2 Nunavut agencies get funding boost to provide country food
Organizations in Clyde River, Iqaluit to use money to expand country food programs
Clyde River’s Ilisaqsivik Society and Iqaluit’s Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre will each receive new federal funding to continue improving secure access to food in their communities. (File photo)
Two Nunavut food security organizations will share $1.4 million to enhance local Inuit food production as part of a nearly $3-million federal spending package announced Tuesday.
Clyde River’s Ilisaqsivik Society and Iqaluit’s Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre will receive $1 million and $400,000 respectively, according to a news release from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.
The funding is the second phase of CanNor’s Northern Food Innovation Challenge, launched in 2021.
The project was created to address concerns over reliable access to food by supporting community-developed projects for local and Indigenous food production.
The Ilisaqsivik Society will hire additional instructors to teach youths skills needed to hunt and harvest traditional country food. During the first phase of the program, it used its funding to employ hunter-instructors to provide country food year-round in the community.
At the Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre, funding will be used to purchase equipment to expand capacity for food processing and increase its retail space for local hunters to sell their country food.
It will also use a web application to enable hunters to nail down a buyer before investing their time in harvesting.
During the first phase of the federal program, the community food centre used funding for the Inuliqtait Country Food Program, which allows hunters to earn an income by harvesting country food and provides a retail space for storage, processing and sale.
In the release, federal Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal said during the food innovation challenge both organizations “worked hard to develop excellent programs which are locally-led, innovative, and creative solutions that overcome some of the challenges with Northern food systems.”
The rest of the approximately $1.5 million in funding through the food innovation challenge will be shared by organizations in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., and Whitehorse, Yukon.
“Good Idea”…Never Cry Wolf movie. Anivianie, aniviasiutirit!
Nunavut needs to have a serious discussion about the morality of selling meat, and what actually needs to happen to create more young active hunters.
All the animals and fishes up here are not owned by anyone. These things are so valuable they are actually priceless. How can anyone say they are worth a few bucks? This is so demeaning.
The GN has a full blown hunter training program on the books but they do not seem to deliver it. The HTOs also have a role in training young hunters but they do not seem to do it unless they get special funding. So, 2 Nunavut groups are not doing their jobs. Then, the taxpayer gets hit up yet again with this influx of money from Ottawa.
Why are we rewarding bureaucratic failure? Why isn’t it so that we demand GN to deliver its program, or demand the HTOs to do their jobs instead of celebrating even more money getting used up?
All this for something we should be doing automatically to contribute to our community, friends and families? Government money -like right from the beginning – is totally and completely corrupting our culture.
All those young Inuit complaining about colonialism this and that – well here we are staring it in the face.
Young people should be advised to get a job, work hard, get their own equipment and go out and harvest. There should be huge social pressure out there for all the uncles, older cousins and fathers to take the young people out. If necessary, we should create full time hunting positions with our own money so the best hunters can go out and provide meat without cost.
Honestly, who doesn’t think our long dead ancestors would be either laughing or crying their faces off if they could see what is happening today. We don’t even take our young people out on the land unless Kablunaks pay us off, and we do not give people in need meat without them paying? What a giant, regrettable joke!
Capitalism is the global operating system. People hate it, complain about it, rail against it, or love it depending on their luck and ability to control or manipulate it. Say what you want but it will not change. If you want to revive the past somehow it will still need to be done under this model, somehow..
While you’re at it, talk to the elders. So many of them won’t speak to the young and share their knowledge anymore without getting paid or receiving a stipend.
Morality in selling meat? Who are you, PETA? The NA gives rights to do whatever we want with legally harvested wildlife. This was negotiated by our grandparents and great grandparents who saw the not only the cultural benefits but had the foresight to see the economic benefits. It is possible to sustain both needs. Though you may not agree with selling meat say to your fellow Inuk, it is a right nonetheless. Same rights as freedom of speech and all that other stuff. Look at what fisheries can do. In the East coast it is a multi billion dollar industry. Imagine what can be done up here with char, halibut, shrimp, seals, whales. When done sustainably it can be a continuous resource for jobs. Look at even the selling of boutique soaps like Uasau soap, made from bowhead! Imagine selling harps to the chinese for oil supplements like those omega pills. Or smoked char to fine restaurants, blackberry wine to all those wine drinkers that want something new. The opportunities are limitless and it all starts with the right to sell what we catch. Our elders before us saw opportunity to use our resources for modern times because they saw the changes coming.
Hunting is not free. Hunting requires expensive equipment in constant need of maintenance. Time spent hunting is time others spend working for a salary.
Elders do not live for free. Limited pensions and high cost of basic food items can make life hard for Elders. Living is not free. To eat you must pay; to pay you need a source of revenue. No one lives on air alone. Stupidly sarcastic comments about giving meat away for free or not honouring Elders’ time with an honorarium are just that – stupid if not racist.
Pray tell, in what way can it be seen as racist? There is no value statement of the value of one race over another anywhere to be seen.
You had me agreeing until you said racist. Not racist. Don’t ruin a good point
No, they didn’t. They had their eyes firmly focused on the past. If they had been focused on future success they would have:
1. Prioritized formal education and engagement with the national and global economy.
2. Understood that behind every successful hunter is a spouse with a cash job.
3. Understood the damage that Article 23 would do to Nunavut development. It should have a sunset clause.
4. Foreseen the growing multiculturalism and immigration to Nunavut and prepared their population to be less xenophobic and clannish and willing to engage with other peoples.
5. Understood that resource extraction industries are the way of the past, that there are many competitors in that space, and that the value add is minimal.
This is just a small list. The focus of the drafters of the NLCA on natural resources was fine, but that alone will keep our territory in poverty. We need to complement this focus on natural resource extraction with the development of our human capital.
This is the glaring absence in the NLCA and something for which the drafters have much to answer.