RIGOLET, LABRADOR — Karl Michelin woke at 6:30 a.m. and saw the remote coastal land outside his window — fresh white snow below, sharp blue skies above.

He knew that it was time to close up his camp for the winter on a clear day after the first snowfall.

But first, he had to care for Josie. Already, the toddler was a physical force, playing living room soccer with a balloon beneath the caribou horns mounted on the wall, or thunking a heavy steel hammer toothlessly against the exposed partition of a house addition.

This morning, Josie was calm and smiling. Michelin changed her diapers, prepared her bottle and dressed her for the day, before retrieving his rifle from the case in the kitchen.

Michelin hitched his boat to his truck, protected from the wind by clothes that his wife had crafted — a dickie from the fur of a fox he’d trapped, and mittens from the skin of seal and moose.

In this isolated Inuit community, 100 miles from the nearest town, each of the five dozen or so homes built on the hill are within a half-mile of the docks, where the fresh waters of Lake Melville mingle with the salty Atlantic.

The extent to which those waters could be poisoned by toxins associated with a new upstream hydropower project is a matter of fierce scientific and political debate between the Inuit and a massive government-backed corporation. Michelin and others, though, are worried about the deadly implications on their food supply and way of life.

As Michelin put the boat into the water, he barely glanced at the Northern Store, Rigolet’s sole source of groceries. There, a dozen eggs cost $4.49 in Canadian dollars ($3.45 U.S.); a pound of butter $8 ($6.16 U.S.); half a gallon of orange juice, $11.99 ($9.23); and a medium-sized ham, $56 ($43). The prices were particularly painful for the Nunatsiavut Inuit, who have a median annual income of just $23,211 Canadian dollars ($17,872 U.S.).

The prices reflect the logistical realities of a supply chain that includes no roads into or out of town — just boats, Twin Otter planes and, when the ice freezes, dogsleds and snowmobiles.

Rigolet is one of five Inuit communities under the Nunatsiavut Government; the rate of food insecurity for its 2,600 people is 61%.