Food Soveriegnity Toolkit - Yellowhead Institute

Inuksiutit Toolkit

ᓂᕿᓂᒃ ᐊᐅᓚᑦᑎᔨᐅᓂᖅ ᓄᓇᕘᒥ

Food Sovereignty in Nunavut

The Inuksiutit project is a living collection of resources to support communities across Inuit Nunangat (and beyond) in advancing food sovereignty, community resilience to climate change, and self-determination.

Follow the Story of the Seal, an interactive pathway that shares the cultural importance of seal to Inuit communities from the storytellers’ perspectives. Scroll through each section to explore how seal harvesting supports food sovereignty, sustains communities, and strengthens Inuit identity.

The story includes individual reflections and descriptions of hunting and harvesting in the past, along with videos, recipes, toolkits, and analysis. Each segment reveals how the seal is used — not only for food, but also for clothing. Follow community members and see how harvesting, preparing, and using the sea support families and assert food sovereignty in the North.

GROUNDED IN INUIT KNOWLEDGE

The toolkit synthesizes years of research from the Inuksiutit: Inuit Food Sovereignty in Nunavut (IFSNu) Project, creating a resource hub designed to:

Preserve Knowledge

Centering Inuit food traditions, nutrition, and preparation

Support Harvesting

Rooted in community economies and practices

Highlight Policy

Affecting Inuit food systems and sovereignty

Advance Sovereignty

Through priorities and advocacy defined by Inuit communities

Celebrating Inuit Food Sovereignty, February 2025
This video weaves together moments from the Celebrating Inuit Food Sovereignty Yellowhead Fire, featuring voices from the event alongside clips from the IFSNu YouTube channel. It offers a glimpse into how food sovereignty is lived and upheld across Inuit communities and what emerges is a vision of food sovereignty grounded in connection to community, culture, and the right to define one's own food systems.

Food sovereignty is a new concept, especially new for Inuit. We don't really discuss it often, so there's no term for it. And it's okay to say we don't know what it is, but we're going to explore it. And we're going to define the term and we're going to use it to change our narrative of what it means. It's not something easily translatable in Inuit. And to be able to translate it, we have to define it, what it means.

What it means for us. And for me, it's to assert a culture. It's to practice culture, to use culture, to use it every day. For me, it's deciding what is our right for Inuit. Deciding what it is. Deciding as a group what it is. What our rights are. What we give to each other Inuit as a Right. Before we tell it to someone else. These are our rights.

- Sheila Katsak | Inuk, Mittimatalik

The Story of the Seal
ᐅᓂᒃᑳᖅ ᓇᑦᑎᕐᒥᒃ

The harvesting of a seal and the sharing of its meat continues to be the cause for great celebration and joys, bringing families and community members together. One seal can feed several people for days. It is through hunting that Inuit express identity, togetherness, and cultural survival.

01.
Seal Hunting
ᓇᑦᑎᕋᓱᖕᓂᖅ

Seal hunting is an important cultural activity in Inuit communities. Hunting seals often takes place with others, promoting social wellness and an active lifestyle, while harvesting healthy food to be shared within families and the wider community. Seal hunting is hard work, and is central to Inuit culture as a source of food, warm clothing, and a sense of belonging.

Back a long time ago, everyone had a role to play in the hunt. Whoever was able, especially in the spring seal hunting period, they would all be helping man the breathing holes. So my grandfather and others would all take part in hunting. If there were six people, for example, together in a group, they would all be helping each other out seal hunting on the sea ice.. Sometimes when people were working together, there would be an elder with us to help us to keep us organized and manage us well.

- Joshua Katsak | Inuk, Mittimatalik

During the spring and fall harvesting seasons of 2024, Joshua and Rhoda Katsak took five of their grandchildren out on the land to learn about and document Inuit harvesting skills. On these trips, the younger people-- including Christian Milton, Raymond Katsak, Tristan Omik, Jabez Katsak and Dana Katsak-- were trained in sea-ice travel and navigation, different ways of hunting seal and geese, egg collecting, butchering, caching seal meat, making meat-carrying bags from sealskin hides, preparing food and setting fishnets under the ice.

02.
Preparing the Seal
ᐱᓚᒃᑐᖅ ᓇᑦᑎᕐᒥᒃ

There are many ways to prepare a seal after it is hunted. It may be butchered and eaten fresh, or prepared for storage such as freezing, fermenting, or caching. In addition to the parts of the seal which are eaten, the skins are prepared for sewing and making traditional clothing. Inuit also participate in a global economy by selling seal skins and their products in the commercial market.

