Nain, Nunatsiavut

Nain

Starving for it, we are. We are hungry for caribou. We're not used to old moose meat, now, we got no choice. It's not the same.

Eva Nochasak

It's effecting everything in our every day use. Whether it's our health, I mean, we're eating different foods now so people are talking about how not having caribou in our diet is now effecting our health. Whether it's having heart problems or diabetes or any other kind of serious health problems. We really, truly believe that caribou is so important to our lifestyle. I can't imagine it never not coming back, so, I really miss it in my diet.

Heather Angnatok

When my sons were growing up hunting with me the best stories and the best days would be like when they got out and got their caribou with me. Like being a parent and all and you live in the north and you go out hunting with your family you try learn off your dad much as you can. I think stories like that is just, beats and other story for me I think. That way they can keep their generation going if I passes away.

Harry Haye

Sharing still happens with smaller game but not like it was with caribou, yeah. And we don't even, not just the hunt of being around here, even being able to go into the country and stuff like that and knowing the land. Like that knowledge is gonna go with it. Yeah. It's large.

Edna Winters

Well, I think it's very sad, especially for the elders. They don't want to see that being lost, and not only do they miss the caribou as a source of food, but I think it's sad for them to know that their children, their grandchildren are not gonna get the chance to do it, and not know how to do it, probably.

Henry Lyall

Yeah, it has been in our culture for years. It is like, biggest part of everyone's stories is going in the country caribou hunting. That was one of the biggest hunts you could do, before the ban.

Andrew Andersen

Andrew

Andersen

Hopedale, Nunatsiavut

Hopedale

They [men] feel more Inuk when they go off. And having a caribou hunt is one of the proudest things that a young man can say, is that they shot their first caribou. And now, my generation don't have that option, so that is a loss to them.

Andrea Andersen

I would like to see you

do is implement some of the general rules

and regulations that were put in place by our

people many, many years ago, and that's

what we had to live by

Jack Shiwak

I think there's some people think so, you know, that the caribou is declining, maybe we shouldn't have any but, but to go without it, I find it really bad like most people, senior citizens especially, they find it really hard to go in the winter without the caribou. They misses it so much and there's nothing else can satisfy their craving that they have.

Pauline Andersen

Postville, Nunatsiavut

Postville

It's something we don't know much about because we never got to hunt them and we never got to actually kill them. But it's something that we do love to have and have as part of our culture. Because it can be used for so much and we do miss it even though we never had much of it when we were younger. Only our younger years but it's still something we'd like to have.

Hanson Jacque

Jennifer Poole

I've got too many [stories]. Like, in around Nain, we used to go up from here, hunting three or four days in the country and come back out, and then get some gas, grub, whatever you want, come back home.

Torsten Jacque

It meant food, like they're something we depend on all the time. When they came here, years ago, well to us it was something that we ate almost every, probably every second day, and since the caribou has gone away, it's gotten more expensive for food. It was important to everybody in town. Before they came here even, people went to Nain or back then it was Davis Inlet. And they went down there caribou hunting. So it was very important food for us.

Amos Jacque

It's a tradition. I don't think the tradition is lost but it's shut down for the time being until the caribou returns.

Morris Jacque

My kids are growing up now not knowing what caribou is like, what it even tastes like. And here we've got our ancestors, our uncles, aunts, grandparents, talking about the wonderful caribou meat, they probably won't never know what it is like.

Tim Poole

Makkovik, Nunatsiavut

Makkovik

Andrea Andersen

Ocean Lane

Toby Andersen

When we was home in Akulivik and the komatik was coming with the caribou, everybody would run out, you know. It was really a good time when people came home with caribou.

Annie Evans

Caribou meat is such a good meat that you can use it so many different ways and I would say close to 50% of our diet when we were able to get caribou and now that we can't get it anymore it is so much more expense to supplement it with store bought meats.

Ivy Strangemore

Well, when you're used to something and you're doing it every year, it's like a tradition. And when that's take away, you can't do that anymore? It impacts on people's mind. You feel bad when you start thinking about it.

Wilson Andersen

Rigolet, Nunatsiavut

Rigolet

I think it affects anyone, not only financially, but I think it affects anyone emotionally and mentally in a sense, too, because all of a sudden it's not only your diet has changed, your whole lifestyle has changed because you can't go out on the land and take your children or your grandchildren out and show them this is what we done or we need some more caribou, now we'll go out and kill one or two.

Sara Baikie

My friends usually think, they think different. They're always talking about caribou. They're always talking about them. I wish we were allowed to kill one, just one, so I can have some meat.

Dane Shiwak

I hear my mother and said there is nothing wasted on a caribou, nothing. The hoofs, the legs, the bones, the marrow bone that was kept years ago, they said, you know. I been eaten all that myself everything, it wasn't wasted, not them days.

Fred Palliser

You travel to Nain or you travel to Nunavik. You travel to Labrador West, you know, inside of Goose Bay, Border Beacon, inside of Natuashish. You go to Natuashish, you go to Davis Inlet, Makkovik, Postville, Hopedale. People came here to harvest caribou. It was that social aspect of it. It was a part of who we were. It, so it not only played a significant role for filling bellies, but there was that social, respectful aspect of that.

