Food & Foodways, 10:55–78, 2002

Copyright © 2002 Taylor & Francis

0740-9710/02 $12.00 + .00
DOI: 10.1080/07409710190032232

FOOD AND THE MAKING OF MODERN

INUIT IDENTITIES

Edmund Searles
Department of Anthropology
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK USA

Although the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic have access to an ever-expanding

market of different kinds of foods, they continue to invest considerable time
and money obtaining Inuit foods, that is, foods hunted, fished, and gathered
within the Inuit homeland. In this article, I explore how Inuit use these two
types of foods (Inuit food and non-Inuit food) to express cultural differences
as well as personal and collective identity. I focus on three realms of expres-
sive activity: 1) local networks of exchange, 2) local discourses about the moral
and physiological effects of Inuit and non-Inuit foods, and 3) the cultural logic
of eating Inuit and non-Inuit foods. In short, food serves as an important vehicle
in the production of meaning and identity, a process that has become increasingly
important politically yet increasingly complicated socially and economically as
Inuit react to an expanding world of commodities and consumer tastes.

. . . things which are good to think with may also be good for eating.
—Raymond Firth (1973:260)

The study of food and foodways—which Counihan (1999:6) states is the

“behaviors and beliefs surrounding the production, distribution, and con-
sumption of food”—provides a rich field for sociological, culture, and sym-
bolic analysis.1 “Eating is never a purely biological activity.” Sidney Mintz
(1996:7) argues, but a practice which is always conditioned by meaning. In
this article, I will trace how different kinds of foods and food activities
become meaningful, morally, politically, and personally. Inuit use different
foods not only to articulate cultural difference and cultural distinctiveness,
but to make claims about the power and importance of Inuit food.

55
56 EDMUND SEARLES

With a few exceptions, scholars of Inuit culture have treated food almost
exclusively from an economic or an evolutionary perspective, that is, as a
material resource that is a key component of a subsistence mode of produc-
tion adapted for arctic ecosystems (e.g., Dahl 2000; Freeman et al. 1998;
Wenzel 1991).2 The Inuit of Nunavut, one of the four major Inuit groups of
the Canadian Arctic (the others are the Inuvialuit of the Western Canadian
Arctic, the Inuit of Arctic Quebec, and the Inuit of Labrador), eat more than
just foods obtained through hunting and other subsistence activities. Fully
integrated into a globalized cash economy, Inuit have access to an increas-
ing variety of foods, from avocados imported from Mexico to Arctic char
fished from local lakes and rivers. As the number of foods available to Inuit
increases so has the interest in fitting these foods into local systems of mean-
ing and value. One way Inuit generate meaning is by situating themselves,
their actions, and the objects they use and consume within a spectrum of
dichotomies distinguishing the world of Inuit from the world of Qallunaat
(“White people” or people of Eurocanadian descent). These dichotomies
are based on a number of historical trends, including 1) the recent shift from
an economy dominated by hunting to an economy characterized by a mix-
ture of wage labor and subsistence activities (Wenzel 1991); 2) the recent
increase in the number of Qallunaat who call Nunavut home; and 3) the
recent urbanization of a large majority of the Nunavut Inuit population.
Although the exact meaning and moral weight of these dichotomies may
vary, Inuit invoke them in everyday discourse to express the distinctiveness
of Inuit culture and identity.

The way in which Inuit describe a particular way of eating as being typi-
cally “Inuit” or a certain food as a typically “Qallunaat” food reveals how
Inuit objectify, institutionalize, and even reify a world of objects and prac-
tices (cf. Berger and Luckmann 1966). But this process of “objectifying” is
always in flux due to three factors: 1) social experience in Nunavut is var-
ied; 2) Inuit lifestyles have become increasingly diverse; and 3) Inuit are
more actively involved than ever in the politics of cultural identity (cf. Briggs
1997; Cruikshank 1997; Nuttall 1998; Saladin d’Anglure and Morin 1992).
Inuit leaders are actively constructing a collective Inuit identity in order to
achieve specific political and economic goals, such as convincing other na-
tions to ban the production of pesticides that are contaminating the animals
and fish Inuit eat, or promoting Inuit-owned businesses and products out-
side of Canada. Furthermore, Inuit of all backgrounds are involved in an
ongoing discourse about what it means to be Inuit versus what it means to
be Qallunaat—about fundamental differences between the ways Inuit and
Qallunaat understand and interact with the world. Both official political
discourse and private dialogue are part of the production of Inuit identity
 FOOD AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INUIT IDENTITIES 57

