Ammo, greenhouses, food pantries: What Sahtu residents in N.W.T. say will help them put food on the table
CBC
Beatrice Kosh needs a bag of flour to make bannock.
The 65-year-old Tulı́t'a, N.W.T., resident is waiting on a pension check to come at the end of the month and until then, she doesn't have the money to buy that flour for herself.
"My neighbour … she's an elder next door too, she gave me a bowl of flour. So me and my common law [partner], we made bannock yesterday." But, said Kosh, she can't always ask her neighbour for help.
"I only got about 20 cents to my name. But it's OK, I'll figure out something."
Kosh was one of about 20 people who came out for a community meeting in Tulı́t'a last Thursday with Sahtu MLA Danny McNeely, and representatives from Food Banks Canada and Nutrition North.
McNeely and both organizations visited the five Sahtu communities to talk about food security, and McNeely's idea to set up a food bank in each place.
He sees those efforts as a way to help his constituents manage how expensive it is to live in the Sahtu, a problem made worse by barge cancellations in 2023 and 2024.
Speaking to CBC News on Thursday, Kosh said a food bank in Tulı́t'a would help a lot of people, including herself, become more food secure.
Helen Squirrel, another resident who attended the meeting last week, agreed. She said money being touted by Food Banks Canada and Nutrition North for tools to get out on the land to harvest traditional food, like fuel, ammunition and snowmobiles, would help too.
"We can't just rely on store-bought groceries and that. We need to eat our traditional food because that's what keeps us going, keeps us strong," she said.
Aron Ellton, who has lived in Fort Good Hope, N.W.T., his whole life, hunts caribou and moose. He said getting communities equipment to get out on the land will "open up a lot of other doors with the traditional foods." He'd like to see funding being used to teach people how to make dry fish.
There's already a food pantry run by volunteers at the Our Lady of Good Hope Roman Catholic church. Ellton says growing that food bank could make a big difference because "there's a lot of people struggling here in town."
In Délı̨nę, meanwhile, many people at a community meeting there talked about the need for healthy produce.
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