I remember my mom every day working on seal skins. She was always making clothing, preparing different types of seal skins. Sometimes, she’d prepare baby seal skins so that they might be sold in the stores. We’d cache some of the seals, we’d cover them over with rocks, to store them to use for dog food for the winter. This was because we lived with our dogs, and they were our only source of transportation.

-Rhoda Katsak | Inuk, Mittimatalik

Butchering Seal
In this Masterclass, Johsua Katsak from Mittimatalik shows how to butcher an ugjuk (beaderd seal), how to clean and braid the intestines, and what parts of the skin can be used for making rope.

Caching Seal
Joshua Katsak shares how to cache seal meat for fermentation. His grandson Tristan Omik filmed this caching masterclass. In this video, Joshua Katsak teaches his grandsons Jabez Katsak, Raymond Katsak, Christian Milton and Tristan Omik how to place the seal and how to cover the seal with smaller and larger stones.

03.
Using the Seal
ᓇᑦᑎᕐᒥᒃ ᐊᑐᕐᓂᖅ

Seal is a healthy food source. Many parts of the seal are eaten, including the meat, blubber, liver, intestines, and heart. As an example, seal meat is a lean meat, low in fat and an excellent source of protein, iron, selenium, and Omega-3 fatty acids. Seal intestines are an excellent source of protein, iron, vitamin A, zinc, selenium, folate, and vitamin D. For more nutritional information about seal and other Inuit traditional foods, see the Government of Nunavut’s Nutrition Fact Sheet Series on Traditional Inuit Foods.

The seal is used a lot for every type of meal you can think of. You can use the whole seal.

- Joshua Katsak | Inuk, Mittimatalik

Recipes from Inuit Community Members

Each recipe represents the rich, intergenerational knowledge of Inuksiutit—country food that “makes us human.” Developed with partners in the Nunavut communities of Kinngait and Mittimatalik, the recipes highlight the rich variety of foods harvested from the land and water. It also reflects the importance of passing down these traditions from one generation to the next, ensuring that younger Inuit continue to have access to and knowledge about harvesting and preparing their food sources. This project aims not only to preserve traditional knowledge but to foster community wellbeing by providing pathways to sustainable and culturally relevant food systems.

Seal Stew
Rhoda Katsak from Mittimatalik explains how to cut up a seal, where to cut between the joints, and what parts of the seal are good for boiling, frying, or eating raw.

Boiling and Frying Seal
In this Masterclass, Regilee Ootoova from Mittimatalik explained what parts of the seal are good for boiling and frying. In this video, she is boiling and frying seal meat and shares her special seal spice recipe.

Preserving Meat
In this video, Joshua Katsak teaches his grandsons Jabez Katsak, Raymond Katsak, Christian Milton and Tristan Omik how to preserve meat in a sealskin.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

These toolkits, available in English and Inuktitut, are part of the Inuksiutit Food Sovereignty Project – a living collection of resources designed to support Inuit communities in advancing food sovereignty, community resilience, and self-determination. Grounded in the everyday experiences of preparing, sharing, and reflecting on country food, the toolkits offer practical guidance for documenting these relationships through interviews, video, and digital storytelling. Together, they support the creation of locally-driven narratives that speak to food sovereignty, community knowledge, and collective wellbeing.

Toolkit

CREDITS

Yellowhead Institute

Lead, YI Research Associate
Jessica Penney
Inuk, Iqaluit

Producer
Ash Vols
Métis

Multidisciplinary Artist
Prim (Pasa Mangiok)
Ivujivik, Nunavik

Video Editor
Cecilio Escobar

Videographer
Caelin Holmes
Inuk, Toronto

Translation
Anita Uuttuvak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

UI/UX
Anita Sekharan

Inuksiutit Food Sovereignty Project

Principal Investigators
Anna Hudson
Nancy Wachowich

Co-Investigators

Jessica Penney
Inuk, Iqaluit

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
Inuk, Iqaluit

Rhoda Katsak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Amy Caughey

Research Fellow
Peter Loovers

Collaborators

Aaron Pudlat
Inuk, Kinngait

AJ Arreak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Damian Enoogoo
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Dana Katsak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Jabez Katsak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Jean Allen
Inuk, Iqaluit

Joshua Katsak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Martha Jaw
Inuk, Kinngait

Neevee Jaw
Inuk, Kinngait

Pitsiula Kilabuk
Inuk, Kimmirut/Pangnirtung

Sheila Katsak
Inuk, Mittimatalik

Partners

A note on translation

We are exploring options to expand the translation of Yellowhead Institute’s Northern resources. For now, elements of this toolkit have been translated and are downloadable by PDF. The translations featured on the Inuksiutit Toolikit are Inuktitut syllabics in the North Baffin dialect.