(cf. Dorais 1997). As I have argued elsewhere, it is the dialectic of the per-
sonal and the public that drives the creative expression and subjective expe-
rience of Inuit personhood in everyday life (Searles 1998a, 2001).
Food and eating plays an important role in this dialectic, since they re-
veal how Inuit transform their embodied, emotional experience of the lived
world into an objectified and public display of cultural differences. Since
the 1950s, anthropologists and sociologists have argued that Inuit and
Qallunaat quickly developed caste-like social relations (Brody 1975; Duffy
1998; Graburn 1969; Honigmann and Honigmann 1965; Mitchell 1996;
Paine 1977; D. Smith 1993; Vallée 1967). This caste-like structure emerged,
in part, because of policies of acculturation. These policies created a condi-
tion of “internal” colonialism, one in which a small (and nonpermanent)
group of Qallunaat managed to maintain near absolute control over the so-
cial, economic, and political development of the Inuit of the Canadian Arc-
tic. Many observers of contemporary politics and society in Nunavut con-
tend that internal colonialism has ended.3 Although the balance of political
control has shifted into the hands of Intuit leaders, many Intuit still believe
that they live in a world dominated by Qallunaat values and modes of gov-
ernance.4 The push for autonomy on the part of Inuit leaders with the ex-
pansion of a massive bureaucracy in Nunavut, still dominated by Qallunaat,
has intensified the discourse of difference on the part of Inuit. The diverse
forms of symbolic capital attributed to certain foods, their consumption,
and their exchange in everyday life remain central to the ways in which
Inuit relate to their colonial past and to a postcolonial present, an era in
which caste-like relations and sentiments continue to deeply impact social
experience. Today, Inuit in Nunavut use the imagined distinctions between
Inuit and Qallunaat as they do the imagined differences between tradition
and modernity, as a source of power and creative energy in the crafting of
collective and self-identities (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 1993). Eating and
the exchange of food figure prominently in this symbolic construction of
both cultural identity and individual autonomy.

In much the same way western Apache use joking and other gestures to
reveal how their moral and social worlds are distinct from those of the “White
Man” (Basso 1979), Inuit often treat eating and sharing food as resources
for cultural critique and social distancing. In this article, I deal with three
features of food and eating that illustrate how food and eating are impli-
cated in a symbolic construction of dichotomies linked to the making of
modern Inuit identity. They are: 1) the place of Qallunaat and Inuit foods in
local systems of exchange; 2) local ideas about the physiological and moral
effects of eating different kinds of “Inuit” and “Quallunaat” food; and 3)
the cultural logic and politics of preparing and eating a meal Inuit style.
58 EDMUND SEARLES

Before I address these topics, however, I will present a brief description of

the region that Nunavut Inuit call home.

RESEARCH SETTING: NUNAVUT AND NUNAVUMMIUT

Nunavut, which means “our land” in Inuktitut, is a vast territory (770,000
square miles) of land, lakes, and rivers, and coastline in the extreme north-
east of North America. Residents of Nunavut refer to themselves as
Nunavummuit, or “people of Nunavut,” a term that includes both Inuit and
Qallunaat. The territory of Nunavut was created April 1, 1999 when the
Northwest Territories (NWT) were split into two separate entities, Nunavut
and the Northwest Territories. When Nunavut became a separate territory,
the 23,500 Inuit living in 27 communities suddenly inherited the distinction
of being residents of the only territory in Canada in which an aboriginal
population constitutes a voting majority, because they outnumber Qallunaat,
the other group, by almost 7 to 1.5 Nunavut has emerged as the symbol of a
new era in aboriginal-nonaboriginal relations in Canada, one in which ab-
original and nonaboriginal (in this context, Inuit and Qallunaat) persons
share equal access to power and representation in regional government.6 Of
the 3,500 Qallunaat living in Nunavut—mostly Canadians of European origin—
about 85 percent of them live in Iqaluit, Nunavut’s capital and largest town.

