All Ethnographies

In their meat-eating habits, the Bushmen
show a similar selectivity. Of the 223 local
species of animals known and named by the
Bushmen, 54 species are classified as edible,
and of these only 17 species were hunted on a
regular basis. Only a handful of the dozens of edible species of small mammals, birds, rep­tiles, and insects that occur locally are regarded as food. Such animals as rodents, snakes, lizards, termites, and grasshoppers, which in the literature are included in the Bushman dietary ( Schapera, 1 930), are despised by the Bushmen of the Dobe area.

Listed in urder of their importance, the principal species in the diet are : 

wart hog, 

kudu, 

duiker, 

steenbok, 

gemsbok, 

wildebeeste, 

springhare, 

porcupine, 

ant bear, 

hare, 

guinea fowl, 

francolin (two species), 

korhaan, 

tortoise, 

python.

they are nevertheless willing to devote considerable energy to the less reliable and more highly valued food sources such as medium and large mammals.

Historic Ainu people were hunter-gatherers who practiced limited agriculture. Their diets were rich in venison, bear, millet, beans, peas, salmon, trout, rabbit, shellfish, fowl, and foraged plants.[1][2] The Ainu lived as a sustainable part of their ecosystems for hundreds of years. On Hokkaido, a single household caught as many as 1400 salmon and 300 deer per year.[3] On Sakhalin Island, dogs were raised as both transportation and food animals.[1]

Ainu men supplied most of the red meat and fish for their families.

The Ainu people are most malodorous at times; but it should be borne in mind that the men and women sometimes walk ten or fifteen miles a day in a broiling sun with a heavy load of unsalted, sun-dried fish upon their backs. Such fish have by no means a pleasant smell, and, when once the odour gets well into their clothes, it most tenaciously remains there, and only requires a little perspiring dampness to bring it out in its strength. Not only so, but it is sometimes quite pain ful to sit in a hut with an Ainu who has lately been eating some kinds of dried fish, particularly the skate. It makes the breath peculiarly strong and noxious.

But there is nothing an Ainu loves so much as hunting, excepting, perhaps, getting intoxicated.

A few generations ago there was a very great famine in Yezo, so that thousands upon thousands of animals— deer, bears, foxes, wolves, and rats—died. The Ainu would not have minded the famine so much but for this. The death of the animals was far worse than the failure of the crops; for the staple food was flesh. A great number of the Ainu died, starved to death. The people who lived towards the south of Yezo saved themselves by fleeing to Mororan, in Volcano Bay, where they were kept alive by eating shell-fish—the Haliotis tuberculata, or ‘sea-ear.’ These fish are very plentiful about Chiripet and Mororan. I believe the story of this ancient famine is quite true; for near the sea shore, about two miles from Mororan, there are some very large lumps of sea-ear shells to be seen, covered with nearly a foot of black earth.

In the winter time, particularly during the latter part of November and the early part of December, the women assist the men to net or spear the large salmon which are found in the rivers about this time.

the Ainu do not know how to cook. They are remarkably fond of stew, strongly flavoured with badly dried fish, and almost every article of food is cast into the stewpot, and is there completely spoiled. However, their food is not always cooked in this manner, for fish is sometimes roasted before the fire, and potatoes are baked in the ashes upon the hearth. A hungry man can make a good and enjoyable meal off sueh things. They are very fond of salmon, salmon trout, young sharks, swordfish, and whale; and, in the way of flesh, bear's fat and marrow-bones, the haunch of venison, and any part of a horse or bullock.

while grouse, wild geese, and cranes serve for game.

Salmon-fishing is a very favourite pursuit of the Ainu, and many of the people take great delight in it. Some of them are very clever at spearing salmon, for they commence to learn to use the fish-spear very early. I knew a lad only twelve years of age, who would some times start off to the river at daybreak, and return by eight o'clock with six or eight fine fish.

