in the middle of the shack. I tasted it with some trepidation, but it’s delicious. It doesn’t taste like meat at all, and has a melt-in-your-mouth texture almost like sorbet. In our shack later that evening I realize there’s a blister on my nose. I've been frost-bitten. I don't have a mirror to look at it, but my Inuit companions don't seem to think it’s too bad. Mild frostbite is common, and wintertime hunters are often recognizable in town by the (painful) purple blisters covering their cheeks. We slept soundly in the cabin, comfortably heated by a Coleman stove and a small kerosene
one I had just returned from. Unlike in Greenland, where hunting by dog sled is the law, dog teams are mostly a thing of the past here. Throughout Nunavik, sled dogs were nearly exterminated in the early 1960s by government agents who had a combination of some misplaced good intentions and some outrightly bad ones. After the dog slaughter, when desperate hunters sought new ways to feed their families, the first snowmobiles were purchased (in 1962). As many Arctic ethnographers have discussed, the snowmobile ushered in a whole new era in the Canadian North, one of dependence on money rather than on the land. It’s almost a cliché now to say that dogs eat fish while snowmobiles eat money; but they really do. Snowmobiles are expensive to purchase and generally poor on gas efficiency; they breakdown frequently, require expensive parts, and often don’t last long anyway. It’s not just snowmobiles that eat money nowadays. A lot of things do, and many households---including households with active hunters---are forced to go without a snowmobile when they prioritize purchasing food, iPods, cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol. The handful of Kangiqsujuarmiut who own dog teams today are financially successful hunters; those with both money and time, feed and train dogs primarily for racing purposes. But the value of dog teaming for Nunavimmiut as an expression of being truly Inuktitut (like an Inuk) has perhaps been strengthened by its symbolic resurgence after near-eradication fifty years ago. Along with dogsledding, hunting by snowmobile, the consumption of country foods, and the fine work of Inuit seamstresses are publicly embraced by Kangiqsujuarmiut as quintessential expressions of their culture. But as I suggested before, these things generally require expensive supplies, from gas, dog food, and satellite phones to commercially-tanned furs and embroidering machines, such that money is now often a prerequisite to participation in these ‘traditional’ expressive activities.
ants, made by his mother, and a homemade parka.
furnace. I slept in between my four other companions on a large platform bed. Some members of our party needed to be back in town for Monday, so we made the return journey the next day, for a total of 150 kilometres in two days. When I visited another friend, an Inuk lady in her mid-fifties, for morning coffee a few days later, I told her about my adventure. “You are so lucky,” she said. “Even Inuit don’t get to do that.” She is deeply Christian and never fails to remind me how blessed I am. Her reminder doesn’t fall on deaf ears. It is true that many Kangiqsujuarmiut may have never even ridden by dog sled; far fewer would ever experience a weekend trip such as the
This is where my research questions about country food sharing and food security come back into the picture. Today, freely-distributed country food goes a long way in supporting the food security and nutrition of those with few means in the cash economy. Returning hunters almost always ring up family, friends, or neighbours, and sometimes even the FM station, to let people know there’s fish, caribou, or seal in the backyard shack, ready for them to come pick up a share. But substantial disparities in country food consumption already exist: 20% of Kangiqsujuarmiut report consuming country food everyday, but 12% of households consume country food less than once a week. Will hunters continue to share food freely when the cost of living continues to increase and prized foods such as beluga, seal, and caribou become scarcer? I’ve spent the past eight months speaking with Kangiqsujuarmiut about country food on an almost daily basis, and my feeling is that these questions can’t yet be definitively answered. Money is an admitted necessity of life here, but like dogsledding, food sharing reinforces elements of Inuit selfidentity that are a considerable source of pride and empowerment. These become all the more important as Canadian Inuit strive to redefine themselves politically, economically, and culturally on the national and international stage. VOLUME 7
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2013 / 2014 NEWSLETTER
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ANTHROPOLOGY
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