Contribution short abstract:

This research explores how economic, environmental and social changes affect the practice of sharing locally harvested foods in Nunavut, Canada, examining its transformation, commodification, and implications for access and community relations.

Contribution long abstract:

Seals, whales, caribou and char are staples in an Inuit country food diet, food harvested from the land and waters in Nunavut, Canada. Harvesting, preparing and sharing country food is foundational to Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or Inuit knowledge, and has become a central aspect in movements towards Inuit food sovereignty. However, in the last 60 years, contact with Canadian settler-colonial society has led to increased reliance on market-based systems, paired with pressures of food insecurity, and shifting norms of food consumption – all of which challenge the practice of food sharing in Nunavut today. Grocery stores in the Arctic territory seldomly sell country food products; instead they are stocked with foods shipped up from the “south”. There is no agriculture in Nunavut, and there are no roads that connect Nunavut to the rest of Canada, requiring food, diesel, and other products to be transported up by ship or airplane cargo. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023, I explore how practices of sharing locally hunted and harvested foods may be transforming in response to economic, environmental, and social changes. I ask whether the commodification of locally hunted and harvested foods disrupts the commoning effect of sharing, and how such changes may reconfigure Nunavut residents’ access to food. By framing sharing practices as acts of “communing”, this analysis highlights the relational and political dimensions of food sovereignty in Canada’s youngest Arctic territory.