Iqaluit, named Frosbisher Bay until the 1980s, has been the hub of com-
mercial activity and government expansion in the eastern Northwest Terri-
tories since the 1950s. Iqaluit is home to a growing population of Qallunaat
that is quite diverse and which includes enclaves of French Canadians,
Maritime Canadians (mostly from New Brunswick and Newfoundland),
western Canadians, as well as a small group of British and other ex-patriots
from other nations in the British Commonwealth. Some of them have be-
come millionaires, benefiting from an endless supply of government con-
tracts and other business opportunities that have coincided with the growth
of Iqaluit’s size and infrastructure. Iqaluit is also the home of an expanding
population of Inuit professionals, many of whom work for the newly cre-
ated Inuit corporations and associations, including Nunavut Tunngavik In-
corporated (NTI), an Inuit corporation set up to negotiate the Nunavut Land
Claims Agreement on behalf of all the Inuit of Nunavut. The Agreement,
ratified in 1993, transferred 136,000 square miles of land and $1.148 bil-
lion of compensatory funds to Inuit in return for 640,000 square miles, which
is now controlled by the Canadian government. The funds have been in-
vested in the creation of the Nunavut government and in funding the opera-
 FOOD AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INUIT IDENTITIES 59

tions of NTI and other Inuit organizations. NTI has become a major eco-
nomic force in Nunavut. It has invested millions of dollars in loans for the
start up of Inuit-owned businesses. One of NTI’s greatest sources of pride,
however is its hunter support program. In 1994, the average amount of the
240 grants made to individual Inuit was $7,000 (Wenzel 2000), making this
a huge injection of capital in a segment of Nunavut society (i.e., hunters),
which has grown increasingly marginalized economically and politically in
the past decades.
Despite the increased economic prosperity of Iqaluit, Iqaluit continues to
have its share of problems. These problems include a chronic housing short-
age, a high unemployment rate (for Inuit), growing disparities in socioeco-
nomic status (on a trip to Iqaluit in 2000, I met and interviewed several
homeless Inuit), and high rates of substance abuse and other forms of crimi-
nal activity. For many Inuit outside of Iqaluit, this town of 4,500 has come
to symbolize not only a place of danger and greed, but a place in which
Qallunaat dominate town life and where the vast majority of Inuit have
become more Qallunaat than Inuit (cf. Rasing 1994). It is perhaps for these
reasons that many Inuit (especially those not involved in politics) do not
have very high expectations for the new Nunavut government and its prom-
ise of redistributing power and prosperity to all Inuit.

Although the land claims era in Canada has led to new forms of social,
economic, and cultural empowerment (Cruikshank 1998; cf. Fienup-Riordan
2000 for an Alaskan example), it has not eliminated the social, economic,
and ideological divisions for many aboriginal groups (including Inuit). De-
spite the fact that these divisions are poorly documented, they remain cen-
tral to understanding the struggles Inuit face in creating a workable moder-
nity of their own.7 In my own work, I have concentrated on the interpersonal
dimensions of these divisions, such as the experience of modernity, the con-
struction of identity, and how Inuit attribute Inuitness to a wide range of
practices, ideas, and objects. My research in Iqaluit involved working with
various families with different interests and aspirations, including individu-
als who have used the recent surge of economic and political opportunities
to better their lives as well as those who had little interest in doing so. In
fact, I lived with a group of Inuit who had chosen to flee the problems of
Iqaluit by finding refuge in a hunting camp some 200 miles from Iqaluit.
This group (i.e., the Pisukti family) belonged to a large extended family,
many of whose members live in Iqaluit. This hunting camp group, however,
had decided to pursue a lifestyle that included a more “traditional” defini-
tion of work, one based almost entirely on hunting, fishing, and associated
practices. Ironically, however, much of their work was not compensated by
financial rewards, and they actually had to rely on the financial support of
60 EDMUND SEARLES

