Eskimo Food Security: Why is the U.S helping to promote Starvation amongst the Inuit?

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I think we should help the Inuit. Not because we have a moral obligation to, but because I find the preservation of their culture a valuable thing, worth preserving--analogous to preserving an endangered species. Let me explain:

The Inuit are where they are because they are resistant to change. Global warming is a change--and that change is far more pronounced at the poles. It impacts the entire planet, and that means everybody on the planet is going to have to change along with it--including the Inuit.

That being said, there is a richness to preserving other cultures, and I think we should do that. The oil companies are destroying their habitat up in Prudhoe (If not causing the global warming altogether), and I see no reason why the same supply chain that enables the pipeline canot enable the Inuit to preserve their way of life.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

I think we should help the Inuit. Not because we have a moral obligation to, but because I find the preservation of their culture a valuable thing, worth preserving--analogous to preserving an endangered species. Let me explain:

The Inuit are where they are because they are resistant to change. Global warming is a change--and that change is far more pronounced at the poles. It impacts the entire planet, and that means everybody on the planet is going to have to change along with it--including the Inuit.

That being said, there is a richness to preserving other cultures, and I think we should do that. The oil companies are destroying their habitat up in Prudhoe (If not causing the global warming altogether), and I see no reason why the same supply chain that enables the pipeline canot enable the Inuit to preserve their way of life.

Never got to say many thanks for sharing as you did - and thankfully, there are ways for us to respect the environment while finding ways to survive...although seeing groups as they actually are makes a difference.


For a good video on the issue of how much imagery can make a difference:

Andaman Islanders and Polar Eskimos: Emergent Ethnographic Subjects c1900 at the British Academy - YouTube

 

[Gxg (G²)]

This was timely:

• Food Insecurity: Arctic Heat Is Threatening Indigenous Life - Yale E360
  

As said there for an excerpt:

In northern Greenland, where hunters often use sled dogs, some owners have been forced to kill the animals because it is too costly to continue feeding them given the paucity of prey on their hunts.

According to several recent Canadian studies, one-third to two-thirds of the households in the vast Arctic territory of Nunavut lack access to safe and healthy food. In some places in northern Quebec, soup kitchens are having trouble keeping up with the demand, and food scarcity has been linked to the slow growth of many Inuit children.

Food shortages have always been a challenge for the Inuit and other aboriginal people in the Arctic, as dependence on subsistence hunting and fishing has meant that life is often lived on the edge. Engaging in a rugged life on the land and sea also has been problematic for a new generation of Inuit who tend to identify more with southern cultural values than the ones their parents and grandparents held.

The current food shortages, however, are something quite different, because along with skyrocketing food prices — milk often costs $15 a gallon and steak more than $25 a pound — climate change has made subsistence hunting less reliable and more dangerous. Once-stable sea ice is now breaking apart under the feet of indigenous hunters and their sled dog teams.

“In the 1980s, we could expect three to five feet of ice in early March,” says Inupiaq elder Austin Swan, 68, who lives in the small community of Kivalina on the north slope of Alaska. “Today [in mid-March], we have open water in some places and very thin sea ice elsewhere. Weeks of minus-40 weather seem to never come, as they did in the 1980s.” He says the decline in sea ice makes it difficult to hunt bearded seals and almost impossible to hunt beluga and bowheads.

Inuit hunters are traveling longer distances to get around open water. ED STRUZIK
“It’s too dangerous,” says Swan. “It’s the same with caribou on land. They’ve really declined.”

Swan is one of 146 Alaskans representing 81 villages who contributed to a report on food security published by the Alaska Chapter of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) in December. In addition to citing climate change, rising fuel and food prices, and resource development as causes of the problem, the report calls for a complete reevaluation of how wildlife and resources are managed in the Arctic during a time of rapid change. This reassessment would involve an examination, for example, of how oil, gas, and mineral development might negatively impact caribou herds.​