Economic Strategies, Community, and Food Networks in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the social networks of country food sharing in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada, in light of our current understanding of the relationship between climate change and Arctic peoples. Most recent work on the impacts of climate change on Arctic peoples has tended to focus on conceptual frameworks appropriate for this field of inquiry or to document perceived threats of climate change. This research incorporates a social network approach to document the association between different economic strategies (full-time worker, part-time worker, hunter) and categories of kin. It demonstrates that the sharing patterns of hunters favor the cultivation of ties with distant and collateral kin, while those of wage earners favor ties with parents and siblings. These different affiliations point to different vulnerabilities to change. For example, hunters pursue a strategy that provides the flexibility and connections necessary for adapting to changing environmental circumstances but increases their vulnerability to economic and political changes that restrict their ability to generate cash. Wage workers, despite a steady income, are more vulnerable to environmental change as it affects traveling conditions, potential hazards, and hunting success.Key words: Inuit, Canada, climate change, social networks, subsistence, food sharing RÉSUMÉ. Dans ce document, nous nous penchons sur les réseaux sociaux en matière de partage de la nourriture de campagne à Ulukhaktok, dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest, au Canada et ce, à la lumière de notre compréhension actuelle de la relation qui existe entre le changement climatique et les peuples de l'Arctique. Les travaux les plus récents relatifs aux incidences du changement climatique sur les peuples de l'Arctique avaient tendance à se concentrer sur les cadres conceptuels convenant à ce domaine d'enquête ou sur les menaces perçues du changement climatique. Pour sa part, la présente recherche a recours au réseau social pour cerner le lien qui existe entre les différentes stratégies économiques (travailleur à plein temps, travailleur à temps partiel, chasseur) et les catégories de parenté. Nous démontrons que les modèles de partage des chasseurs favorisent la culture de liens avec la parenté distante et la parenté en ligne collatérale, tandis que les salariés favorisent les liens avec les parents, les frères et les soeurs. Ces affiliations différentes laissent entrevoir des vulnérabilités vis-à-vis du changement. Par exemple, les chasseurs adhèrent à une stratégie qui leur donne la souplesse et les liens nécessaires pour s'adapter aux circonstances environnementales changeantes, mais qui accroît leur vulnérabilité en matière de changements d'ordre économique et politique, changements qui restreignent leur aptitude à faire de l'argent. Pour leur part, les salariés, malgré leur revenu stable, sont plus vulnérables au changement environnemental dans la mesure où il a des incidences sur les conditions de déplacement, les risques éventuels et le succès à la chass...

Dene Hunting Organization in Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories: “Ways We Help Each Other and Share What We Can”

“…Methods of collecting network data on foodsharing dynamics have typically used a series of short-term recall surveys (Collings, 2011) or a single long-term recall survey (Magdanz et al, , 2004. We constructed network diagrams on the basis of the interviews with hunters about the households to which they shared out meat from the specific hunts.…”

“…2011;Collings, 2011). Network analysis techniques aim to uncover complexities within social systems that emerge from interactions between social actors (Collings, 2011)-in these cases, interactions involving the transfer of food. Network analysis often assesses the components of a network that are essential to its integrity as a single structure.…”

“…Even allowing for some overstating of shared amounts (Collings, 2011), this figure represents a significant proportion of the total harvest. For the community hunt, as we have no standard edible weight information for processed portions of meat from the community hunt (i.e., "a bag of dry meat" or "some bones") we cannot infer that the pieces shared represented any specific ratio of the total.…”

“…Accounting for variations in sharing practices was certainly a focus for some ethnographical work during the last century (Osgood, [1936(Osgood, [ ] 1970Helm, 1965;Savishinsky, 1974), but recently many references to food-sharing norms have only indicated broadly their importance for Arctic peoples in buffering against variations in resource availability (Berkes and Jolly, 2001;Nuttall et al, 2005;Chapin et al, 2006). Also, the recent literature that does in fact examine the variations and dynamics of sharing in contemporary northern communities usually refers to Inuit, Inuvialuit, or Iñupiat groups (Burch, 1988;Condon et al, 1995;Collings et al, 1998;Bodenhorn, 2000;Wenzel, 1995Wenzel, , 2000Magdanz et al, , 2004Kishigami, 2004;Collings, 2011;Ford and Beaumier, 2011). This study in a contemporary Dene community broadens the academic understanding of sharing norms among Arctic peoples and shows that the social context of resource production processes may influence the dynamics of resource distribution.…”

Transitions of social-ecological subsistence systems in the Arctic

“…Provisioning actions are also enabled by the organization of households into networks engaged in cooperative subsistence activities and sharing of hunting equipment and country food (Magdanz et al 2002;Collings 2011;Harder and Wenzel 2012). This characteristic and well-documented organization of collective provisioning actions among Inuit in the Arctic is the basis for the mixed subsistence-cash economy (Wolfe 1984;Langdon 1991;Marquardt and Caulfield 1996;Usher et al 2003), and is also important in terms of buffering subsistence disparities between lower-and higher-income households (Dombrowski et al 2013;BurnSilver et al 2016).…”