local hunters and trappers organizations, government, and other family

members to make living at the hunting camp possible. They needed to in-
vest thousands of dollars annually in the maintenance of their equipment
and in the purchase of fuel, ammunition, and other supplies. Except for
small quantities that can be sold to local restaurants and “country food”
stores, it is illegal to sell meat and fish. On the other hand, the foods that
these hunters regularly provided family and friends in Iqaluit gave them
and their lifestyle considerable symbolic capital (often contested capital, of
course), a point I develop more extensively in the remaining sections of this
article.

FOOD, EXCHANGE, AND COMMUNITY

Food sharing and exchange have been central to the study of Inuit social
organization since Boas’s ([1888] 1964) description of the sharing prac -
tices of the Central Eskimo in the late 1800s. Even today, Inuit are consid-
ered to be an ideal “hunter-gatherer” group to study because of the ongoing
intensity of hunting and gathering practices (cf. Balikci 1967; Dahl 2000;
E. Smith 1991; Wenzel 1991). The dominant theoretical premise of stu-
dents of Inuit social organization is that the sharing of Inuit food—guided
by principles of generalized reciprocity and rational decision making—is
adaptive. The institutionalization of sharing created networks of interde-
pendence that lasted for many centuries, and the ethics embedded in these
sharing practices enabled Inuit to survive frequent episodes of food short-
ages (Balikci 1959: 128). According to Wenzel, ningiqtuq, the name North
Baffin Inuit give their system of food sharing “. . . is premised on the knowl-
edge that a person may expect to receive reciprocal treatment from others
because of responsibilities that kinship, village co-residence and cultural
solidarity confer on each person” (1991:99). The episodes of food short-
ages started to decrease in intensity and frequency as commodities became
more abundant and affordable to Inuit, a process that began with the estab-
lishment of commercial whaling and Hudson Bay Company trading posts
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These traders and merchants intro-
duced Inuit to system based on the exchange of alienable objects between
independent transactors (Parry and Bloch 1989). Although many scholars
argue that Inuit really participate in two different economic systems (e.g.
Langdon 1986), whether or not Inuit see these two systems as mutually
exclusive remains poorly understood and poorly documented. The general
argument made by scholars working in the Canadian Arctic mostly mirrors
the claims many Inuit are making about their own practices, that the local
 FOOD AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INUIT IDENTITIES 61

subsistence based system of production and exchange continues to be an

active and vibrant part of community life (Freeman et al. 1998). What this
argument ignores, however, is the ways in which Inuit regularly transform
(or attempt to transform) alienable objects (i.e., commodities) into unalien-
able ones by inserting them into local networks of interdependency. This
practice has important implications for understanding the various ways in
which Inuit express their identity. For those Inuit who have the means, the
inclusion of commodities in locally created and maintained interdependent
networks of exchange is a source of empowerment. These practices also
reaffirm a distinction that Inuit regularly make about the ways Inuit depend
on one another for support versus the ways in which Qallunaat do not.
Whereas the former is a world of continuous sharing and redistribution of
wealth, practices that strengthen the ties of interdependence, the latter is a
world of continuous accumulation of personal wealth, practices that lead to
social stratification and isolation (cf. Nuttall 1992).
I learned the importance of this distinction while visiting the family of
Atamie and Eva in Iqaluit. My wife and I dropped by their home to visit
them and their two young children. As is customary for guests visiting Inuit
households, I proceeded to the kitchen to help myself to a cup of tea with-
out asking. Seeing a large container of fresh orange juice on their kitchen
counter, I decided I wanted a glass of orange juice instead, in part because I
was nursing a sore throat and because it had been a long time since I last had
a drink of orange juice like this. The family we were staying with at the time
could not afford to keep a regular supply in their house, because it cost
$7.00 for a half-gallon. I asked Atamie if I could have a glass of the juice.
Alarmed and slightly annoyed by my request, Atamie replied, “Don’t you
ever learn? You don’t have to ask.”
Confused, I poured myself a glass of juice. It was not until later that I
learned that Atamie was annoyed by my question because it made him feel
like a Qallunaat. By politely asking him for some juice, I was redefining his
household as a Qallunaat one, a household in which the ethics and etiquette
surrounding access to food is predicated on the concept that food, like any
other commodity, belongs to the person (or persons) who buys it. It is indi-
viduals (or the various individuals who manage the household budget) who
decide whether household property shall be given away, sold, or discarded.
On the other hand, in the Inuit world of goods, foods as well as other ob-
jects associated with hunting, fishing, and gathering are more or less com-
munal property, belonging not to individuals but to a larger group, which
can include multiple households (Dahl 2000; Nuttall 1992; Searles 1998a).
Another important feature of this Inuit system of exchange is that despite
its communality, those who contribute more regularly to the communal sup-
62 EDMUND SEARLES

