In First Nations and Inuit cultures, there is an emphasis on passing stories from generation to generation through oral storytelling, explains Inez Shiwak, co-producer of the film and Inuit community researcher from Rigolet, Nunavut. “In this way, we actually have something that’s on film and people are able to see and listen to what has happened and the story doesn’t change,” she says. Part of Shiwak’s role in the project was to help conduct interviews and ask community members questions. She explains that people have always talked about caribou and how the animal is missed, but HERD brings to light how people are feeling about the change and its effects. “Sharing is a big part of family time,” she says. “Being able to go out on the land with families is being able to hunt caribou. You can’t do that anymore.”

Working with Inuit communities, Inuit government and Inuit partners, film director David Borish says the idea of creating a documentary film was central to the project. Borish, who has a background in Indigenous-related social science research and film creation, was asked by the Inuit communities, government and people involved to work on the project and help to bring together a variety of disciplines. “[The film] was very much looking at this conservation crisis, or this ecological crisis, from a social, health, and well-being lens,” he says.

The goal, says Borish, was to co-create both storytelling and research material with communities, exemplified in the film and in an article published in Global Environmental Change. Figuring out how to do both at the same time, however, was a challenge. In the end, Borish believes the result was successful because of how the team has been able to publish research by analyzing video interviews as a form of data. Video interviews became core pieces of the documentary. “We developed a new process that engages community members while repurposing video editing software for actual qualitative analysis,” he says. 

“We’re losing language. We’re losing traditional ways. And the loss of a food, a cultural food, is just as high of an importance as language, as craft, and art, and all the rest of it,” says Judy Voisey, a community member from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., in an interview for the project. “I’m 48 years old, and my chances of ever eating caribou again, and I’m hoping I live a decently long life, is very, very slim, you know? And I’ll never have my marrow bone — the thing that I want more than anything on Earth, I will probably never, ever get never again. So, you can’t help but feel that sense of sadness and loss. It’s hard enough for someone to be sick, and for their life to end, and then to know that the final blow is that you’ll never get to have what you always had.”