Northern Canadian Foodways

Regional

Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut: about a third of the land and a very small share of the people. The food system is COUNTRY FOOD — caribou, muskox, seal, char, whitefish, ptarmigan, berries — supplemented by store food that arrives by air or by a short sealift season and costs several times what it does in the south. ⚠ NUNAVUT HAS AMONG THE HIGHEST DOCUMENTED FOOD-INSECURITY RATES IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD, and the Nutrition North subsidy programme has been repeatedly criticised for subsidising retailers rather than households. Also: DENE and GWICH’IN foodways of the boreal and the Mackenzie; the Yukon gold-rush inheritance and SOURDOUGH, which is why old-timers there are called sourdoughs; and community freezers and hunter-support programmes as deliberate food policy.