Surviving in the North

Since I decided to come up north, I've been thinking about how we as white southerners prepare to survive life up north.  We buy special gear, we bring up food, etc to make life comfortable for us here.  For many years, the Inuit have survived up here without all of the things that we bring up.  Today I was really struck by that as I worked with my friend Amy the dietitian, for someone with rickets.  Rickets is a disease most often caused by vitamin D deficiency.  While all liquid milk has vitamin D added, in the south we are more regularly exposed to sunlight and have enough vitamin D to not have any problems.  Up here, all babies and children should receive vitamin D drops as malnutrition is common, as well, the exposure to sunlight is significantly less than down south.  Some babies spend all their time outdoors covered in the amauti (parka with a pocket on their back to carry their baby) and receive no sunlight.  

What's cool is, before the "white people" showed up with their vitamin D and grocery stores people survived off the land.  Country food (seal, caribou, whale blubber, arctic char, etc) are FILLED with vitamin D!  The amounts WAY exceed that in milk, etc.  (more than double) Basically, if we were able to prescribe seal liver instead of vitamin D drops there would be no more rickets!  But because of a lack of jobs and money, many people can no longer hunt and as a result they are not eating as much country food and not getting enough vitamin D.  It just shows how well the Inuit community is able to survive here in what we perceive as this cold, barren land!