Inuit Nutrition

So many of my recent posts have been about the Inuit and the Canadian far north. Here’s another story from cbc.ca. Titled ‘New Project Tackles Inuit Nutrition’, the story describes a reserach project in Cape Dorset (Baffin Island) aimed at increasing the amount of country foods eaten locally. It is supported by Nunavut health officials and the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment at Montreal’s McGill University. (See here for CINE’s traditional food page.)

I was surprised that a government intiative, supported by a university team, was needed to promote the use of traditional foods. The reasons cited for the need for this work are, however, interesting:

There is a concern people in Nunavut are not eating as much country food as they’d like because they’re having trouble getting it, [one researcher] said.

The article also quotes the researcher describing the land as a freezer; I heard local lakes described as a refrigerator for fish regularly in northern British Columbia and suspect that it is a common refrain across northern Canada. The research says:

“The program really is to work closely with the communities to get hunters out to hunt for everybody else, basically, and have a communal freezer that has some people full-time to maintain it, keep the stock and distribute the food to people in need.”

The communal aspect of the project is intriguing, partly because the article quotes an area resident saying that some people simply can’t afford to hunt anymore.

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