ply of goods generally earn the right to more authority and power than those
who do not. In fact, this is one way in which Inuit become leaders within
their extended families. Indeed, many exceptional hunters became leaders
because of their hunting success, although this is not the only way to be-
come a leader. Nevertheless, the case of Atamie raises an important point
because it reveals how Inuit are dealing with socieoeconomic differences
within their communities. Unlike other members of his family, Atamie was
able to buy expensive items like fresh orange juice because both he and his
wife (who likewise supported various members of her family) had steady
salaries. As a consequence they were able to share orange juice and other
commodities with their family and friends. On the other hand, because of
the amount of time he had to devote to his job, Atamie was unable to hunt as
much as his unemployed relatives. Consequently he was unable to contrib-
ute Inuit food to his family’s communal supply. By giving away orange
juice to me and hunting supplies and equipment (which he purchased) to his
extended family, he was trying to enhance his respect and prestige within
his family and the community even as his contributions of Inuit food de-
clined.

By the same token, however, this process can become extremely difficult
for those who have steady salaries. Indeed, many Inuit find themselves
trapped by the system, especially when a person finds herself supporting
rather than receiving from an ever-expanding network of family and friends.
Whereas some Inuit deal with this by quitting their jobs and thereby elimi-
nating their access to a salary, others have developed more subtle methods
of dealing with increased demand, strategies that enable them to maintain
prestige, social status, and their jobs.

Alukie, the matriarch of a prominent Inuit family in Iqaluit is one such

example. She regularly provides meals and food gifts (of both Inuit and
Qallunaat foods) to a broad network of kin and friends, including brothers
and sisters, children and their spouses, and even neighbors. 8 This family
gained its prominence in part because of its reputation as a generous family,
and several of its members have won seats on the town council. Because of
the family’s affluence and notoriety, more distant relatives started to join in
on meals and help themselves to the family’s storeroom of food supplies.
Alukie was expected to continue feeding and providing food gifts to these
relatives because she and her husband both had good paying jobs and could
afford to purchase Qallunaat foods regularly. Furthermore, she did not want
to be called minik (“stingy”), which is a source of shame and stigma. How-
ever, Alukie had a problem with food supplies of her own. She quickly ran
out of the large supply of canned and other nonperishable foods that she had
sent to her by cargo ship once a year from Montreal. The practice of order-
 FOOD AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INUIT IDENTITIES 63

