Discovery Channel's "Human Planet" series showed an incredible act preformed by Canada's Inuit people in an episode titled "Arctic". The people of Kangiqsujuaq, near the Hudson Strait, go to incredible lengths to add variety to their diet of seal meat, seal meat and more seal meat. This group of people are able to collect mussels from under the sea ice during extreme low tides which happen only twice a year, during the Spring and Fall equinox. During this time, the sea ice drops by 40 feet which opens fissures in the ice and exposes the seabed. Then, with nothing more than a bucket and a lantern, a group crawls down below the ice and collects as many mussels as they possibly can before the escape hole closes and the sea returns. "We all know stories of mussel hunters who didn't make it out in time. If you can't get out, you die," Mary Qumaaluk told the Human Planet team.
This tradition goes back generations, but the Kangiqujuaq people say it is getting harder and harder to find places safe enough to go beneath the ice, which freezes later and melts earlier than it did even a few decades ago.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Sky Burials
The Discovery Channel created a beautiful six part series named "Human Planet". The series follows people from all over the world in extremely diverse environments. One episode titled "Mountains" follows a group of Tibetans who have just lost their father and shows what happens when there is no firewood for cremations.
A majority of Tibetans are Buddhist. This religion teaches rebirth and there is no need to preserve the body. Buddhist in lower elevations often burn the bodies of the dead, but since there is no firewood high up in the Tibetan mountains, these people practice something known as sky burials to dispose of the dead. In the episode I watched, the body of the dead man was wrapped up in a colorful cloth. His body was carried up the mountain and his family was allowed time to say their goodbyes then leaves. The man who preforms the sky burial is not a Buddhist and mentions before he does the "burial" that he has done many in his life but he still needs some whiskey to preform it. The sky burial begins by unwrapping the body. Then the man proceeds to cut the body into many parts. The remains are left on the mountaintop and left to the elements. In the episode, vultures are on the scene immediately and eat the remains of the man. Seeing this was slightly horrifying, but this funerary practices makes sense for these people. It allows them to get rid of the body so that it does not spread disease. And following Buddhist tradition, the body is an empty vessel after death, and this practice allows the remains to be given back to nature.
A majority of Tibetans are Buddhist. This religion teaches rebirth and there is no need to preserve the body. Buddhist in lower elevations often burn the bodies of the dead, but since there is no firewood high up in the Tibetan mountains, these people practice something known as sky burials to dispose of the dead. In the episode I watched, the body of the dead man was wrapped up in a colorful cloth. His body was carried up the mountain and his family was allowed time to say their goodbyes then leaves. The man who preforms the sky burial is not a Buddhist and mentions before he does the "burial" that he has done many in his life but he still needs some whiskey to preform it. The sky burial begins by unwrapping the body. Then the man proceeds to cut the body into many parts. The remains are left on the mountaintop and left to the elements. In the episode, vultures are on the scene immediately and eat the remains of the man. Seeing this was slightly horrifying, but this funerary practices makes sense for these people. It allows them to get rid of the body so that it does not spread disease. And following Buddhist tradition, the body is an empty vessel after death, and this practice allows the remains to be given back to nature.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)