about 18 inches to two feet of water

and that's about perfect, because, that way,

the beavers don't have a lot of area to go around where I'm gonna make my set.

This is looking pretty good right now.

Beavers are good to eat.

The by-product is, I'm also gonna be able to have some good fur

to make some mittens or some mukluk liners or...

Beaver fur is really, really warm fur.

Other than otter fur, beaver fur is probably one of the warmest furs

you'll find out here, and it's fairly durable.

Beavers tend to really like cotton wood

so I'm gonna try and put a gourmet meal out for those beavers.

The idea is to get these set

so that they're hanging like this around the bait.

Beaver comes in, he swims around, and he's caught.

So, the trick now is just to put this in without disturbing my snares.

It's got to go in pretty slow, that water is already starting to freeze again.

I think I'm going to make it.

That looks pretty good, I don't see anything that's moved.

All right, we're in.

The trap is set and it's kind of a waiting game now.

Gee! Gee! Gee. Gee!

So, I'll come back tomorrow and see if I caught anything.

ERIK: Well, I got two ptarmigan and two fox today.

I'm gonna clean one up and eat him for supper.

First thing we're gonna do is expose the breast.

Keep a nice angle on the knife so you don't waste any.

Nice breast.

Now, when I kill these animals,

I like to utilise all parts, so...

It's not the law

but I always utilise

and salvage the thighs as well.

And not only are we gonna take all the edible meat from this ptarmigan,

but we're going to use the remaining carcass as trapping bait.

So, kind of coming full circle here.

I make just a little incision here.

We're going to tear up on the chest cavity,

exposing the innards.

Here is my personal favourite, the heart,

which is a really tender bite.

Then we're going to go in and grab the liver as well. Here's the liver.

Another essential part to ptarmigan hunting is the use of onions.

You know, a lot of people wonder out here in the bush,

"What do you do with all your trash? There's no garbage pickup."

So, anything like this, that's a composting item,

throw it right in my slop bucket,

anything that's biodegradable,

and I have a composting pile.

Anything I can burn goes in the wood stove

and then the very few number of items that accumulate,

like tin cans and things like that, I haul out.

Life is good.

Who wouldn't want to eat fresh ptarmigan with onion?

Just another wild Saturday night

here in the Brooks Range.

I'm not sure that

that's what the average 29-year-old guy is doing tonight,

but it's what I'm doing. (CHUCKLES)

This heart is the tastiest part of any animal you'll ever eat.

It was an efficient day. An efficient day is a good day.

The gas I burnt in my snow machine, I was able to get meat,

we got trap bait, and then we also got fur.

Ptarmigan thought they were getting ahead, getting rid of a few fox.

Fox sure like to eat ptarmigan,

but I took a couple ptarmigan home as well, so...

Maybe something will take me home tomorrow, I don't know.

CHIP: Everything I need to make a living is out there.

Out there, it's all hunting, fishing and gathering.

The town is in a predator-controlled kind of deal,

where they're trying to avoid rabies getting into the dogs

and dog teams in town,

so, they've been offering people $40 a piece for fox right now.

I just set a couple of traps yesterday and so I'm back to check them today.

Hopefully, we'll get a couple of foxes, which will get us some extra cash.

The bait wasn't touched at all.

Uh...

I haven't been able to trap anything.

There's food everywhere.

You can see up here a fox walked by

and went straight to the trash.

We're in town, food sources are everywhere,

so getting them to go to any one place is not easy.

I haven't done very well with the traps, but it'll work out when I get out there.

I just have to wait for the river to freeze up.

You never know what this winter is going to do.

It's been a pretty tough start off to winter so far.

It kind of makes me a little worried.

I don't really know what's coming next.

But, it's that time of year, it's gonna have to freeze up.

We just have to pass our time as wisely as possible.

ANDY: It's always kind of spooky walking around on this ice.

When you hear that ice cracking, it's kind of an eerie feeling.

Gee, gee.

Good, good boy!

All right, everybody stay. Good boys!

All right, so we're here at the beaver traps.

Uh, I want to check them and see what it's doing.

It's about 30 below out, so...

We'll see if they've been moving or not.

I don't think I'm going to see anything through here.

This is thick already.

I'm not seeing anything real obvious.

I think I'm going to end up having to open the hole up.

There, I thought I saw something floating around.

I'm not seeing anything in the snares.

I think I'm going to pull it out and see if anything was in there chewing on it.

Nope, nothing. (EXHALES) No beavers today.

One of them chewed on here, I'm going to have to reset it and try it again.

So, somebody came in and did a little bit of chewing here and here.

Got a free meal.

That's where I wanted them, right here.

I'm hoping they think there's another free meal here.

Minus 30.

I was unsuccessful trapping the beavers

and I expended a lot of energy.

