- Hi, I'm Les Stroud, host and creator of the series "Beyond Survival".

Within the scope of filming this series, I had the good fortune to be able to travel the globe and connect with cultures that still live a very close to the earth lifestyle or engage in practices meant to keep their connection to the Earth strong.

I actually circled the globe eight times in 10 months, so I was never not jet lagged, but it was worth it.

To be able to bring you these experiences caught on film in many cases for the very first time ever.

My series "Survivorman" may have taught me how to survive physically in many ecosystems around the world.

But through this series, I was able to get beyond the physical survival and deal with the survival of the heart, mind, and soul through connecting to nature itself.

In nearly every situation, I needed to meet the Elders first, often bringing a gift and always bringing my humility, before I could be accepted to live among them, to hunt with them, fish with them, sleep in their huts and get to know them on the physical realm.

In many cases, you're about to see footage that has never been captured before this, and may never be captured again.

For in far too many examples, I've heard of places where I went, where the people are no longer in the jungle, in the desert, out in the wilderness.

They are now in homes, towns, and existing within the modern world, assimilated into it all, often against their will.

There was not a moment through the filming of the series "Beyond Survival" that was not profound for me, and I'm hopeful that in witnessing these cultures firsthand as I did within the scope of this series, you too will feel the profound nature of what it means to connect to the Earth.

This is "Beyond Survival".

A thing that makes life so harsh up here, that's no surprise, it's the cold.

When they need food for the communities here, they go out to the land and that's how the culture stays alive.

That's how it keeps from vanishing, surviving and existing on the land.

It's still a very big part of their culture.

Look at this, look at this, this is just unbelievable.

I'm Les Stroud.

I'm in the Arctic on a mission to seek out the true masters of survival, with some of the last indigenous people from around the world.

Before they're gone, before the past is lost, before their world vanishes, I can learn their ways.

(epic rock theme music) Located at the top of Baffin island, in Canada's high Arctic, is a small Inuit community called Pond Inlet.

The tenacity and resilience of the Inuit culture is shaped by the unforgiving Arctic landscape.

That may sound like a cliche, but to the people here, there's nothing cliche about it.

Barren, cold, and isolated.

Each year, Pond Inlet plunges into near total darkness for months, before slowly emerging into the blinding light of early spring.

Can the Inuit culture survive, and will assimilation into the new world wipe out the skills of the past that are still needed to sustain life in this majestic, beautiful, but foreboding landscape.

(Inuit drumming) Survival here requires a deep knowledge of the land.

The ability to read the snow for signs of life and the skies for approaching storms.

I'm here to test my skills on the land.

So before there's time to reconsider, I'll leave the tiny village of Pond Inlet and head out to the vast and powerful environment known simply as the Arctic.

Hours into the evening, hole after hole is chopped, trying to strike the spot where the original hole is.

If we miss and keep digging, we'd have to chop through six feet of solid ice to hit the water beneath.

Whereas the old hole itself should have only two feet of ice.

Whoa!

(laughs) All right.

- Happy New Year!

(laughing) - White needle in a white haystack.

Gonna walk along the ice, and the bottom side of this, it's just gonna like walk, walk.

Walk, walk, all the way.

- You pull it, let go..

Pull it, let go, pull it, let go.

all the way over the hole.

- Piece of wood with the lever action, it's gotta walk its way across to the other hole.

So it's gotta be pointed perfectly, lined up, and it, it grips the ice from underneath and sort of walks.

It's like walk, walk, walk, walk, until it comes up on the other hole there.

What happens if we miss?

- Try it again.

(speaking in Inuktitut) - Brian's actually bending over and listening on the ice as it goes, it hits the bottom of the ice, and you can tell where it's going.

This first try, I think we might have, might have gone too far to the right.

(speaking in Inuktitut) - That's pretty wild.

You can actually hear it walking along the bottom side of the ice.

That kinda sounds kinda spooky.

It's pretty funny.

You can see, there's the moon in the sky.

It's getting cold and getting late.

Anyway, a couple of trials.

We're gonna try it again, see if we can get this four foot board to walk across underneath the ice, and land right on the spot of this one little hole.

