Post Punk Kitchen Forum

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120608/inuit-food-prices-protest-120608/#ixzz1xKWAJkGe



I've heard/seen/read some people blaming conservationists (blocking Inuit from eating whales) but I don't think it's that simple - the article itself mentions that hunting is too expensive for many families.

Is it lazy of me to just think 'fork the government'?

Maybe they should live somewhere else? It's a little easier to find food when you live somewhere that food actually grows.

"The roots of the problem are deep and tangled."

No, not really. Seems pretty obvious to me what the problem is.

Leaving an ancestral home may seem like the obvious answer to someone who doesn't have one but I think severing ties with your family, community, and identity is a pretty forking hard thing to do.

Are you for real?

I'll cut you some slack and guess that maybe you are completely ignorant of Canadian history, politics, and bloody geography. Nunavut - a Canadian Federal Territory is sparsely populated. A quick Google tells me that it's supported an indigenous population for about 4000 years. The article in the OP says that about 1/2 of adults earn less than $20,000 a year.

When the majority of people in a fairly large piece of land say they can't afford food, the problem is just a weeeeeeee bit more complicated than move to another place. Because when you are already poor and marginalized, that will fix everything.

Also, isn't Nunavut being exploited (in all senses of the word) for its enormous mineral wealth? Why isn't that money flowing back to the native population?

Why have the traditional ways of life become unsustainable?

Re: moving. Governments have been shifting indigenous populations around for hundreds of years (you know, like Lego pieces to plop down somewhere else that is more convenient). When has that ever worked out well?

nice! I'm intuit

Sadly, colonialization (or "I want your land") has never been to the benefit of the people that existed in the land prior to being colonized. I don't know much about the native populations of Canada other than they have challenges similar to those in the US.

Many natives (I can't say for sure all and know some were farmers) lived a nomadic lifestyle in the Americas prior European establishment here. They knew their lands and knew how to live on them. That kind of lifestyle doesn't work when you have people who want to call the land their own. In the US, natives had their lands taken from them, they were enslaved, they were purposefully exposed to diseases, they were killed and they were forcibly moved to lands that they had no familiarity with or were boxed into pre-defined lands.

Like Canada, there is extreme poverty in the native populations of the US as well as alcohol usage is rampant and they have the highest suicide rates. Obviously moving them wasn't the right solution here. Their way of life was taken from them and finding a way out for them is difficult. The solution for many here has been using their lands for profit via casinos. Tribes will even share with other tribes (in California at least). Other than that, they can't do a lot with the lands they were given.

Anyway, I think there are a lot of parallels between the US and Canada in their native populations. The issues are complicated and there is no easy solution.

Are you for real?



They're overpopulated right now. After a quick round of starvation, they'll once again hit a population that is sustainable.

Doing something stupid (i.e. living where they live) does not become less stupid simply because people have been doing it for a while. Their location is the obvious root of the problem. That is what needs to be fixed. Anything else is just throwing duct tape at it and crossing your fingers.

Overpopulation? What is that analysis based upon?

The fact that they have this problem? I'm not sure what you need me to explain here. There are insufficient resources for the current population. It's pretty straightforward.

I just wanted to know if it was kneejerk trolling or if there was some thought behind it. Thank you for answering my question.

and how exactly will they fund a move and setup shop somewhere new and have access to resources?

The problem is not obvious. Even if those living in Nunavut could move south it wouldn't solve marginalization.

You know that Inuit are PEOPLE, right Jinkies?

You also know that they live in northern Canada, which has perhaps the lowest pop/square mile of any populated area on earth?

Why must you insist on muddying the water with facts when the solution to this problem is totally straightforward?!

I don't see what the big deal is. It's just a little forced migration.

Don't let facts interfere with a good solution.

Birds enjoy it! If they get down to the NYC parks Bloomberg will just have them shot.

What if we just strap the Inuit to the birds flying south for the winter? Then they can just stay wherever the birds land!

Now that is the right idea, ignoring facts to find a perfect solution, it works.

Call the government of Canada! We have the solution!
They can film a documentary and play Wind Beneath My Wings as everyone gets whisked down to their new happy home.

The birds might even land in a Wal-Mart parking lot - that would be perfect, because then the Inuits could get everything they need in one place (so much more convenient than some stupid ancestral home)!

ignoring the idiots (idiot) in this thread will probably be more productive.

we're having an interesting conversation on this topic in another forum i'm on. someone linked this blog. it shows just what the prices are for mainstream north american foods. i linked this article about a woman who hosts a tv show about making traditional foods more appealing for younger people.

moving away completely from traditional foods is a bad idea because Arctic ethnic groups do in fact have some physiological differences adapted for a very specific diet, and there are major health benefits to eating a high protein, high fat diet in their environment.

hunting for food has become expensive and marginalized for tons of really crappy colonial reasons, and then further complicated by environmental changes (climate warming, high mercury levels). so it can't be the only solution.

however, there are real cost barriers to getting produce and other foods to the extreme north. the shipping costs are really astronomical, and everyone in canada can attest that food prices are higher here than in the US, for example. even living in northern ontario comes with a high price tag when it comes to food, which i've personally lived with.

southern canadians (ie white canadians) who have moved to northern canada to work, (a bunch of my teacher's college classmates are up there) get huge subsidies and hardship pay to compensate for the higher costs. if you work for the govt or for a bigger company, you'll get compensated. but if you don't, you slip through the cracks and end up having to spend $70 for 3lbs of meat with no financial assistance.

I haven't had so much fun in a thread in I don't know when.