Authentic Aleut Recipes that show their dependence upon animal foods:

Braided Seal Intestine

The intestine of seal is referred to as an’giˆx or chidgiˆx/ an’giˆx in Unangam tunuu. Seal intestine was one of the resources used in the past for making the hooded parka, or chigdaˆx (E). As a food item, the intestines of the seal can be used to prepare «braided seal gut» or An’gim chikuĝigan kiichkaĝii (E), an’gim amaĝii (A). Seal gut is usually braided by women, however few people know how to do it today. The gut from a small young seal, one to one and a half years old, is best to use for braiding because it is easier to handle and clean and it’s not as stringy as an older seal. It can be braided and stuffed with any parts of the seal, such as the heart, lungs, or kidney, but is typically braided with the fat [Atka]. Once the braided gut has been prepared, it is boiled, cooled, and then eaten with mustard. Lucy Kenezuroff learned how to braid seal gut from her dad, John Nevzuroff. Lucy was born in 1930 in King Cove to Annie Galishoff, and then moved to Belkofski. She came from a family of 13 kids. «I used to watch my dad braid seal gut. One time I was sitting out on the porch, my dad had strings all lined up to tie, to use for foxes and stuff. I took some of them strings, sit down and was putting them around my finger. That’s how I taught myself to braid seal gut. Using a rope». Lucy’s braided seal gut recipe has two ingredients: a cleaned gut of seal and seal fat, cut into strips. The end of the seal gut must be split open and scraped out until it is clean. This takes a lot of work. After it has been scraped, Lucy soaks the gut in salt water and continues to stir it and clean it further. Her parents used to get water out of the bay to soak the gut. The gut gets soaked in salt water for a day or two. Lucy cuts the fat into strips and stuffs it in the gut while she is braiding it. The fat helps keep the gut soft. After she is done braiding, she cuts the braided intestine into three pieces, each about a foot long, to cook it. It is then cooked in boiling water for about an hour, or until it is tender. She likes to eat it right after it is done cooking with some plain rice: «I don’t wait till it gets cold. I always dive in when it’s hot… it’s a real tender meat…it almost tastes like corned beef in a way.» While Lucy prefers to eat seal gut warm, some others prefer eating it cold with mustard.

Jellied Meat - Stuudinax:

Considered a delicacy by the Unanga-n/s, sea lion flippers can be cooked, fermented, or boiled and made into a dish called stuudinax. Stuudinax is a variation of head cheese, or meat jelly, that uses the natural gelatin found in the bones and cartilage of the flippers to gel. In the past, flippers were sometimes cooked until they came apart. When cooled they were sliced and eaten with potatoes, onions, other vegetables, bread, salt, pepper, and mustard. Some people ferment the flipper in a paper bag for up to ten days until the skin gets loose. Then, it is eaten right away or preserved in salt or frozen.

Skinning and cutting 1000 pounds of moose meat was a lot of work for just the two of us. He always had stories that had important lessons for me. He talked highly of his father and how they would be traveling a long way on foot in the cold weather, and to warm up they would drink moose blood soup. Taking several hours to skin and pack up we were usually home at night and grandma would be worried about us. After hanging the meat for a full day it was time to process and make cuts and dried meat. I always asked my grandma to retell me the story of when her family went through a hard time. Her father had been gone one week following moose tracks and her mom and four other siblings had been harvesting squirrels for food. They were very lucky that the moose had circled around close back to the cabin. Moose blood soup and Dry Meat soup were always my favored meal growing up and I cook them often in return for my grandparents.

