‘You can’t eat sovereignty’: Nunavut voices central to new research on northern food
PhD researcher to present findings on transport infrastructure, food sovereignty Tuesday evening Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum
Katrin Schmid, with the InfraNorth project, receives an award in February at the Conference of the Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien in Berlin. The award supported her return to Nunavut, where she will present her research tonight, titled Country Food Cargo: Transport Infrastructure and Imagined Futures in Nunavut. (Photo by Philipp Budka)
A public presentation tonight in Iqaluit will explore the link between transportation infrastructure and food sovereignty in Nunavut.
Katrin Schmid, a PhD student in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna, will share her findings during a free event at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum. It starts at 7 p.m.
Her talk, Country Food Cargo: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Food Sovereignty in Nunavut, draws on more than a year of fieldwork in five communities across the Qikiqtani Region.
“We’re all looking at the role of transport infrastructure, specifically in sustaining northern communities and permanent residents here — as opposed to Arctic infrastructure is being built with resource extraction in mind or military interest in mind,” Schmid said in an interview.
She visited Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Pond Inlet, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord between 2022 and 2023, conducting about 170 interviews with hunters, community leaders, civil servants, airport staff, shipping workers and others.
Schmid also held workshops and focus groups on the future of transport and food access in the territory.
Her findings rely heavily on direct quotes from community members — something Schmid said was intentional.
“A woman from Grise Fiord told me, ‘You can’t eat sovereignty,’ and I think that’s such a powerful statement, especially thinking of all the interest in the Arctic,” Schmid said.
“I think having outside interests dictate infrastructure in the North could happen very easily again. And that would be unfortunate, because there’s been so much work toward really advocating for Inuit interests.”
Schmid’s work highlights ongoing challenges with the movement of country food, including spoilage, damage, and delays in cargo shipments. It also points to wider issues, such as the ability of hunters to access the land when transport infrastructure such as roads, trails, docks and runways is inadequate or unreliable.
She offers several policy recommendations, including expanding regional cold storage hubs, modifying air cargo subsidies to support small businesses and co-operatives, and ensuring infrastructure developed for industry or defence is also accessible to local communities.
Tuesday’s presentation is expected to serve as a conversation starter among community members and decision-makers, Schmid said.
She also said she’s exploring the possibility of a livestream or recording the event to ensure residents in other communities can access the information and ask questions.
The event is part of InfraNorth, a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council that looks at how northern residents experience and engage with transportation infrastructure.
The project includes case studies in the European, Russian and North American Arctic.
Well without sovereignty , we won’t have much of a choice . we need sovereign Arctic so we can enjoy our freedom to go anywhere on the lands and waters.
Thank god for these PHD students coming from Australia to study Inuit . Need more research (not)?
Ummm…Vienna is in Austria, not Australia.
Also, Katrin Schmid is focusing her doctoral studies on how northern residents experience and engage with transportation infrastructure in the European (Scandinavian/Nordic) Arctic, Russian Arctic, and North American Arctic. That sounds like a very interesting project. Its relevance is made very clear by the rapid changes that the Arctic realms are currently undergoing due to anthropogenic global warming (which is proceeding much more rapidly in the polar regions than in temperature regions, for reasons that are too complex to cover in a setting like this, but the IPCC reports give good insight for those who are interested).
Curious you would mention AGW as an absolute when there is no evidence yet for that hypothesis.
Clearly, you are not an Earth scientist, nor do you have any scientific leaning
Regarding AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, today more commonly known as climate change), please read the IPCC reports. This is world-class science, supported by an overwhelming amount of research and scientific consensus from scientists all around the world:
https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/
I would also like to point out that Big Oil’s scientists themselves researched AGW decades ago. For example:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148376084/exxon-climate-predictions-were-accurate-decades-ago-still-it-sowed-doubt
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/climate/exxon-mobil-global-warming-climate-change.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/big-oil-fossil-fuel-warning
https://www.desmog.com/2024/01/30/fossil-fuel-industry-sponsored-climate-science-1954-keeling-api-wspa/
Meanwhile, here in the Arctic, traditional Indigenous knowledge is also showing a trend. For example, Inuit hunters themselves notice that ice is becoming thinner sooner in the spring. And, at the beginning of the ice season, the freeze-up process takes longer.
