Your editorial on the U.S. decision to list the polar bear as threatened (Burying Our Heads In The Snow - May 15) insults the significant knowledge Inuit have about the species. Your characterization of Inuit traditional knowledge is condescending, and trivializes a central part of an indigenous culture that is thousands of years old, and that the Supreme Court of Canada has understood by virtue of the Delgamukw case.
Inuit believe the U.S. decision was heavily influenced by environmental lobby groups using the bears as a pawn in climate-change politics. This decision is being used to set U.S. climate-change policy to appease the U.S. environmental lobby, while trying to protect U.S. energy interests.
We know hunting is not the threat to polar bears, yet, it has become the expendable element in this decision and Canadian Inuit will be hit the hardest in the most immediate way.