And if he can do that, I'll be impressed.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look at that!

Right on the center.

Seven attempts at it, right on the money.

Right in the center of the hole.

That is something to see, holy mackerel.

Okay, we put some rocks on the net, weigh it down.

It's gonna come the other end here, and pull the net through, under the ice.

(Inuit guide) will guide it through from the other end and I'll pull.

What do you think?

Good?

- [Inuit Guide] Good.

- Many fish?

- I don't know.

Last week, not too many, this is it.

- Yeah but I have good luck here.

So we'll catch Arctic char.

We'll be lucky.

That's finally in there and it's late.

We could check in an hour but we're gonna leave it, sleep through the night, check in the morning, and hopefully have sushi for breakfast.

Arctic char sushi.

Arctic char sashimi, 'cause we don't have any rice.

We go to bed?

- Yeah.

Yes, yes.

- (laughs) Let's go to bed.

The beauty of fishing with a net is that it works while you rest.

In years past, an entire family would've been hoping for a good catch, just to be able to eat.

Let's see about this fish net, see if we've got any Arctic char.

Interesting thing about the culture of the Inuit, it really is a culture that subsists or at least traditionally subsisted almost entirely on meat.

Maybe some berries and roots in the summertime, but otherwise it's all meat.

And that part of their tradition, that part of their culture hasn't vanished at all.

We've got some modern equipment to use, but in the end, still going after the meat that the area provides.

Ropes undone, now we find out if we got any fish.

Hey!

There's one.

Oh, he's alive still.

Two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, ten.

That is sweet.

That's amazing.

We did really well.

Got 11 Arctic char, just overnight in the net.

So for all the effort that was put into it, chipping through the holes, trying to get that thing to line up underneath the ice.

Nice.

That's a sweet catch.

That's good, hey, we eat well, We eat well today.

Take caribou and lots of char, we're not gonna starve.

Don't get sushi fresher than that.

Mmm.

That's good.

Ironically, in a land that seems like it couldn't be any harsher than it is, our bounty for survival has been good.

Three caribou, and 11 Arctic char but it doesn't stop there for the Inuit.

Seal meat is still a mainstay in their diet and most of the hunters will take nearly 100 or more seals every year for both themselves and their dogs.

This time, they want me to make the kill.

(rifle fires) Well, I missed the seal, but I hit myself.

- You you, you're not touching there.

- No, I was too close to it.

Yeah, just when I went to shoot, I leaned in just a bit and then I hit myself with it.

It's okay, I'm fine.

- Must have hurt?

- Yeah, that hurt, though, it hurt.

I'm fine, but it hurt, yeah.

And with that I've given myself a classic case of scope eye.

A goof up that every hunter does at least once in his lifetime, I figured I'd escaped that fate until today.

Let's see if we can get this seal.

And that's the way it normally happens.

Down goes the seal.

You gotta be so full of stealth to get out to these things.

Very skittish.

Come back here in about six weeks and the seal are out like pepper sprinkled all around the ice.

Right now, they're a bit spread out, but we'll get one.

My Inuit guides figure we can have more luck at the flow edge where the frozen ice meets the liquid ocean.

It's a fertile area for hunting.

That means the competition will be there.

Competition in the form of a 1500 pound polar bear.

Okay.

Check this out.

We were just scooting along by this iceberg and came upon some incredible polar bear tracks.

These are super fresh.

How fresh?

Well, we probably scared the polar bear.

That's about how fresh they are.

We likely came around, and our sound probably sent 'em running.

It's actually, they look huge.

And I'll give you a comparison with my hand here, but they're actually not even that big for a polar bear.

They're massive, but they're not as big as they can be.

See if I do that, you can see if I put my hand, just, right in there.

So this is actually, I consider this a fairly small bear even though the width of the track is probably eight inches across.

The reality is, there are a lot of polar bears here.

Every hunter, everyone who comes out fishing has gotta keep their eyes open for polar bears.

The polar bears can be very predatory, very very dangerous animal.

Even with us, even with our numbers, well, put it this way, when we go to bed at night every single place where someone is sleeping there's gotta be a rifle there beside them for the night.

