Nuisance Bear is a vital documentary that drives home the looming dangers of climate change for wildlife and people.
Nuisance Bear, playing at Sundance Film Festival, documents the challenges as the gap between wildlife and the human population shrinks, endangering both. The focus is on the polar bear’s experience in Manitoba. But it connects the environmental upheaval with the Inuit experiences. The name for a nuisance bear in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut is Avinnaarjuk. It’s a bear that loses its mom too early and, over time, as it roams around towns and people, loses its fear of them. Narrated by Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, the journey and story of the polar bear is one tied to Indigenous people there, colonization, and the continued difference in perception of the problem.
Directed by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, the movie follows a polar bear as it roams around a rapidly changing landscape in Canada. Because of their changing environment it brings them in closer proximity to people. With that comes an exploration of the differences between people. Indigenous people prefer to let the polar bears be, except when they must hunt. Meanwhile, white people who come in droves photograph and video the polar bears. They see them as something to study.
Therein lies another parallel with Indigineous people. It raises questions about who the land belongs to and who decides what’s done with inconveniences. It opens with the most adorable image of a polar bear mom with her cubs, but it shows the encroaching human element, photographing and disturbing them. These are the two conflicting existences.
Nuisance Bear Shows Conflicting Ideas
Mike’s assertion that the bear is “a visitor from the past navigating a maze of the present” encapsulates the essence of the issue. While people can usually adapt to changes in the environment, the polar bear is at a standstill. They traipse through the same parts of their habitat. But where ice once was, water remains thanks to climate change. As this happens, they must spend more time on land in search of food, which brings them to towns. The polar bear the film focuses on goes through a lot in an effort to survive in a world that’s unrecognizable to them. He’s scared away, drugged, transported, tagged, marked, and almost killed in a hunt.
The Inuit community and white people view solutions in a different manner. First, the Inuit people believe that how the officers handle the bears is part of what brings them closer. Because the officers use loud noises and fireworks to scare the bear away. So, the polar bear, over time, becomes desensitized to the noises. On top of that, polar bears have increased sensitivity to sounds generated from human activity. As such, they can lose their hearing altogether. So, soon, what’s meant to discourage them will be ineffective.
A Beautiful Documentary About Our Part
Nuisance Bear is a vital documentary that drives home the looming dangers of climate change for wildlife and people. As their natural world becomes unnatural, they move closer to people. It increases the danger for people and, in particular, animals. After all, it is not their actions that created the current problems.
But the movie also draws parallels between the Inuit’s experience with colonialism and the toll on wildlife as their need to gawk and control remains paramount. It’s difficult to watch and not fret over the future state of polar bears or other animals. Nuisance Bear creates a spiritual and moving documentary that hopefully motivates people to do their part to combat climate change.