ing large quantities of commodities from stores in Montreal and having

them transported by the annual sea lift saves many residents of Nunavut
thousands of dollars a year.
In response to the rapid depletion of her annual sea lift shipments, Alukie
adopted a strategy that enabled her to remain generous without spending all
of her salary on supporting her extended family. She discontinued her an-
nual food shipments from Montreal as well as any large purchases from the
local store in order to keep her cupboards as bare as possible. She then
purchased a small quantity of food on a daily basis, enough to feed herself,
her husband, and other family members who dropped by to visit. These
relatives who previously had free access to her cupboards and storeroom of
food supplies soon realized they had to look elsewhere for food and other
supplies. Of course, Alukie’s home was always open to family and friends
who wanted food or to be included in a meal. However, if the food ran out
before these people had their share, Alukie could not be blamed for being
stingy. Rather, she could retain the image of being generous and giving,
values associated with Inuit identity.
Just as some Inuit try to incorporate Qallunaat foods (and other com-
modities) into local networks of exchange, others play down the impor-
tance of such actions by emphasizing that the sharing of only the most valu-
able items, such as Inuit food (e.g., walrus meat), really counts. This is
especially true of full-time hunters who possess hunting talent and skill but
who often lack the money necessary to maintain their equipment and pur-
chase other supplies, such as gas, parts, and ammunition. For hunters, the
most important goods they can provide the community are Inuit foods. On
the other hand, the actions of Atamie and Alukie reveal that new forms of
generosity, especially those involving the circulation of commodities, have
created new sources of empowerment and prestige for those with salaries,
including women, many of whom invest regularly in helping their relatives
who hunt.

Surrounded by images, objects, and foods that have been produced and
packaged elsewhere, Inuit strive to give new meaning to these entities. In-
deed, with all of the emphasis on the importance of the exchange of Inuit
foods in the production and reproduction of social ties on the part of social
scientists working on the north, it appears that it is Qallunaat, not Inuit, who
are uneasy with the blurring of categories. This is true in part because the
two systems are often regarded as existing in competition, and sometimes
they are, but much of the time they are not. Since many economically disad-
vantaged Inuit may not be able to share the same amount as others, sharing
has become a social institution that can lead to both prestige (for those who
give generously) and stigma (for those who don’t give when it appears that
64 EDMUND SEARLES

they can). In this way Inuit transform goods “symbolic” of the Qallunaat
world into resources which Inuit use to build status and prestige and to
express Inuit identity.

INUIT FOOD AND THE BODY

I have shown that Inuit commonly assign food to ethnic and cultural categories
—Inuit and Qallunaat. In theory, any of the foods hunted, fished, and
gathered locally, from eider eggs to seaweed, from ptarmigan to Canada
geese, from Arctic char to Arctic cod are classified as Inuit foods. By con-
trast, those foods that are produced and packaged outside of Nunavut are
termed Qallunaat foods. My goal in this section is not to detail a single
cognitive map or cultural model of how different foods are classified and
conceptualized by Inuit (cf. Quinn and Holland 1987; Hunn 1990), but to
explore the personal and ideological dimensions of these classification sys-
tems. Specifically, I argue that by assigning foods to ethnic categories, Inuit
express self-identity and power.
A recent trend among Nunavut Inuit has been to identify real “Inuit”
foods with those foods derived from the muscle, fat, and organs of a variety
of sea mammals, like ringed seal, bearded seal, walrus, beluga whale, and
polar bear. These foods are said to be effective in keeping the body warm,
making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making the body
healthy—all qualities, that Inuit value (cf. Borré 1994). Different informants
often explained to me how the consumption of Inuit foods leads to healthy,
strong, and sturdy bodies and how they keep the body warm. Kelli, the
oldest brother of the Pisukti family, considered these foods extremely effec-
tive in keeping the body warm because they help the body to produce heat,
even when consumed frozen. He stated that walrus meat is not only an ex-
cellent source of energy because it is packed with vitamins and minerals,
but that it is also the best heat source. “A pound of frozen walrus meet
consumed before the start of a day of winter travel,” he claimed, “will keep
you warm all day.” Although frozen meat may cause the body to shiver at
first, Kelli added, its warming effects are gradually released in the body,
thereby enabling the body to remain warm for long stretches of time. This is
particularly important when Inuit hunters must remain still for many hours
waiting for prey, which is characteristic of some types of hunting.

Oleetoa, Kelli’s youngest brother, was more inclined to talk about the
capacity of Inuit food to make the body strong, and he used a number of
examples to illustrate this point. First, he frequently mentioned the extreme
vitality and strength of his 68-year-old father and leader of the hunting camp,