So that's how dangerous it is here.

Beautiful animal, but a powerful one.

Think the Inuit have it tough, this is all the caribou have to eat in a land like this.

Scrubby moss and grass, whatever they can nibble away on.

That's a harsh, harsh, tough life for these animals.

You know, every time you hear people talking about cultures that are vanishing, worlds that are disappearing, you hear about the language being lost, and so on.

A lot of times it's true, but here with the Inuit, it actually seems fairly strong.

Young kids in the town, they speak Inuktitut, their native language, very well, no issues at all.

They haven't lost the language and they can speak English too.

We come out on the land.

The expertise is still here.

To come this far and to be able to pick out two or three caribou in a place like this, bring 'em home, feed your family.

That's not a vanished skill.

That's a skill that's still thriving, still alive and well.

It's good to see.

It's cold out here.

One thing that they do have to worry about here, a lot of polar bear, they can come in, real thick at times.

They're after the same prey, they're after the seals, and can do an awful lot of damage.

And unlike grizzly bears and black bears which I think I would call them accidental predators, meaning when they take a human life, that's it's not really what they're after.

Polar bears are different.

They've got no problem at all hunting you down and considering you as prey.

So polar bears here are extremely dangerous.

Even sitting here, right by the side of this, this ice flow edge.

I'm laying here with the rifle waiting for the seal to pop up.

It'll be nothing for a polar bear to see me from way over there, to swim all the way underneath under the water and to come right up, out onto the land and grab me right from the edge of the ice, like this.

It's a very dangerous situation to be laying here like this, and you really gotta keep your eyes out, at all times.

Polar bears themselves will lay at a seal hole, waiting, waiting, waiting for the seals to pop up, to grab and actually cover the little tiny black on their nose with their paws, which makes you wonder who told 'em their noses were black anyway.

So you really gotta keep a watch out.

And there's a lot of white out here.

They're hard to spot.

The Inuit don't head out and hunt seal because it's some kind of sport activity.

It's not for game.

It's not for fun.

It's how they've always existed.

It's how they continue to exist.

They come out to the land, they get the food they need, they take it back home.

Before the seals were fully exposed outside their small ice holes, here, it's only their heads that remain a target to a hunter.

And yet in the past, (rifle fires) this had to be done in a kayak with a harpoon.

This is a lot tougher than it looks, trying to pick off little tiny black head in the distance.

It's a lot different from trying to hit the side of a large ungulate like a deer or a moose.

The seals come in outta curiosity, just to see what I'm up to, what I'm doing.

Even when you hit the water beside them, it doesn't seem to deter them.

They'll still come back in, outta curiosity, to check you out.

There he is.

It's really moving, this one.

(rifle fires) Had to have got him that time.

But light, wind, and water reflection, all play a part in making a shot like this difficult.

Add to that a gun sight, slightly offset from the rough travel, and the result for me is another miss.

We've been successful at getting caribou, and Arctic char, but seal is vital to their culture and to keeping healthy meat on the table without buying imported cow or pig at the village grocery store.

For (Inuit guide), my success is important.

(rifle fires) Got him.

It was a perfect shot, a clean and quick kill.

Alright, the boat's too small.

and the seal's probably too big for both of us to get in the boat and go out and get him.

So (Inuit guide)'s gonna head out there to pick the seal up, This is a week's groceries for (Inuit guide) and his family.

Like always, preparing the game takes place immediately.

The Inuit culture and the seal are intertwined and always have been, and hopefully always will be.

Wow.

Well, it's not like I haven't done this before but before I do, pass me a piece of liver?

A warm seal liver, it's actually, it's fantastic.

That's good, eh?

(Guide speaking Inuktitut) (Les speaking Inuktitut) - Yeah.

- The eyeball.

The eyeball's usually saved for the children, eh, often times?

Yeah, the children like the eyeballs.

I can't hold it.

It's too slimy.

It's basically just full of a really nutritious, really tasty gelatin.

And I know it seems really kind of gory and gross but up here it's a treat.

- Mmm.

Well, that's good.

- Mm.

