What local issues are the Caribou Inuits facing today? Is there much government help regarding these issues?
The seals, whales and walruses that are the staples of the Inuit diet have become deposits for the world’s 12 most toxic chemicals, persistent organic pollutants that collect in the animals’ fat and are passed on to the Inuit as they eat, or through breast milk. “We have few alternatives to the food we hunt, as it is the same food through which we identify ourselves, binding us as family and community,” said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, president of Canada’s branch of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which defends the rights of Inuit in Arctic countries. “We are the land and the land is us. When our land and animals are poisoned, so are we.” Oil drilling is disrupting the migration of the caribou herds and changing tradtional birthing grounds, which is dwindling the caribou herds, which the Inuits rely on as a primary summer food source. Global warming has caused flooding of some Inuit communities that were ancestral land for thousands of years that had to be evacuated in recent times.
