Kirt sez:
| I'm kinda tired of everyone and their brother (ab)using the Eskimos for
| their own ends. The high meat folks refer to the Eskimos; the vegetarians
| refer to the Eskimos--each dawing their own conclusions. Everbody is a
| frickin Eskimo expert these days.

Jo sez:
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on arctic sociology, but I do
believe that the Inuit nation prefer NOT to use the term "Eskimo." I think
it loosely translates to "eater of raw meat" or something to that nature.
Ironic, huh?

Kirt again sez:
| Perhaps the most telling thing about the whole Eskimo situation is how
| their health deteriorates when eating modern foods.

Jo continues with:
With the advent of modern technology and western civilization creeping into
their traditional lifestyles, the Inuit were arguably not discriminating
enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and therefore witnessed the
steady deterioration of their society over the last several decades (this
sounds oddly familiar). The worst of it was probably the adoption of the
money culture to buy Kraft dinners or petrol for their new snowmobiles.
Yes, modern processed foods, booze, narcotics, unemployment, poverty,
family violence, and other social ills have all exacted their toll. But
that wretched dependency on government subsidy cheques in exchange for
sanctioned reservations deprived of vision, deprived of a sense of
self-destiny, that has been their core poison.

We have one or two Inuit communities in northern Quebec with the highest
per capita suicide rate in Canada as well as the highest rate of
Parkinson's disease (or was it Alzheimer's?) that far exceeds the average
national stats. Details aside, it is clear that public health in these
isolated villages fall far below that of other rural "mainstream"
communities. At this stage, there is zero chance that these indigenous
people will embrace again their traditional ways (including diet), and so
we have to face the fact that in order to bootstrap these communities
towards recovering their turn-of-the-century health levels, we may be
forced to put our faith in Ottawa bureaucrats to synthesize solutions based
on compassion. The track records of federal governments on both sides of
the 49th parallel over the last 150 years or so have not been
scintillating; it's no wonder that the First Nations people (including the
Inuit) are not overly optimistic nowadays.