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Inuit Foodways

Inuit

Indigenous

⚠ A COMPLETE FOOD SYSTEM IN A PLACE WITH ALMOST NO PLANTS. Inuit Nunangat is the Inuit homeland across Inuvialuit, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut. COUNTRY FOOD — the term Inuit use — is seal, caribou, Arctic char, whale, walrus, ptarmigan, geese, eggs, berries and seaweed, and a great deal of it is eaten RAW OR FROZEN, which is not privation but the technique: freezing preserves, and raw organ meat and skin supply vitamin C in a diet with no fruit, which is why scurvy was a European disease in the Arctic and not an Inuit one. MAKTAAQ — whale skin and blubber — is the clearest example. Plus AGED and fermented preparations, and drying. ⚠ SHARING IS STRUCTURAL: a hunter distributes, and that distribution is the food security system. ⚠ AND IT IS UNDER PRESSURE. Nunavut has among the highest documented rates of food insecurity in the developed world, store food is extraordinarily expensive, sea ice is less reliable, and the 1950s-60s SLED DOG KILLINGS removed the means of hunting from many families — all documented, all food-system facts.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Inuit community documented

Languages: Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun

What is recorded

  • Inuit country food is documented as including seal, caribou, Arctic char, whale, walrus, birds, eggs and berries, frequently consumed raw or frozen. Raw organ meat and maktaaq (whale skin and blubber) supply vitamin C, which is documented as the reason scurvy affected European Arctic expeditions and not Inuit populations. Distribution of a hunter’s catch through the community is documented as a structural food-security mechanism. documented
  • Nunavut records among the highest rates of food insecurity in the developed world. The killing of sled dogs by authorities during the 1950s and 1960s is documented and was examined by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission; it removed the means of hunting from many families. Declining sea-ice reliability and the cost of shipped store food are documented constraints on the contemporary food system. documented
  • Sled dogs killed across the eastern Arctic, removing the means of hunting from many Inuit families; later examined by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Greenlandic Foodways documented

    One circumpolar Inuit food system; Greenlandic and Canadian Inuit share species, technique and language family.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

Recipes

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