Hunting documentary reflects on respect for tradition and land

A silent documentary on moose hunting by a Moose Cree First Nation filmmaker recently concluded its screening as part of an exhibit at the Banff Centre in Alberta.
The 50-minute documentary, titled Modest Livelihood, follows Duane Linklater and his friend Brian Jungen, a DaneZaa from Doig River First Nation in northern British Columbia, as they hunt for moose on Jungen’s traditional territory.
The project came about after the two contemporary artists first met at the Banff Centre in 2009.
“We met and had coffee and discovered we both grew up in northern communities and hunting cultures,” Linklater said.
Linklater was working towards his Masters of Fine Arts degree at Bard College in upstate New York with a focus on video and film and decided to produce a project on hunting. In October 2010, Linklater and Jungen went moose hunting north of Cochrane, Ont., for five days. They documented the hunt digitally on a Canon DSLR camera.
“To move forward, we used the initial video as sort of a sketch,” Linklater said.
In October and December 2011, the filmmakers hired a camera operator to follow them as they hunted moose near Fort St. John, B.C. In a time where an industry is moving towards shooting digitally, they decided to shoot on actual Super 16mm film.
In the first hunt, Jungen’s uncle, Elder Jack Askoty, shares with Linklater and Jungen his intimate knowledge and a local history of the land. He leads the hunt while Linklater and Jungen follow.
“The dynamic of the camera person, or the view, following me, following (Jungen), following Jack, is sort of a metaphor,” Linklater said, referring to following the teachings of the Elder. “There’s an idea of waiting, looking, being patient, and following signs and tracks.”
In the second trip, the filmmakers hunted on their own, without Jack.
Following the shoot, the filmmakers ended up with nine hours of footage.
Upon reviewing the raw footage, Linklater and Jungen independently decided that it should be completely silent. Modest Livelihood has no soundtrack, sound effects or ambient sounds of the bush.
“It’s giving the viewer an opportunity to give a focus on visual material that’s presented to them,” Linklater said.
Linklater added that historically, in films, silence was imposed on Aboriginal people, often portraying them as silent stoic characters.
“It’s a construct and artifice by white people to show this is how Native people are,” Linklater said. “There was no choice. So I think to actually choose silence was important. It’s also a form of protection.”
In titling the documentary, Linklater referred to a 1999 court case in Nova Scotia against a Mi’kmaq fisherman who sold his fish commercially so he could support his family.
The court said he could do this under the treaty rights, but only up to a “moderate livelihood.”
“Why is this limitation placed only on Native people?” Linklater asks. “It’s not placed on corporations, who can accumulate wealth indefinitely.”
“So we thought this coupling of two words is interesting, and we wanted that wording to more reflect the value system we believe in, and that the idea of modesty, or respect, cannot only be placed in the people to the film, but also what we’re looking for, including the moose.”
Modest Livelihood premiered at the Banff Centre on Aug. 2 and was screened as part of an exhibit from Aug. 3 to Nov. 18.
Unused footage from the project was edited together to produce a new film that will be screened in Chicago at the UChicago Arts from Dec. 11 to Feb. 3, 2013.
Linklater has since completed his Masters of Fine Arts and said he will look into bringing Modest Livelihood to northern Ontario in the upcoming year.