In mid-to-late summer, fish racks like this one dot rural Alaska villages all along the rivers. Salmon are the primary fish hanging up to dry, or smoking in tarp-covered shelters. But other fish are also important food sources for rural Alaska. Late summer is also the time when rural Alaskans gather berries of all sorts to store for winter. Later in the year, just as the snow starts to fly, rural Alaskans hunt moose and caribou, ducks and geese, and sometimes bear and other large mammals. But wild-gathered foods are becoming scarce--federally-instituted catch quotas this year, for example, have forced rural Alaskans to watch king salmon swim by on their way to Canadian streams. They are forbidden to catch them, although king salmon have been a foundational food for rural Alaska since time immemorial. Industrial, military, mining, and other development activities threaten wild foods, from salmon to moose to caribou to berries to ducks to geese. The number of available wildlife for hunting has decreased, and increasingly rural Alaska looks to stores to purchase food. But what is in those stores? Much of the stuff sold in rural Alaska are processed foods, high in carbohydrates and sugar, packed with salt and chemicals, and culturally incomprehensible to older Alaskans. Additionally, store-bought food is expensive in rural Alaska. Some communities are able to farm and to raise gardens to provide for their food needs. But much of rural Alaska is inhospitable to most forms of farming, and thus rural Alaskans are often faced with the difficult task of putting healthy, nutritious, affordable, culturally-recognized food on the family table.
In this section, students will explore food and rural Alaska. Some of the questions we will ask include:
- what are the major foods used in rural Alaska? How have foods changed in rural Alaska in the last several decades?
- why is store-bought food so expensive in rural Alaska?
- Why are salmon runs being restricted? What kinds of hunting and gathering laws have restricted the ability of rural Alaskans to put food on their table?
- how has wolf control, bear control, and other predator control programs been used to increase wildlife populations for hunting? Are these programs effective? Are they scientifically justified? Politically justified? Who do they benefit and how do we know?
- What is in the food in the rural stores? Are the stores equally distributed in rural Alaska?
- How has immigration and emigration affected the availability of certain foods in rural Alaska?
- How secure is Alaska's food? What is food security, and how does this new concept shape Alaska's rural food policies?
Food Security in the North
ReplyDeleteThis Alaska Indigenous blog post from last summer talks about the high cost of groceries, and the effect of closing down King Salmon fishing early in the Kuskokwim river. Many photos from Nunavut and Alaska alike show the costs of food, and these high costs are in remote (such as Nome or Kotzebue), but not actually rural communities.
Last summer, across Nunavut Inuit protested the high cost of food and garnered much media attention, and some political action, but not enough.
Not that I really think the Food Guide is the healthiest way to eat, but here is a link to Canada's food guide for First Nations, Inuit and Metis that includes traditional meats, fry bread, and frozen vegetables. They tried to only include food that are available all across Canada in order to be relevant.
ReplyDeleteAC Value Centers are rural Alaska's main grocery stores. Who owns the company? The North West Company, a Canadian-owned mass retailer.
ReplyDeletehere is the history of the company
And this is a brief link to a CBC article saying that the company's net profits are up 12% this year. The company says it is due to better shipping. Residents in rural communities in the North might say it is due to rising costs.
Shopping in the Bush
ReplyDeleteIn this blog post (2011), a rural resident explains how most shopping is done, using Span Alaska or Fred Meyer.
Shopping Tips for new Bush Teachers
This is a longer wedpage about the varieties of ways to get food to Rural Alaska, and the pros and cons of each method, and contact info.
http://www.anthc.org/chs/epicenter/upload/traditional_diet.pdf
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to an article detailing the diets and food consumption of rural Alaskan natives. This article contains many tables on both store bought and subsistence food consumption by region. Researchers found that people were concerned about the contamination of the food obtained through subsistence and the cost of food bought in the store. Subsistence plays a large roll in the lifestyles of rural Alaskans.