DER Documentary
Fishing at the Stone Weir
From the Netsilik Eskimo series
Directed by Quentin Brown
Fishing at the Stone Weir Part 2
Pricing information and conditions
About Fishing at the Stone Weir
Part 1, color, 30 minutes - watch a preview
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, color, 27 minutes
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.
About the Netsilik Eskimo series
These films reveal the live reality of traditional Eskimo life before
the European acculturation. The Netsilik Eskimos 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.
other films in the Netsilik Eskimo series:
At the Caribou Crossing Place
At the Autumn River Camp
At the Winter Sea Ice Camp
Jigging for Lake Trout
At the Spring Sea Ice Camp
Group Hunting on the Spring Ice
Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice
Building a Kayak
Related Films:
Alaskan Eskimo series
Through These Eyes
