The people of Canada’s far north are evolving from a self-sufficient economy to a money-based economy strongly tied to the south, have new means of transportation, all while Canada has extended its hand in creating the new territory of Nunavut to help cater to the people of the far north.
Subsistence Economy in the Arctic
It used to be that the people of the Arctic Region survived on a subsistence economy. They would hunt and fish their own food, and trap furry creatures whose fur they could trade, trap whales for the whale oil and blubber they could trade and whose meat they could eat, and trap seals for the seal skins they could trade and whose meat they could eat. They would build their own dwellings, travel by bobsled, make their own clothing out of animal skins, and so forth. Most of the time, they would do things cooperatively with other people, families, and tribes, allowing all the people cooperating together to share in the benefits of the work, including getting food, materials for hunting, dogs to pull sleds, as well as perhaps help when help was needed. There was no need for money. If, after the concept of money was introduced to their culture by Europeans, they needed money to buy western things, they would get it from what they captured by trapping.
In other words, the Inuit subsisted without needing any money. Later, even though they still didn’t need very much money, they could produce products, through their normal hunting and trapping components of their lives, which they could then sell for some money. Now it seems like they need money more than ever. Why?
After European people came around, and started to make inroads into the Inuit communities in the Arctic, they introduced other material things, including new types of foods, snowmobiles, medical care, alcohol, televisions, stoves, oil, heating oil, refrigerators, rifles, ammunition, and so forth. All of these things required the Inuit to have money to purchase them, as well as the means to acquire that money.
The fact that the Inuit have, for a long time now, been increasingly using western things, as well as eating western foods from farther south, this has led to the need for them to figure out how to make more money. This has led to the rise of a money economy within the Arctic Region, which has led many Inuit to abandon their semi-nomadic life and settle down in villages. As this is happening, this has increasingly led the Inuit to move from places that are isolated from one another to the sparse ever-growing communities, which has led to large areas of the Canadian Arctic becoming almost unpopulated. Part of the reason for Inuit moving to settlements is the lure of better housing, stores, medical facilities, and the possibility of a steady job providing a steady monetary income.
Even when the Inuit hunt, they use hunting rifles and ammunition, which cost money to purchase, instead of their former knives and spears, which they made themselves. Also, when they go out and hunt, they tend to use snowmobiles these days, as well as the fuel to run them, which cost money, rather than dogs and sleds, which they made and acquired from the wild themselves, without needing any money. When they go home with their hunted food, they like to store them in refrigerators, and sit down and watch some television, using electricity to operate those devices, all of which also costs money. Then, they also like to eat packaged foods, fruits, and alcohol, which comes from the south, and which also cost money. These “southern comforts” as well as the money needed to have these things has been leading to all sorts of other problems.
It has led to increased health risks, including heart disease, obesity, alcoholism, tooth decay, and suicide, as members of their society start comparing themselves to other member of society and to people farther south. The fact that there are some difficulties that are erupting as a result of becoming a money-based economy has caused some Inuit to react by trying to keep in touch with their roots, including attempting to spend part of the year in hunting parties, living in traditional housing units, and learning how to practice subsistence living. This has allowed for many Inuit to reduce the amount of money they need to purchase things, as they are learning self-reliance. This has caused a small revival in traditional subsistence economic practices, although there is still a great deal of need for money.
Another way to measure subsistence economy is through the amount of money the Inuit would have earned in the free market if they had sold the food for which they hunted, rather than just eat it, or trade it for other things. How much would they have earned? Roughly about $30 million dollars, as estimated by Larry Simpson, with the Department of Sustainable Development in Iqualuit, Nunavut (Simpson, 2008). According to Larry, there is monetary value for everything that could be sold, but doesn’t. This doesn’t just include food, but animal skins, fish, antlers, and other things that could be turned into clothing, or arts and crafts. Finn Lynge, while speaking at the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, in Nuuk, Greenland, in 1998, stated that one of the problems with subsistence economy is the fact that it is difficult to quantify in monetary terms, so economists usually don’t pay attention to it, and don’t include those replaceable monetary values in their statistical analyses of economies (Lynge, 2006). In fact, when governments decide to set aside land as a preserve, they tend to look at the monetary aspect of it, such as money from tourist draws, and so forth. When this happens in other parts of the world, usually the indigenous people, within that area that is being preserved, are forced to evacuate the region, throwing them from a place where they were living within a subsistence economy, in harmony with the nature surrounding them, and putting them in a place where they become an economic liability and burden, and in places where other people already exist, bringing about tribal warfare and ethnic clashes – fortunately most of those type of problems, with indigenous populations living within a subsistence economy, have been avoided in the Inuit-inhabited lands of the far north.
