“We the people in Nunavut are asking for a change, because it is time for a change”

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

A year after groups of demonstrators last marched with placards outside Nunavut stores to protest against high food prices, the Feeding My Family group plans to hold what they describe as “another peaceful protest against the high cost of food in the Canadian North.”

The protest is planned for 5:00 p.m. Aug. 15 at the Northmart store in Iqaluit and at other stores in communities across the territory.

“The protest is to show that we the people in Nunavut are asking for a change, because it is time for a change. If we don`t do anything, then nothing will change,” says an announcement about the Aug. 15 protest on the Feeding My Family Facebook page.

“We Inuit have stood together to fight hunger, let`s do it again, and fight the high cost of food, that is making us hungry and angry. Let us stand together as one and fight.”

The decision to hold the protests came less than a week after a study released by a team of researchers at the University of Toronto found that 56.5 per cent of Nunavut children — more than half of all children in the territory — live in households deemed “food insecure.”

At the same time, 36.5 per cent of all households in Nunavut reported at least some degree of food insecurity.

The Feeding My Family announcement advises the nearly 20,000 members of the Facebook page to find supporters and administrators who will answer questions about the protest.

Members continue to post comments and photos on the page that illustrate high prices for food and other items in Nunavut, with one member noting that in the High Arctic community of Resolute Bay, less than a kilo of coffee costs more than $40.

Last August in Grise Fiord, the most northerly community in Nunavut and Canada, about 12 protesters showed up to the airport with signs bearing slogans such as: “High Arctic: high food costs, high freight costs, high travel costs: paying the price for Canadian sovereignty,” and “Canada’s Arctic flagpoles need affordable food.”

The point of their protest at the airport was to draw attention to all of the issues surrounding high transportation costs.

But demonstrations are not the only way to bring food costs down, Feeding My Family has said.

Since the last food cost demonstrations in August, 2012, activist Leesee Papatsie of Iqaluit, who founded the Feeding My Family group and organized the first demonstrations against the high cost of food in Nunavut, also urged people in Nunavut to go out and get an education.

“If we are to make it better for our future generations, we need to train or get education to make it better for us and for the future,” Papatsie said.

A Statistics Canada study on food insecurity in Canada showed the link between education and food insecurity: the prevalence of food insecurity is twice as high in households where no one in the household has graduated from high school, compared with households where post-secondary graduation is the highest level of education achieved in the household.