De grenzeloze vooruitgang - het bestaan van een Eskimo-familie

In August 1988, in the process of recording an item for the VPRO-programme about the American airforce base Thule on the fringes of the North Pole, Thomas Doebele and Maarten Schmidt met Ussarqak Qujaukitsoq and his family. Together with 750 other inhabitants of the Thule region they may well be the last Pole Eskimos in the north of Greenland.
Ussarqak is a hunter and recently became a deputy mayor of his village. He stands up for hunters' interests in his village. His wife Inger prepares and works the skins of the seals caught by Ussarqak.
In 1951, during the Cold War, a big American air base was built right next to the Eskimo village Dundas. To protect the Eskimos against too rapid a transition to the western culture, the Danish government moved Ussarqak, still a child at the time, together with his family and the other inhabitants to Qaanaaq, 100 miles north of Dundas, in 1953. This settlement has grown into a village with modern facilities.

tells about the life of Ussarqak's family in a small community on Greenland. As a consequence of their long-lasting isolation the culture of these people has long been guarded off from external influences. Now, in a short while, almost within the space of one lifetime, this society has greatly changed. While Ussarqak's father could well have played a role in Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), his son Vittus studies in Copenhagen, and Ussarqak himself has lesser and lesser time for hunting, owing to his growing role in politics.