Still, though, the trend, into the foreseeable future, is an increase in population at town nodes, less people living away from each other, an increased monetary economy, steady paycheck work, and being connected economically to the southern parts of Canada as well as the rest of the world. The Inuit are struggling to keep their past, their heritage, and their traditional ways of doing things in mind, passing these ideas and practices on into the next generation, while trying to forge ahead into the future. And, it’s not just for the sake of tradition and culture that they are trying to keep some semblance of their subsistence economy – it’s for the sake of allowing them to be more self-sufficient, with less need on the world economy around them, and less need for its money.
Northern Transportation Systems
In the Arctic Region, as was previously stated, the Inuit used to rely on dogs and sleds to get around to distant locations in order to hunt for their food. These sleds used to be able to go only about 20 or 30 miles in a day’s travel. Now, the dog and sled are being outmoded by the snowmobile, and in some cases, by the all-terrain vehicle (ATV), which can travel 100-150 miles a day. This allows for faster travel, and for increased mobility to move to more distant locations to hunt, which is needed as more and more Inuit cluster into ever-larger communities and need to move ever-farther out to find their food.
Another form of transportation that has become important in the Boreal Forest and Arctic Regions is the airplane. Many communities, whether white settlements, First Nations, or Inuit, have airfields, which allow for aircraft to run scheduled and nonscheduled air service. This allows for people and goods to get to these remote locations much faster, and allows for faster connection with the outside world. Before air service, it might have been impossible to reach a location; now that location can be reached quite quickly by means of aircraft. And, the aircraft can be fitted with floatation devices to float on water, or sleds to land on a snow-covered service, making the aircraft the means of transportation to get to and from locations fast. The only obstacle to using this means of transportation is the fact that it is expensive.
Many times winter roads are built, that are made by compacting snow into a smooth surface, and plowing any excess snow to the side. This allows for motorized vehicles, like personal automobiles and trucks to travel around, delivering people and goods to remote locations, as long as they are properly equipped with snow tires and/or tire chains. But, these roads are only available in the winter months. It might be possible to build all-weather roads in the region, but this costs a great deal of money, and the cost usually outweighs the benefits. If they were built, it might possibly bring economic benefits in the form of increased economic development.
Railroads are also pretty sparse in the Boreal Forest and Arctic Regions in the northern parts of the North American continent, and if more were built to bring goods and people to and from the distant locations up north to locations farther south, this might help with economic development also. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of an economic benefit to increasing railway service to more areas than those that already have them – it might be better to just have good roadways to travel on in any season.
So, how can we improve on the transportation infrastructure of the Boreal Forest Region and the Arctic Region? We could construct more all-weather roads, which allow for personal vehicles and trucks to traverse the large land area, and reap its resources. It would also allow for improved connections between the northern towns and the southern parts of Canada and the United States, which would allow for improved ability for economic functionality. This would allow for more materials to be mined, as well as increased ability to bring products to market if manufactured in those more northern lands. You can find more about this subject below, concerning Nunavut economic growth, and the suggestions concerning their economic growth will work in the other parts of the Boreal Forest and Arctic Regions as well.
Nunavut – Canada’s New Territory
In 1999, the Canadian government took a large part of the Northwest Territories and turned it into a new territory called Nunavut. The area around Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake, on the western mainland of the former Northwest Territories, as well as some of the western Arctic Islands, including the western half of Victoria Island and all of Banks Island, will remain part of the Northwest Territories. The rest of the former Northwest Territories, including the eastern half of all mainland in the former Northwest Territories, along with the vast majority of the Arctic Islands, including the large Baffin Island, were excised from the Northwest Territories to become Nunavut. The new capital of Nunavut is a city called Iqualuit, near the southern end of Baffin Island.