Derrick Pottle

Dad used to have it for under his sleeping bag when you drive around by dog team. Deer skins, you hear me say that again, the deer skin, the caribou skin. And he would always have for whenever he was going around camping or wherever. They say we didn't know then, but it gives off heat because the hair is hollow and they make mix and all this out of it and they say it's really warm because of that, the hollow inside.

Belinda Shiwak

Cartwright, NunatuKavut

Cartwright

Well in them days it was was the only way to eat meat, eh. But never the day where you go into a shop somewhere and buy meat.

Kenneth Martin

The caribou was used for a lot of things. Like we used it for food... some of the Inuit use it for clothing. A part of the caribou, the sinew part, was used for sewing and stuff, so there's a lot of, a lot of use for the caribou. And now it's, like it's gone.

Susan Dyson

We would travel to Hopedale, Makkovik, Churchill Falls, wherever the caribou was at, and the areas was open, and we would probably kill anywhere from six to 10 caribou per trip, and then we'd come back and then we would share around with other family members and stuff.

Dwayne Burdette

I mean it's, you know, part of our, a staple in our diet and mainly we just utilize whatever we could from it. I don't know, I just never, you know. Trying to explain something to someone who don't know about it... I'd have to sit down and think about it.

Shawn Howell

I don't know how many years, but the Mealy Mountains herd today, I can remember when my parents, my father used to go caribou hunting, bring home caribou, and then then they were gone, and now they're back again. So, it's only a cycle. They just move around in different areas.

Herb Bird

It takes, it takes something away from the people when they can't go hunting at that, like. And the food, it takes something that, you know, that you always long for really. Yeah, seems like you're hungry, most of the time you can't get the right kind of food.

George Bird

George

Bird

Charlottetown, NunatuKavut

I haven't had one for years. Only when I was young... but I liked it better than moose. But never had one for years now.

Susie Roberts

Charlottetown

I remember one time the caribou...

was one string in a straight line for thirty-five miles. And it looked to me about four in a pair right four broad side and just heading directly north.

Tony Powell

Tony

Powell

I think one of the biggest impacts of the loss of caribou to the South Coast is you're not going from community to community so much as you used to one time. One time, when there was a hunt done, you didn't necessarily just hunt. You'll take two or three men from your own community and go. You probably had people coming from other communities like 10 or 12 men going together from different communities and have a shared hunt and harvest and bring it home to the communities

George Morris Jr.

George Morris

Jr.

Port Hope Simpson, NunatuKavut

You can never replace the caribou. Nothing. The moose is. The moose is eatable. It's OK. It's good. But. Nothing replaces the caribou.

Dennis Burden

Port Hope Simpson

Everybody should be able to go and hunt something on your own land, right, something on your own land people lived off. Some people wished, needs it really now, some people do. But yes, anything, you should be able to go hunting, like same as fish. If we lost our salmon up home or codfish or something, we'd be lost, for us people.

Bill Russell Jr.

St. Lewis, NunatuKavut

Everybody likes to hunt, you know, it's the excitement that got, like when you hunt you get a little excitement when you kill. You don't kill to do no harm, you kill for food, right? So if you kill and slaughter it, you know, there's no need of that but for food, I kill it. It's, the emotional part to the younger people now like, you almost gotta teach them again 'cause they never come up through it. They never grow up through it like, depending on caribou, right?

Roy Mangrove

St. Lewis

Northwest River

It is kinda emotional 'cause you can't go hunting no more and, you know, like we was reared up on it and well, I don't know if I'll ever get another meal, I don't know, but I don't really know. It's hard to really talk about it right.

Dick Michelin

Northwest River

It was such a nice food resource and same with the community too and now people are turning to moose, and we're getting more accustomed to eating that and beginning to like it a bit more, but they're still not caribou, and caribou still has, you know, like a mentioned before, the uses of the hide and so on, we're more accustomed to that and used to working with them.

Douglas Blake

Happy Valley-Goose Bay

Now, after they closed [the hunt] completely, you can't get none for yourself, and so, yeah, it was pretty, it's hard to take, really, and like I said, I kind of joke around a lot and say that's half the reason I moved to Goose Bay was for the caribou, and now they're gone, so what do I do?

Bill Larkham Jr.

Goose Bay

It was a real family visit, gathering, and celebration of how we always had lived. It was quite marvellous really. And we haven't been doing it for many years now since, you know, since the caribou have been gone.

Lloyd Pardy

It's not only about being able to eat the caribou. It's being able to go out on the land and harvest with your father, or your grandfather, or something like that. That whole experience. Our culture, is what it is, right? I mean that's our makeup.

Jim Shouse

Pauline Andersen

Amanda Neville

The meat was really important. We always had meat, caribou meat. It was a healthy choice, especially in coastal communities, where you don't get all the fresh produce. You know... wild meat is consumed daily in our household, mom and dad always was. Now, not me so much, I try to, and caribou was a part of that, part of the meal plan that we had, everyday wild meat in our house, really important then.

Cliff Russell