So, a little bit of a deficit today.

Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate with you.

SUE: I just am who I am and I'm different than everybody else I've ever met.

But to be true to my nature, means that I might be gone at any minute.

Somebody has flown all the way out here to the middle of nowhere,

stuck their fuckin' hand in my pocket

while I was in rehab for ankle surgery,

and stolen $5,000, $6,000 worth of fuel.

My life's on the line here.

For me to order more,

I gotta pay $600, $700 an hour for a plane.

You know? It's a two-hour round trip.

So, every 100 gallons, I'm spending 1,400 bucks to get it.

I mean, we're supposed to get this big storm that obviously is starting to come in.

We got blowing snow.

You know? We had it crystal clear

and northern lights going all night last night.

Now we got wind, we got a ceiling of clouds.

So to me, it's the storm coming in, it's here. This is the leading edge.

I have to get in and call Bob, my bush pilot.

I gotta get him to make an emergency fuel run before this storm really hits.

-Hey, Bob, how's it going? -Adequate, how about you?

(CHUCKLES) Adequate.

So, I am down to 280 gallons total.

I have to count on you to help me out, buddy.

Okay, I'll try to get at least one load...

You got to get up right now and get out here. Right now.

The weather conditions are degrading and we're losing our window.

Even if he can get out here, doesn't mean he's going to be able to land.

We got fog coming here, wind picking up a little.

That may be a problem for him landing with the cross wind on my runway.

When a plane lands, you either have downwind,

when the wind is moving the same direction as your runway is.

A crosswind means just that, it's going across my runway.

Now, you have a plane with wings

and he's trying to land, 20-mile-an-hour may make him do this.

Bob, got a copy on me yet?

(BOB SPEAKING)

Well, the winds aloft are definitely pushing him this way,

but the winds down below are going here.

I mean, there's unbelievably strong crosswinds right now, and they're a little variable.

Makes it extremely dangerous,

and, I mean, it's just the way life is out here in Kavik.

It's just another way to die out here on the tundra if you're not careful.

He's gonna try it, he just has to be able to hang on to it.

And right now, it doesn't look like he can.

He's still coming in too fast.

You can see how he's being thrown around.

You be safe, buddy.

(BOB SPEAKING)

All right, buddy.

It's always, always, always safety first.

So, yeah, he's feeling the pressure,

I'm feeling the pressure, but sometimes, you know,

no matter what you want, Mother Nature has a whole different idea.

He's gonna... One more circle.

He's coming in for another approach.

Come on, come on, come on. Don't let it get you.

Be careful, Bob. Be careful, Bob.

Be careful, Bob.

Whoa, whoa... Oh, my God.

Awesome job, Bob.

All right, we'll be right there to unload.

Yay!

I appreciate it, buddy.

Two barrels, 10 days of fuel. It's a start.

It's gonna help me get there,

it's gonna get me a hell of a lot closer than I am right now.

Thank you, Bob.

CHIP: Folks around here treat me no different than they do a native.

They look at me for what I do. They always honour a provider.

The good thing about a traditional subsistence lifestyle

is that there is more than one way to make a living.

Then we have elders that we hunt for, like,

my wife's older brother

and other people that we'll give meat to.

My wife goes out and trades the things we have a lot of

for things that we need.

Trade and barter are a necessary part of making a living up here.

Today, I'm going to get an assortment of fish,

and I'm going to go trade for, um...

Some muktuk and some seal oil and blubber.

Muktuk is the skin and the first layer of blubber from the whale.

This is a real good trade because I need the oil,

because when we eat fish without the oil,

and the fish are frozen, then our bodies tend to get cold,

but when we have that oil and that muktuk and stuff,

it just gives us energy instead of let our bodies try to fight to be warm.

-Hi. -Hi, how are you doing today?

-All right, you? -Good.

I got some fish to see if you wanted to trade.

Yeah, yeah, I got muktuk right here,

I got some blubber...

AGNES: Right on.

Yes. Thank you.

-All right. -Thank you very much.

-Thank you. -Yeah.

-We're going to go make a good dinner. -Okay.

This here is muktuk, it's from the whale.

This is the skin here and this is the fat and the blubber.

CHIP: Rice, cranberry sauce, eggs, fish heads.

AGNES: Muktuk. CHIP: Muktuk.

CHIP: Apples, and some sort of vegetable.

So, what you end up doing is not having a whole lot of anything,

but a lot of different things.

If it tastes good, we eat it.

But it's a lot cheaper if we just go get it ourselves.

I think of the way that my kids would know

that they're tied to this food,

because they were all in on either catching it or trading for it,

or processing it in some way.

There are so many different things that people do

that are related to the food

without actually being the one to go out

and shoot the thing.

It's the only time of day that everybody shuts up

-because their mouth is full. -(CHUCKLING)