The development of the Territory of Nunavut is part of a series of native land settlements that has precipitated across Canada over the course of the past forty years or so. This is the twelfth land settlement that has happened in Canada over that time period. In other native land settlements, the Canadian government gave the First Nations or Inuit parties land, a cash settlement, and certain hunting rights, in exchange for cancellation of all other claims, but in the case of the Arctic lands, the people were primarily Inuit, meaning there were few white people, and they were spread out over a vast terrain and had a very small population, so the Inuit leaders in the Arctic maintained that they would not settle for anything less than their own semi-autonomous territory.
In this new territory, the Inuit get complete ownership of about 1/5 of the land, and will have joint control over how the remaining 4/5’s of the land gets used – joint control with the federal government of Canada. This means that they will have the ability to approve or deny land planning that uses parts of the land of Nunavut for wildlife protection, environmental protection, and usage of mineral and offshore resources, among other things. The Inuit will also have sole rights to hunt, fish, and trap throughout the Territory of Nunavut, and they also received $1.5 billion from the Canadian federal government. Because the Inuit now have more control over their land, they can now have a greater influence on protecting their environment, including the tundra landscape, from destruction, while helping to establish viable industries in that domain. They also have a greater hand in their own economic development.
This new territory of Nunavut encompasses about 735,000 square miles, almost three times as much land as the U.S. state of Texas, and has a population of about 33,000 according to the last census count. Today, the economy of Nunavut includes the money people make from subsistence economic means, as well as mining, including gold, lead, zinc, nickel, copper, and diamonds, as well as government services, particularly in the capital of Iqualuit on Baffin Island.
So, how do the people of Nunavut take care of their environment? What are they doing to help protect the environment of their homeland? According to the Nunavut Department of Environment, there are several things they try to do, particularly through that department (Environmental Protection, 2011). This includes enforcing their own Environmental Protection Act, as well as all other environmental regulations and guidelines; undertaking initiatives intended to identify and resolve environmental issues; provide input and direction to government agencies, industries, and the public through environmental assessments and land-use planning initiatives to minimize impact on the environment; provide advice to industries and government concerning environmental impacts and issues; and develop policies that help Nunavummiut (the people of Nunavut) cope with climate change.
So, what are ways that the Inuit can help to improve their economy? First they need to improve their roadways, creating all-season roads that can be used at any time of the year, and develop proper means for personal vehicles and trucks to safely navigate the roads in the harsher winter months, such as requiring the use of snow tires and tire chains. After developing a better roadway system to get to their community nodes, which are continuing to increase in population size, they can then figure out ways to get more outside business. Perhaps they can build factories which allow them to produce consumer goods that can then be sold in the markets farther south, as well become part of the automobile production supply chain by producing parts needed in the assembly of automobiles. As this takes place, many of the materials needed for those consumer goods and automobile parts can by supplied by mines from their own territory.
Another possible idea is to develop, by hybridization and genetic engineering, shorter and quicker-growing versions of grains, such as wheat, rice, oats, barley, and so forth, which need only a short amount of time after planting to be harvested. These plants could grow to 25% of the height of normal stalks of the same species, perfect for the short growing season of the Arctic. This is only one of perhaps a multitude of ideas that we could think of to help the Nunavummiut.
So are the people of Nunavut working to try to protect their environment? Yes. Are there ways they could improve their economic situation? You bet. They are doing a lot to improve their future, and will continue to find ways to improve their well-being into the future.
Conclusion
The people of Canada’s far north are moving into a future that is evolving from a subsistence form of living to a more monetary-based economy, while becoming increasingly linked to the people and economies to their south, while enjoying new forms of transportation available to them that they didn’t have at their disposal before, and have been given more political rights and freedoms by being given their own territory to govern and control. All of these things, though, come with a price, as it means more pressure for its people to make money to buy the things they want and need, social pressures to fit in with the status-quo, and more responsibility as they learn to govern their own territory.
Make sure to look below to find some other articles that might also be of interest to you:
Works Cited
- Environmental Protection (link no longer available). (2011, October 11). Retrieved October 10, 2011, from Nunavut Department of Environment.
- Lynge, F. (1998). Subsistence Values and Ethics. Address to the General Assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Nuuk
- Simpson, L. (2008, August 22). The Subsistence Economy (link no longer available). Retrieved October 10, 2011, from Nunavut ’99:
- Alia, Valerie. (2008). Names and Nunavut: Culture and Identity in the Inuit Homeland. Berghahn Books
