Alethea: "
Some of my earliest memories are of seal hunting as a family.

I wanted to make this film because it bothered me when I saw animal welfare groups portray seal hunting as an evil and greedy thing.

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I've seen many campaigns argue that sealing should end because it's not moral to kill a seal just for the fur. They say fur is shame and a frivolous luxury. But Inuit defy that argument because we eat the meat. And for us a warm coat is not a luxury; it's necessary for day-to-day survival.

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How could these groups work for so many decades to crush our industry without ever having seen it with their own eyes?

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in 1983, the European Union banned products made from white coat harp seal pups. Even though the legislation only targeted one type of sealskin that we don't even sell, the campaigns ruined the reputation for all types of sealskin. And the whole market crashed immediately. It was our Great Depression.

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Suicide was once a rare thing in our communities. But as a result of the trauma from residential school abuse, forestry locations and other destructive government policies, Inuit began taking their own lives at alarming rates in the 1970s.

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When the ban hit in 83, it was yet another layer of stress on our communities, causing widespread hunger and hardship. Within a year, our suicide rate spiked even higher and have been among the worst in the world ever since.

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The EU parliamentarians seem to be having a really hard time understanding that we're part of the commercial market. They're still picturing little Eskimos in igloos with no need for money.

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It's been illegal to hunt white coats in Canada for 30 years now. But they keep using images of them, deliberately misleading the public.

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These are huge organizations with so much money to spread misinformation. And here we are, with no resources to fight it.

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I feel for Joshua. As the leader of his hunters association, it's plain to see he feels the weight of responsibility.

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They could have chosen a certification programme based on Animal Welfare standards. They could have regulated things such as killing methods or quotas, boat size or daily catch limits. But instead, they chose the harshest option, designed to crush the entire market.

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Now we have no choice but to try to overturn the ban.

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Aaju has convinced a collective of Inuit organizations to launch two lawsuits to try to overturn the ban through EU courts.

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Before the ban, Inuit were selling around 60,000 skins a year. Now we're selling less than half of that number and the prices for each skin fell from around a 100$ down to about 10$.

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I also cringe when I think of how much less meat people are bringing home to their families.

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We're already the most food insecure indigenous people in any developed country,

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with 7 in 10 Inuit children going to school hungry.

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In all of North America, our region has the highest poverty and unemployment rates and the highest cost of living.

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When I tell southerners that we're sometimes paying 28$ for a cabbage, 82$ for 12 cans of ginger ale, and 18$ for a jar of Cheez Whiz, they're stunned.

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With 50 dollars in hand, an Inuit hunter could choose to buy a tiny amount of junk food or he could buy fuel to go hunting, bringing enough seal meat to feed his entire extended family. Fresh local wild organic seal meat. That's more nutritious and healthy than any meat you can buy at the store. That's why the sealskin market is so important. It's not just about tradition for us. Hunting is still the best way to feed Inuit.

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And the cash from sealskins keeps that cycle going. When that cycle is interrupted, the pressure to look at other economic options increases. And we have very few options. For example, the Canadian government is proposing underwater seismic testing around Baffin Island - my home, to explore offshore oil and gas reserves, putting extreme stress on several of our communities. We're not talking about a tiny island here.

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Baffin Island is about twice the size of the UK. Seismic testing involves underwater explosions at decibel levels that studies have shown to cause damage to the hearing of marine mammals. These explosions happen every 10 seconds for hundreds of kilometres Niore Iqalukjuak is from Clyde River, one of the biggest sealing communities that was hardest hit by the seal product bans. He is speaking out about seismic testing because his community has seen it before. "

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Even in the face of poverty, Niore's community has been fighting for forty-five years to protect one of the most delicate eco-systems on the planet from one of the most destructive industries. All this time, instead of getting help from animal and environment groups, his community's main sustainable economy has been under attack.

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Ironically, by fighting to save the seals, all these groups have inadvertently put all the Arctic animals, not to mention us humans, at higher risk.

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On Humane Society - " They've got over 200 million dollars in assets now. They're definitely one of the bigger animal groups."

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We want to get the word out that, you know, we exist in this world and they're trying to take away all our rights."

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At the bare minimum, we ask that you educate your people and on how the propaganda that the animal rights groups are spreading and really, all we really ask is economic equality."

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And to achieve that, we have to stop the cultural prejudice that is imposed on us by not being allowed to benefit from our natural surroundings without having to drill into the ground and that's really all we want as a people."

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They're kind of like busting our whole economy, where we'll be forced into mining our minerals"

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there's been so much opposition from the Inuit side, and they know that they need our vote to be able to go up there."

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if we don't have any sort of economy to support ourselves we'll have to go and do that."

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Help our economy grow!"

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So we're here to defend our right to hunt seals, but we also want to have a better relationship with environmental groups and animal rights groups because, believe it or not, we're on the same side."

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Before this, I thought maybe the animal groups weren't getting my interview requests. But I traveled over 2000 kilometres to see them. And they didn't even show up to their own event, once they heard we were coming. Clearly, they're deliberately avoiding us."

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the EU courts announced their decision on the Inuit lawsuits against the seal ban and it didn't go our way. They couldn't defend their decision based on animal welfare or conservation standards, so they say they based it on "moral grounds" because, apparently, sealing offends Europeans. Aaju is in Ottawa to meet with lawyers about the results. Just because a million or a billion people do something and pass a legislation against 32,000 Inuit for instance, even if it's a majority, it's still wrong."

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How does a tiny remote population change the minds of a billion people?"

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How do we do it with no money, when animal groups are spending millions a year working against us?"