Food remains an issue in the Arctic. Especially outside of the major centres food is not plentiful or cheap. Within living memory, the 1960s, there was mass starvation in what is now western Nunavut. You see this portrayed in the art from places like Baker Lake -- the time of hunger. Even today school-aged children often do not have enough to eat.
http://natpo.st/q6F0nK
MONTREAL — Six out of 10 Inuit in Canada's Far North don't get enough to eat or are eating the wrong things, says a comprehensive study by a team of McGill University researchers.
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Their findings show a very high prevalence of food insecurity in Canada's Arctic.
The term food insecurity covers a broad range of nutritional issues — from having poor quality food to eating less, skipping meals and going hungry.
3 comments:
"... or eating the wrong things."
Choices. Are we obligated to provide food, shelter, and cell phone coverage to every person in any place they choose to live? Sure, it's their traditional territory but if they have given up the traditional way of feeding themselves then there has to be a limit to our responsibility for them. Nunuvut especially, considering the massive land claims deal that created it, should be responsible for itself.
I hear you, but remember the Federal Government's policy (1950s and 1960s and even early 1970s) to kill the sled dogs and force Inuit to settle into permanent hamlets. You can argue "you broke it you fix it".
I would ask you, do you think the Inuit would prefer to go back to the sled dogs and a nomadic life? I would suggest they do not. What happened in the 50's and 60's was two generations ago, the present generation needs to decide if they want the benefits of a Western lifestyle including better medical care, greater lifespan, easier access to food, or would they prefer to live in an isolated traditional territory and live as their ancestors did. They simply cannot have both.
That may be a harsh choice but almost every non-aboriginal in Canada is here because they faced the same choice in their "traditional territory". My family left Ireland because they weren't getting enough food, too.
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