“… Caribou pizza. Muskox burgers. Arctic char loaf. These may sound like gourmet dishes from an upscale, trendy restaurant serving Canadiana cuisine, but they’re actually the foods that the children of Arviat, Nunavut, reject….The Atii group’s project has received roughly $500,000 in federal funding, on the condition that they put together a healthy eating game show, which is being uploaded to YouTube, and an app, said Jamie Bell, public affairs officer at the Nunavut Arctic College. Those resources will then be shared with other communities in Nunavut…. It’s not surprising that kids prefer salty, sugary snacks, but Tagalik says the distaste for fresh, local food comes from Arviat’s roots as a government reserve town — one in which the displaced Inuit people were given grocery store vouchers instead of paycheques.
Inuit … have lived in camps on the shores of Hudson Bay since the 12th century, but didn’t begin to settle in what is now Arviat until 1921, when the Hudsons’ Bay Company set up a trading post to trade furs. In the 1950s, the federal government forcibly relocated the local tribes when caribou migration patterns changed and the people began to starve. Soon after that, the government set up the area’s first Federal Day School, and a nursing station and other services soon followed. It was one of the last Inuit communities to be created through forced relocation…. “
More Coke® Kids: Arviat, Nunavut Youth Trade ‘Country Food’ for Kraft Dinner at “The Huffington Post”
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