- The skin of the seal itself becomes the, essentially the meat sack, all the, all the meat will be put inside this, sort of tied up and taken back to the village, taken back for (Inuit guide) and his family.

Gonna keep this for your family or you have friends?

- Family.

- Family.

This seal lasts his family about two, maybe three days and carry on from there and come back out and do it all over again, in a short while.

Living in igloos has long since vanished for the Inuit and even building them while traveling has been replaced by heated tents.

But the Elders certainly still remember it well.

Many of them were even born in igloos.

To them, it represented survival in a big way.

So the skill lives on, and has only really started to wane in the last few years.

So we're gonna head up and look for a good spot to find the right snow for our igloo, that we'll stay in tonight.

The art of igloo making has not died with the Inuit people, it's still fairly strong and alive, but mostly with a slightly older crowd.

And even my guy (Inuit guide), mostly if he can rely on a tent now, he does, but still hunters get caught out, still need to know how to do this, how to make an igloo, if you expect to survive out here, so... (speaking Inuktitut) - You like this spot?

- Yeah.

- Snow is right?

Yeah.

Good.

Let's get started.

Well, Brian, what did he tell you to cut?

What, how are you cutting?

- [Brian] Well, we are going to cut this way... - Yeah.

Just straight down?

- No, no, you got slight angle.

- Slight angle.

- So when you pick it up it won't get stuck, - It's like this and straight.

Someone once said, you sweat, you die.

So as always, the sunshine can be deceiving.

The temperatures are still frigid.

So staying dry and comfortable is vital to survival.

This is a lot warmer work and it might look like getting pretty sweaty doing this.

They used to use bone saws, and then they went to regular steel saws that we have and now switched to the wood saws.

Works perfect.

Consistency of this snow is a lot like styrofoam.

It may not sound romantic, but that's what works.

Everything matters, it's not just cutting little blocks.

You have to angle the saw on each of the sides a little bit differently, and you've gotta get just the right size and right type of snow.

For a two man igloo, we need about 40 of these blocks.

I'm always the laborer on construction sites.

It's not fair.

In Inuit celebrations, they hold igloo making contests.

The champion can build a full igloo from start to finish in around 10 minutes and even climb on top to prove its strength.

But it's taking the three of us, many hours, as we've begun to feel the wear and tear of the long hours and the many miles, traveling the Arctic landscape.

Like a bee making a honeycomb, (Inuit guide) builds the igloo from the inside out and seals himself in.

Hey.

Not bad!

(speaking Inuktitut) - Yes?

- Yes.

- You can see there's still all daylight.

That's all gotta be filled in all the way around but it's just a beautiful work of engineering.

Perfect.

Still cold in here though.

That's good.

Keep you warm when it's raw?

(speaking Inuktitut) (Les speaking Inuktitut) - Yeah.

- What does (Inuktitut) mean?

- [Brian] Taste good.

- Taste good.

Ha!

(Les speaking Inuktitut) Oh yeah, the seal's fantastic.

When was the last time you built an igloo for you to sleep in?

How long ago?

How many years ago?

- Long time, more than 20 years.

- More than 20 years ago?

Rather stay in a tent?

- Easiest to set up the tent.

That's why.

- Faster.

- All three meats from what we've caught, the Arctic char, the caribou, the seal, is better eaten raw.

Keeps us warmer and tastes fantastic.

(Inuit guide) has worked with me and Brian to set me up in this igloo.

And it's pretty cozy, actually.

There's no wind in here.

It feels warm and likely the igloo will probably go the way of being a tourist attraction rather than something that's needed every day during the right season.

They still have the skill and can use it in emergencies, but beyond that, at least in my guide's case he'd much rather stay in a heated wall tent which is just fine by me.

Tonight, I'm staying in an igloo.

Good night.

The Inuit are seemingly alone in their world.

Not many people wanna live in a place described as harsh and barren.

Yet in truth, it's neither harsh nor barren not when it's a land rich with culture.

And this culture has had to endure the assimilation into modern civilization, over the last hundred years.

Somehow they've done it and maintained their love for the land and their connection to it, and the animals that live there.

(water splashes)