The first death was on the night of Jan. 9.
It was a Saturday. Pele Kristiansen spent the morning at home, drinking beers and hanging out with his older brother, which wasn't so unusual. There wasn't a lot of work in town. A lot of people drank. In the afternoon, they heard someone banging on their door, yelling.
"Polar bear! It's a polar bear!"
On the frozen fiord a couple of miles away, they could see the bear. Hunting in the Arctic — bears and reindeer and seals and birds — is at the core of Inuit life, even today.
The polar bear was coming toward the town.
A little drunk and really excited, Pele and his buddies fired up the motor on their fishing boat and nosed through the slushy ice in the harbor of their East Greenland village, Tiniteqilaaq, until they were as close as they could get. They got out of the boat, stood on the ice and pointed their rifles at the enormous animal.
Among the Inuit, hunting a polar bear is a big deal. The bears have huge territories — to actually see one around Tiniteqilaaq was rare. And because of their size and ferocity, they're not easy to kill. It's usually a group effort, so according to tradition, the first four people to shoot it share the meat and the glory.
That day, Pele shot the polar bear.
And he was so happy.
That evening, Pele went out drinking to celebrate.
The next morning he was dead. He had killed himself. He was 22.
[For more of this story, written by Rebecca Hersher, go to http://tpr.org/post/arctic-sui...k-kills-you#stream/0]
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