Hello,

I noted this quotation last night in the book Pitseolak:  Pictures
out of my life from recorded interviews  by Dorothy Eber, 1971.
(There are no page numbers in the book.)  Dorothy taped an
autobiography of Pitseolak, a Baffin Island Eskimo woman artist who
was probably born around the early 1900's.  Pitseolak says this
regarding the "old ways" of eating of the Eskimo:

"I can't remember the first time I tasted the white man's food, but I
do remember one incident.  At the time, they were building the
Hudson's Bay post's big warehouse and I was just a little girl.  I
remember watching people unload the supply boat, and I was crying
very hard.  They gave me a pilot biscuit and I really liked it.

"I like the white man's food but I think the old food was better for
Eskimos.  In the old days we had more food from animals and we didn't
get sick so much.  We ate  the food raw.  We used to eat seal, whale,
caribou, ducks and ptarmigan all raw, though we used to cook the
goose, and goose cooked is very good.  We also used to cook the polar
bear, though some people ate it raw.

"We had fruit in the summer.  We used to pick the berries on the
tundra, and something else we ate was dulse.  We used to hunt dulse
around the beaches.  Sometimes when the men went hunting, they would
bring back dulse for the women.  Eskimo people believe that it has
some medicine in it; when they are sick they feel better if they have
some."

I thought this was interesting and in view of the recent discussion
on eating raw meat, thought it would be relevant to post this quote.

Yvonne