Tour touting Hudson Bay 'Stonehenge' site disregards cultural, ecological importance, critics say
Churchill-based Lazy Bear Expeditions says its walking tours ‘highlight nature and culture'
A northern Manitoba tour advertising a trip to an ancient Inuit hunting camp is raising concerns that tourists' presence there could damage an "irreplaceable" cultural and historical site, and the critical animal habitats around it.
The company behind the tour describes it as a "life-changing" adventure with access to Arctic animals in an "awe-inspiring northern wilderness largely untouched by human existence" and visits to what it calls "the Hudson Bay version of Stonehenge — ancient Inuit building remains and hunting grounds thousands of years old."
Lazy Bear Expeditions in Churchill, Man., promotes its Hudson Bay Wilderness Outpost Adventure as "five days based in a remote, sub-Arctic outpost" searching for polar bears and other wildlife, along with visiting nearby coves, estuaries and other coastal points of interest by boat.
However, the trip — advertised on Lazy Bear's website at $16,800 per person — has caught the attention of more than just tourists, prompting conservation and hunting groups to voice concerns to the province about the overnight visits' potential to disrupt the areas included.
"You wouldn't just build, you know, a hotel right on the Grand Canyon," said Christopher Debicki, vice-president of policy development for the conservation group Oceans North, which was among the groups that recently wrote to provincial Natural Resources Minister Jamie Moses about the tours.
"You wouldn't build a hotel accommodation at the petroforms in Whiteshell Provincial Park. You wouldn't build a residential accommodation in a gravesite — right?"
Debicki said the tour appears to offer to bring people to stay in a houseboat-like vessel or "outpost," which Lazy Bear's website says is moored at Hubbart Point. That site is home to artifacts including meat caches, tent rings and graves, he said.
Carbon dating has determined the camp (also known as Qikiqtaarjuit and Hubbard Point) has been in use going back at least 1,000 years, Debicki said, making it an "astonishing" site of extreme historical and cultural significance that should be treated with respect.
He said he's also concerned about the potential for tourists staying in the area to disrupt the nearby Seal River estuary — a site within the Seal River watershed, a pristine area being considered as a possible Indigenous protected and conserved area and national park reserve.
Natural Resources Minister Moses said the province is now investigating "resource tourism activities potentially occurring in non-permitted areas" in the region north of Churchill — an investigation he said would include working with the federal government regarding any off-shore activities involved.
"We are taking due diligence to ensure historical, cultural, and ecological importance of natural resources in Manitoba," Moses said in an emailed statement.
Lazy Bear Expeditions owner Wally Daudrich said the company has been doing "naturalist boat tours of the Hudson Bay coast for 30 years" and in that time has been "one of the largest employers in Churchill employing a significant local Indigenous workforce."
"We would like to thank the Gary Doer government as well as then-Minister Eric Robinson (also our MLA for Rupertsland) and his personal advocacy for the ecotourism permits related to the Manitoba coastline that were granted over 20 years ago allowing us access to the public land we tour," Daudrich said in an emailed statement.
Doer was Manitoba's premier from 1999 to 2009. Robinson was the member of the legislative assembly for the northern Manitoba provincial riding of Rupertsland, later renamed Keewatinook, from 1993 until 2016.
The statement said the company provides walking tours of the area that "highlight nature and culture."
'It's so sacred to us'
Concerns have also been raised about the tour by Inuit in the area — including the Nunavut-based Arviat Hunters & Trappers Organization, which said in a recent letter to Minister Moses it found the visits being offered at Hubbart Point "highly concerning."
The group said that site in recent years "has been untouched and unused by Inuit due to its cultural significance" and because it's an important habitat for many species Inuit rely on to hunt or trap.
"Tourism in this area can lead to disruption and potentially damage these irreplaceable sites," the hunting organization's letter says, adding it worries more tourists along the western coast of Hudson Bay "may further habituate" polar bears and put Inuit lives at risk in Arviat, roughly 200 kilometres north of Hubbart Point.
Johnny Mamgark, an Inuk originally from Arviat who has previously worked with Oceans North in the area, echoed those concerns.
He said he was angry when he heard about the tours and as far as he knows, Lazy Bear has not consulted with Inuit in the area about the tours to the site.
"We respect it so much — it's so sacred to us."
Both groups that wrote to the province also said Hubbart Point is part of a region that's been identified as an area of interest in ongoing Inuit land claim discussions, and that tourism shouldn't be allowed in those areas until those negotiations are finished.
A spokesperson for the federal Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs ministry said Canada is in negotiations to amend the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement — the 1993 agreement that led to the creation of Nunavut — "to fulfil obligations to address Inuit rights in northern Manitoba."
However, those discussions are confidential, and the spokesperson said they could not "comment further or provide further details" about whether Hubbart Point is part of those conversations.
Oceans North's letter to the province says based on years of research at Hubbart Point and the Seal River estuary, it believes neither site is appropriate for the kind of tourist activity being advertised — and that such "unregulated and potentially damaging" activities are "evidence of a disregard" for the sites' ecological and cultural integrity.
The conservation group recommends the province take "necessary action" to protect Hubbart Point from tourism until "governance measures are established in consultation with rights holders."
It also wants the province to work to speed up the process of introducing conservation measures in the area and work with the federal government to prohibit overnight visits by commercial operators in advance of any future conservation efforts.
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