Being Caribou is a National Film Board of Canada production written and directed by Leanne Allison and Diana Wilson.
72 minutes

We estimate almost 1 million Canadians and Americans have seen Being Caribou through 5000 screenings across the United States and Canada including two Canadian national television broadcasts on CBC's The Nature of Things and CBC
Newsworld, and a national broadcast in the United States on LinkTV.

President George W. Bush may not know it, but he took his own advice of 2001 when he challenged people to visit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to:

“go and see how beautiful that land really is.”

In 2003, beginning April 8 and ending September 8, filmmaker Leanne Allison and wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer migrated on foot with the 120,000-member Porcupine Caribou Herd from Old Crow, Yukon, Canada, to the caribou calving grounds in Alaska, and back.

They took along a 15-inch George Bush replica doll.

The film of the threesome’s epic 1000-mile (1500 km) journey with the caribou and what they saw, called ‘Being Caribou’ is an NFB production made from the footage Leanne shot on the 5-month experience. It is screening at film festivals and in living rooms across North America.

The migrating caribou guide Heuer, Allison and George Bush across three mountain ranges, icy rivers, and past wolves and hungry grizzlies emerging from their dens. Surrounded by skittish caribou waiting to birth in their sacred calving grounds, the threesome become hostages in their tent for the 10-day calving season, crawling on their bellies for water, peeing in cups inside the tent, and never speaking over a whisper for fear of disturbing the caribou.

This is the exact place oil companies want to develop.

The team leaves the calving grounds and travels another 2.5 months with the mothers, bulls and newborns — witnessing the drama of separations, drownings, eagle attacks and the height of the insect season that drives the caribou into massive groups and stampedes to escape madness.

Spectacular footage and intimate video diaries give a glimpse into a landscape and a way of ‘being human’ that create a journey never before undertaken. The experience transforms the team leaving them to try and convey their story to Senators on Capitol Hill one short week after returning with the caribou to their winter range in the Central Yukon.

As for the 15-inch President, he refused to return home at all.