When the Canadian harp seal harvest was brought to a temporary halt by animal rights protest in the 1980s, an entirely separate group of people suffered immensely as a result. Canadian Inuit people who depend on the ring seal for subsistence, also suffered because their market for ring seal pelts collapsed when European buyers, spooked by the protest movement and by the ban on immature seal imports, also stopped buying ring seal pelts.

This meant that the Inuit cycle of seal hunting with guns and gasoline driven boats was broken, because they suddenly had no income with which to continue to go out and hunt. They could no longer afford to get to their resource, and their suffering was the result of nutritional and cultural deprivation, a side effect of the animal rights protest against the killing of whitecoat harp pups.

Today, there has been a gradual recovery in Nunavut, as well as in southern Canada. Seal products can once again be sold on the international market. Families can once more depend on their men to bring in seal meat, "the best food in the world". Ring seals were never endangered by any level of hunting. This is a subsistence activity that is directly connected to the irrelevant vagaries of the global marketplace.

An Inuit man today can go out and shoot his seals, by himself, rather than having to crouch by a breathing hole for hours with a hand held spear. Surely, this may be a better death for the seals, as it may be quicker. He can use a snowmobile, rather than depend on a dog team, and the meat he obtains can be used to feed the family, whereas formerly, much of it sustained his dog team. Now, his efforts bring home food, and the pelts can be sold for cash, which he uses to buy more fuel, more ammunition, and to keep his engines maintained. Life is different now in the High North. It isn't necessarily easier, and the interactions of men, fish, seals, whales, and caribou are still all relevant to survival.

Today's people of the seal are proud of building their lives in Nunavut, Canada's newest territory. They are very independent, and very proud. The ring seal is still a constant, still a vitally important part of the new life. IWMC congratulates the people of the seal for sticking to their principles, and for surviving in these times of politics and globalization."