And, the trend is towards warmer temperatures on a global basis too. For example, storms are more violent, and rainfall events are more intense (warmer air holds more moisture) and more frequent, heat waves are more extreme, and so on.
Whether you live in the Arctic, the tropics, or in the temperate zones in between, AGW is making its impacts felt in myriad ways.
I still wonder about the people studying the issue who have yet to answer a simple question: the Inuit population is rapidly growing. If you want to rely on country food, especially caribou, where is it going to come from? There are over 31,000 Inuit in Nunavut alone.
One estimate was that an average family living on the land needed about 75 caribou a year (not counting their dogs, which roughly doubled that). Since the modern diets are a bit more varied, we could probably reduce that to, what, 20 caribou per family of 5 per year? That’s roughly 124,000 caribou. *Per year*. Even at their greatest numbers, the herds would not have been able to sustain this. Even if you cut it in half, that’s 62,000 animals a year, which the herds still can’t sustain.
If I were guessing, I would say: it’s a different group of people to answer that.
I always wondered why there is no caribou farming in Nunavut. Probably can learn from our Nordic neighbours?
“Because it’s stupid”
Is the reason I’ve heard.
wrong..where are you getting the number from?, just one ..yes 1 wolf will have about the number you exasperated for a family of 5. surely the population is growing but the number of harvested caribou is staying stable as predator control is at its best this time of year with our ground hunters who are making a difference so we and our generations down the time table can enjoy the caribou we see on our lands . surely one cannot blame only society for the declines ,wolves are a bigger factor than all of mineral exploration, drilling and all the mining in Nunavut, industries like exploration and mining gets blamed for it , I am positive Traditional Knowledge was never thought of before this outrageous rhetoric was even said about an average family ,living off the land ? 75 caribou average a year a family living off the land ? , what a wasteful comment about our main staple , where are the numbers coming from ? UNREAL. the past is over and we have machines that don’t eat caribou so leave the past behind and move forward ..AKA..2025. study your TK you will be surprised .
Numbers here are out of context, 75 caribou living off the land ? for 5 ppl ? NOT
20 per family now ? NOT- only available tags for caribou. 1 Arctic Wolf ..20 caribou per year?- absolutely !! ppl no longer live off the land and rely only on stores now . where is the traditional knowledge here ?
You can’t eat Sovereignty, but can you eat Food Sovereignty?
Come to think of it, I don’t think words are of much nutritional value at all. I could be wrong, and maybe have to… eat my words?
You can’t eat without food sovereignty, in your mind only. You can’t eat words too, but you can make words that may make a difference for food security . Inuit have sovereignty on homelands because no country in this world “tries” to get it from under our feet yet.
But if it does ..we need sovereignty to continue our traditions and keep our culture alive.
So much talk about caribou when it comes to traditional/country food. Lost in all the discussion is… fish. Caribou numbers may be volatile and precarious, but there’s a shoot-ton of fish out there. You can fish prettty much year-round in one way or another.
Unless you’re Ahiarmiut, there’s a reason that 24 of 25 Nunavut communities are on the ocean.
Caribou
Muskox
Seal
Siksik
Ukalliq
Polar bear
Maktaaq
Clams
Aiviq
Ducks
Geese
Ptarmigan
and let’s not forget those all-important fish.
All of these provided sources of food. Caribou were not a year-round food the way that people want them to be today. Traditional hunting was opportunistic, relying on what was around and what was available at certain times of year. People now are thinking they’re entitled to have caribou whenever they want, from wherever they want.
I guess people in Nunavut don’t pay much attention to global warming, climate change and wildlife becoming scarce from over hunting, week end warrior Eskimos.
And… the chemical content of wildlife making them toxic to eat.
Get over…”We’re Eskimos. We have to kill more animals!! Blame the mine and Qabloonaat.”
Baffin.
Please stay away from Kivalliq caribou.
Over hunt your own to extinction.
Hands off Kivalliq and try to cry, “We’re Eskimos!!! You have to share!!!”
Kivalliq hunters are already over hunting the caribou in its own region. Baffin has nothing to do with it. Tell your own hunters to back down.