New user here, I've searched the forums and haven't found the answer.

I'm using OS-X Leopard. When I do ctrl-c and ctrl-v, it automatically pastes a bitmap instead of the objects. Is this because of the clipboard in X11? Anyway to remedy this?

You have to change the X11 preferences as discussed in this comment - it is also mentioned in the Inkscape FAQ: see "Copying and pasting in Inkscape creates pixellated images instead of copying the vector objects".