Canada's Reindeer
1981 · 24m · Canada
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative
Thousands of reindeer trekked from Alaska are herded north of the Arctic Circle to create Inuit jobs and income.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1981 NFB doc about an earnest colonial scheme to industrialize Inuit subsistence — it's *trying* to be progressive, which is exactly what makes it fascinating as a historical artifact of well-meaning Western paternalism. Most scouts pass on this; I'd rather watch someone interrogate it.
Situated squarely in the NFB's mid-century documentary tradition, this film demonstrates the formal rigor of institutional nonfiction while capturing a pivotal moment in Arctic labor history — the restraint of its contemplative tone suggests a filmmaker aware of the ethical weight embedded in her subject.
The singular choice here is committing to an observational pace that lets the vastness of the landscape and the scale of the herd do the argument; a lesser doc would overcomplicate this with narration, but the decision to let silence and space carry the weight makes the economic and cultural stakes feel genuinely present.