Portfolio > The Quest for Food: Excerpts

Primate Diets
Scavenging
Control of Fire 
Luring Prey
Trapping
Wetland Foods
Periglacial Steppe
Sub-arctic Habitat
Marine Resources
Buffalo Hunters
Sago Harvesting
Firing Woodlands
Cereals
Preserved Foods
Keeping Account

All illustrations by the author Ivan Crowe

Sub-arctic Habitat

Food resources of the sub-arctic

Illustration based on slides provided by John Letts

	Crowberries Empetrum nigrum		Bear root Hedysarum alpinium		Dandelion Taraxacum spp.		Arctic charr Salvelinus alphinus
	Bog bilberries Vaccinium uliginosum		Red & black bearberries Arctostaphylos alpina/rubra		Mountain sorrel Oxyria digyna		Ligonberries Vaccinium vitis-idaea
	Ringed seal Pusa hispida		Arctic hare Lepus americanus		Musk-ox Ovibos moschatus		Caribou/reindeer Rangifer tarandus

Most of the food available to people inhabiting sub-arctic regions is provided by birds, fish, sea mammals and the other animals they hunt. Flesh is often eaten raw. This not only helps to conserve the little fuel available but also avoids destroying the traces of vitamin C that fresh meat contains. In the brief summer though, a wide range of ground hugging plants allow sweet, succulent berries to be added to the diet. Carbohydrates were hard to come by, but the roots of a common tundra flower - the dandelion, which contain toxins - could be made edible by cooking and the leaves too can be eaten; although not all potential food plants were necessarily always utilised by native people