Northern food certainly isn’t limited to wild meat. Since the early days of colonization and as the Hudson’s Bay and North West Companies settled in Canada’s hinterland, Indigenous people traded for commercial groceries. Staples like flour, sugar, canned meat and condensed milk were introduced to Indigenous diets. On the one hand, having readily available food saved time and energy hunting or foraging, but on the other hand, new diet related illnesses like type 2 diabetes, malnutrition, obesity, tooth decay and heart disease took hold.
The introduction of grocery stores also lead to a disconnection from traditional ways of life and family roles, which in turn has lead to depression, substance abuse and housing insecurity. Many of these groceries were intended for people living in camps and were produced to have a long shelf life. Today, those “camp life” buying habits are still here as people must often buy food for many generations of family living under one roof, not to mention that most produce is spoiled by the time it reaches grocery stores.
There is a brand loyalty to many of the canned or boxed goods you find throughout the North: in an amusing twist, many Northerners are very specific about what staple groceries you buy for the home or bring to a camp. It is not unheard of to be scolded or sent back to the store if you were to buy Kikkoman soy sauce as opposed to China Lily.
These photographs were made as part of my project "The Hunt for Healthy Food" funded by The Trebek Initiative, a grant program offered by the National Geographic Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
