On a recent summer morning, elderly people line up to Tungasuvvingat Inuit Food Bank (TI) for the usual produce selection of colorful chard, heirloom tomatoes and kale, among other fresh fruits, vegetables and non-perishables. But there’s also a house selection: traditional country foods like candied bacon, seal meat and tuktu (frozen caribou cubes). Once the elders finish gathering their food, they gather and catch up in Inuktitut.
It’s just another day of food distribution for YOU in Ottawa’s Vanier neighborhood, and volunteers and staff are hard at work bringing healthy, healing food to the community. It is an essential community program, even more pronounced after three years of global pandemic and price gouging in grocery stores.
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The pressure of rising food costs has increased the community food bank’s need for IT, and has also made day-to-day operations more difficult to manage. Rhona Huneault, IT food safety manager, says the lines at the food bank are getting longer and her grocery bills have doubled.
“Sometimes $1,500 to $2,000 is now $3,000. We don’t buy anything more or less than what we buy,” she says. “I can’t believe the change.”
Huneault says new members of the community are arriving who have never needed the food bank’s services before. A good number are members of the working class community. Huneault receives weekly requests for food gift cards, and community members who are unable to travel to Vanier apply for help feeding their families.
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“The poverty line is now in what was once the middle class,” says Huneault. “People come up to us and tell us they don’t have food week after week.”
“The need grows day by day,” he continues.
Huneault and TI are doing their best to continue to provide support to members of the community, particularly those who are unable to travel to the food bank. During the Omicron variant shutdown last winter, TI secured funding to provide families with weekly food gift cards to ensure the community is food secure.
On a recent summer morning, elderly people line up at the Tungasuvvingat Inuit food bank for the usual selection of produce, but also to sample a taste of home: traditional country foods like candied bacon, seal meat and tuktu.
With this growing need comes greater ambition. Huneault’s dream is to build a new community food center called Qaggiq (an Inuktitut word for a huge igloo that northern communities will build to gather and feast).
It is part of a mission to move from food security to food sovereignty, a shift that allows community members to select all the food they want, rather than settle for what is available.
For Huneault, food sovereignty is about feedback on what foods the community wants to eat, so that IT can source those items. The center would have a main floor equipped with a cold room, freezer, and pantry shelves; another floor would be equipped with a new kitchen for the community to gather, cook and party.
Decolonizing the palate a community experience
It is difficult for Inuit in Ottawa to access food from the countryside, essential to their well-being. TI has adopted the slogan “decolonize the palate” which staff will use in the future. The food bank is trying to move from canned and boxed foods to health-promoting cultural foods.
Huneault works with several food sources, including a local organic farm and several hunters and fishermen, to serve the community the most important foods in the country.
Joan Cunha, an IT staff member who grew up in a advance camp on Baffin Island eating and preparing picnics, said Canadian National Observer Having a diversity of cultural foods available in a communal setting is essential to the mental and physical health of community members.
“We grew up with country food. It is our soul food,” she says. “It is sharing, it is seeing, it is gathering. The more you share, the more it tastes better.”
Cunha says that members of the community will share with each other the foods that are assigned to them in the country, so that everyone can experience the culinary diversity of the north, with the added flavor of sharing a taste of home.
Community member Kevin Ettagik honors that culture when he wakes up on food bank day to bake bread for others.
“It’s nice to have a decent bannock because sometimes the bannock bus has a horrible bannock,” says Ettagik.
Ettagik recognizes the importance of providing his perfected bannock to the community because it is part of the Inuit culture and his own upbringing.
“It is part of survival. That’s what I survived on when I was a little puppy, I survived on bannock and tea. That’s why I want to give bannock in my old age. I want to make sure everyone has something,” she says.
Note to readers: The TI food bank, while open to food donations, prefers monetary support in order to provide members of the community with food that promotes health, such as fresh produce and food from the field.