How Indigenous northerners are using traditional harvesting to fight food insecurity

Learning to hunt, trap and fish from an elder in his community was transformative for Demian Lawrenchuk, from Fox Lake Cree Nation. 

It connected Lawrenchuk to his culture and put him on a good path in life, he says. Now he's the executive director for Food Matters Manitoba (FMM).

"I kind of laugh that I never heard the term food sovereignty until I came down to Winnipeg. For us, this is just a lifestyle," he said.

Lawrenchuk and other northern food sovereignty advocates say food insecurity in the region is not caused by a lack of food, but by systemic problems like over-reliance on imported foods. 

Lawrenchuk's home community, 760 kilometres north of Winnipeg, was one of the first to take part in FMM's harvesters program, which pays and outfits hunters to feed their communities. 

He says it creates opportunities for people to feed their family and neighbours while becoming "pillars of their communities." 

"It's really obvious that we can't go very far at all by ourselves but learning how to live that is very difficult, especially in a community that has experienced the residential school system," he said. 

The residential school system disrupted communities' understandings of how to be healthy, successful, caring and independent, he said. 

FMM works to undo other harms, Lawrenchuck added. He said early settlers brought salted meats to the area because they said there was no food, but the locals knew better.

"You could spin around with a blindfold, stop in any direction and just go forward and get beautiful food, get some of the best food in the world," he said.

He said food insecurity in remote communities is a problem created by the Canadian government and the government should address the issue. 

The Canadian Income Survey in 2022 showed the territories experienced the highest rates of food insecurity in the country and Nunavut had by far the highest rate with over 62 per cent of people saying they had experienced it. 

Another 27 per cent of people in N.W.T. and over 21 per cent of people in the Yukon experienced food insecurity. 

In Iqaluit, Joseph Murdoch-Flowers, co-executive director of Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre, says the centre serves between 300 and 500 meals each day. The city's population sits just under 7,500. 

"We see food insecurity increasing year over year," he said. 

Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre distributes boxes of "country foods" and boxes of produce at multiple price points. 

The centre also opened a store where people can buy bulk items on a sliding affordability scale. Murdoch-Flowers said the country foods in particular are popular. 

But while Inuit take pride in their country food, they can be hard for some to access. A southern understanding of what fighting food insecurity means is challenging, too. 

"The way that [food insecurity] is often discussed is around increasing Inuit reliance on southern food," Murdoch-Flowers said. 

"Agriculture is not a part of our culture. And that's not a starting point for a discussion on how we should eat."

Too much emphasis on gardening

Reliance on southern foods including canned goods — that can have high salt content — can contribute to cardiovascular disease, said Amelie Clark, a registered nurse and diabetes educator. 

Clark, a Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin citizen, also worked for a chronic disease management program for five years in Whitehorse. 

"The rate of diabetes is getting worse [in Indigenous communities]. There's a lot of people walking around, even with pre-diabetes, that don't even know it," Clark said.

Clark grew up in Carmacks, Yukon, about 175 kilometres north of Whitehorse, and knows how hard it can be to access fresh food. Her family would travel to Whitehorse to get groceries and would often rely on canned foods to get by.

Clark said going back to hunting and gathering and becoming more self-reliant in accessing food is an important part of the puzzle. 

"These foods are natural. They're from the land, and yeah, they're healthy," she said. 

Lawrenchuk said FMM has had to deal with southern perspectives about how to tackle food insecurity, too. 

He said often there's too much emphasis put on gardening. While greenhouses are an important tool, he said growing seasons can be as short as two months. 

"How much lettuce are you going to grow to feed an entire community?" he said. 

Lawrenchuk said FMM found it challenging to convince funders to support harvesters financially. But once it happened, things changed quickly. 

"[We] went from struggling to have these little gardens mature in a season to produce edible vegetables to all of a sudden producing tens of thousands of pounds of food year after year," he said. 

Qajuqturvik is addressing food security by supporting hunters and fishers who gather country food for its boxes. 

Murdoch-Flowers says that local foods like caribou, Arctic char, berries, seaweeds, clams and more, are not only nutritionally dense but are often preferred. 

"They're overjoyed when they come in and they see that we have the quaq [raw frozen meat] table out," he said.

"They also tell us that when they have country food, they feel healthier."