Notes: This is my experience of eating Eskimo food. I use the word ‘Eskimo’ because that is how the people I knew identified themselves and how they wanted to be identified. This was to make a distinction between themselves and Native Alaskan people who were not Eskimos. I respect the people and their love for the foods they grew up with and that have sustained them for generations. Also, I have changed the name of the village in question, calling it simply ‘Village.’
Where Did You Learn to Eat This Food? Part One
I had known it was coming, of course. I can’t honestly say that I was looking forward to it, but I knew it was coming and now it was here. It was time to try Eskimo food, or “niqipiaq,” as it’s called (literally, this means “real food,” and it is also the word used for “meat,” which tells you something). I had been preparing for this moment for months. I was still nervous. Familiar foods prepared in unfamiliar ways is one thing, but I was now faced with eating animals that I had never thought of as potential food before, and this was a real issue for me.
In fact, eating animals at all was a real issue for me. When I arrived in Alaska, I was a vegetarian and had been for the previous seven years. I viewed this as a personal decision and it was one I felt good about. It didn’t take long for this to be a part of what defined me as a person, and again, I was fine with that. Other people, though, had a hard time. They usually got defensive when I would decline or simply not eat meat—I usually heard, “Oh, I hardly ever eat meat.” Frankly, that was their business as far as I was concerned, and always wondered where that defensiveness or need to explain came from. I was never militant about my choice, and I was always polite. Nonetheless, these kinds of experiences gave me some insight into the importance of food as an identity marker, and I brought this knowledge with me to Alaska.
I knew that Eskimo people had been criticized and made fun of because of their food. While language and some other aspects of culture had been beaten out of them when the missionaries came, it was impossible to do away with traditional foods as was done to some Native peoples in the continental US. In the arctic, there are times when you take what you can get, and that means white people eat traditional Eskimo food. It didn’t take long for me to learn the heightened importance of food to the older generation, who had been the ones to suffer the beatings and were still sometimes afraid to speak Eskimo (though, ironically, the one place where Eskimo people from Village regularly speak their language today is church). And I knew the defensiveness I usually encountered about my food choices would only be heightened here. So, I decided that I would eat Eskimo food when the issue came up. I wouldn’t go out looking for it, and I wasn’t particularly thrilled by it, but I would do it.
Since I knew that their food was unlike any I had eaten before, I figured I had best prepare my system for the great quantities of meat that were to come, so that if there were any adverse effects, they would not make themselves known in a room full of Eskimos, who could get insulted. I gradually introduced meat back into my diet. I suffered immediately from stomach upset, lethargy, joint pain, and other issues. Clearly, this stuff did not agree with me, but I kept on.
video is 3:43
