Grant: Project Grant

Northern Indigenous communities in Canada face the highest rates of food insecurity in the country, with 46% of households in Nunavut and over 75% of Inuit children living in food-insecure households. Federal programs such as Nutrition North Canada, the Canada Child Benefit, and the Inuit Child First Initiative aim to help, but research shows these programs often fall short. Subsidies are absorbed by retailers, cash benefits drive up local prices, and program requirements place heavy administrative burdens on communities already under strain. These shortcomings stem from a fundamental design problem: federal programs are built around market logic that does not reflect how northern Indigenous communities organize food access. Communities across the Arctic maintain sophisticated networks of food sharing, collective harvesting, and mutual support that are deeply rooted in cultural practices and operate outside the assumptions embedded in current policy. Our four-year project, conducted in partnership with Arctic communities in Taloyoak and Kugaaruk (Nunavut), Sachs Harbour (Northwest Territories), and Old Crow (Yukon), will use qualitative and quantitative methods to document and measure the impacts of local food security strategies and how they interact with existing federal supports. Working together with community knowledge holders, we will produce community-owned evidence and advocacy materials to support Indigenous-led redesign of federal food security policies. Through embedded knowledge translation with federal ministries and Indigenous representative organizations, we will share findings to align federal resources with community values, priorities, and ways of life.