JOËLLE ROBERT-LAMBLIN

a film by Joëlle Robert-Lamblin* and Magnus S.Magnusson**

* CNRS – UPR 2147- Dynamique de l'Evolution Humaine

** Human Behavior Laboratory - University of Iceland

The last nomads of Eastern Greenland - 1998 - duration: 23 minutes -

Summer 1994: at Ammassalik in Eastern Greenland, the "last nomads" return to the town of Tasiilaq laden with meat and skins after eleven months of total isolation while hunting marine mammals. They are among the few families that still accept to leave the small urban centres to follow the tradition of their ancestors.

Interviews with elders evoke the period of their youth and their recent past when they continually changed their winter habitats using traditional means of transportation. These testimonies illustrate a laboratory research project, which on the basis of data from Danish archives has allowed the analysis of the geographical mobility of the population and the visualization of the various moves of these nomads using computer animation.

Today many young people have chosen a more westernised life-style in urban agglomerations. But living in town is not all positive. With the help of contemporary images, old documents and computer representations, this film illustrates the considerable evolution of population in East-Greenland over a few decades and the transformation of these ancient nomads to a new sedentary life-style, except for a few "last nomads".