Hunting was associated with seasonal movements along trails and frozen rivers, particularly as bands moved between rivers and uplands. The primarily hunting animals for Tanana Athabaskans are big animals (caribou, moose, and wild sheep). Most valuable hunting animal is the caribou (subspecies Rangifer tarandus granti, Lower Tanana bedzeyh Tanacross wudzih Upper Tanana udzih). The caribou was the most important food animal in the Upper Tanana before the coming of the non-natives and resultant disintegration of the original nomadic patterns.[46] The economic life of the Upper Tanana centers around the caribou. Not only does the animal constitute the source of food for the natives and their dogs, but also it supplies the material for their clothing, shelters, and boats as well as netting for their snowshoes and babiche and sinew for their snares, cords, and lashings.[15][47] The caribou hunt occurred in the early summer and mid-summer. Caribou hunting during the fall migration involved the use of fence, corral, and snare complexes and was a seasonal activity critical to the survival of the Tanana people.[6] Today, most caribou meat is typically used fresh, or is frozen for later use.[15] The moose (subspecies Alces alces gigas, Lower Tanana denigi Tanacross dendîig Upper Tanana diniign) was other most important food animal for Tanana Athabaskans. Moose hunting is the most common resource harvesting activity among Lower Tanana Athabaskan bands.[7] Moose hunting is always a popular activity in modern Athabaskan communities because of the meat's economic value and a food preference for large game.[7] Moose hunting in the fall was either an individual pursuit or group activity. Moose meat was eaten fresh or preserved.[6] The Mansfeld-Kechumstuk band of Tanacross employed several methods to hunt Dall sheep (in Alaskan English simply sheep, Lower Tanana deba Tanacross demee Upper Tanana dibee) in late summer and early fall in local mountainous areas or as far south as the Mentasta Mountains. Dall sheep were a desired source of food and material for clothing and tools.[6]

Migratory waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) and upland game birds (ptarmigans and grouse) were a valued source of fresh meat. Grouse (spruce grouse, sharp-tailed grouse, ruffed grouse Lower Tanana deyh Tanacross deyh, ch'ehtêeg, tsą́ą' ts'uug Upper Tanana daih, ch'ahtagn, tsąą'ts'uu) and ptarmigan (willow ptarmigan and rock ptarmigan Lower Tanana k'orrh'eba, ddhełk'ola Tanacross k'étmah, ddheł k'aal Upper Tanana k'atbah) were taken opportunistically throughout the year with bow and arrows or with snares and fence-snare arrangements. Ducks and geese were easily captured when molting. Men in birchbark canoes quietly approached waterfowl in bays and coves and shot them with bow and arrows. Women and children then caught the birds and collected eggs from their nests.[6]

Fishing (creek and river) was done near the village sites, and the fish were stored in large subsurface caches and is domestic and most common. The main economical fish (Tanacross łuug Upper Tanana łuugn, łuuk) species are mostly whitefish (humpback whitefish, round whitefish Tanacross xełtįį' ) and Pacific salmon (king (chinook) Upper Tanana gath Tanacross łuug chox, red (sockeye) Upper Tanana łuugn delt'al Tanacross łuug delt'el). Other fish species are pike (Upper Tanana ch'ulju̱u̱dn Tanacross uljaaddh), grayling (Lower Tanana srajela Upper Tanana seejiil Tanacross seejel), lingcod (Upper Tanana and Tanacross ts'aan) and sucker (Upper Tanana taats'adn Tanacross tats'aht'ôl). Fishing at Mansfield Lake and Fish Creek for whitefish, pike, and grayling began in the late spring and continued until mid-July and was a major harvest activity; whitifish was an especially important and perennially reliable food source. All band members except the very young children assisted in harvesting and processing the catch. The spring fish harvest provided a welcome dietary change after a long winter of eating mostly dried fish and meat. Fish not eaten fresh were processed and dried on drying racks for later consumption. Both fresh and dried fish were cooked in boiling water, produced by placing heated stones into a birch bark basket.[6]

The Economy
The Borana are pastoralists, though a few also grow crops around Marsabit and Moyale, or in the southern Ethiopian highlands. There are also a few irrigation schemes in Isiolo District. The rest of the country has too harsh a climate for growing crowing crops and here the Borana are pastoralists. The Waat are hunters and gatherers and, because of their very small numbers, they have long attached themselves to other Boran clans, and in the process they have become completely dispersed.

A Borana is not allowed to eat certain kinds of food. He may not eat meat or drink milk from animals which do not have cloven hooves. That is to say animals belonging to the dog, cat, and horse families. He may also not eat fish, birds, reptiles or insects. Foods such as maize, millet and wheat are eaten by the Borana who lives in the higher and wetter areas, Marsabit and the southern Ethiopian highlands. For the majority of the members of the tribe, the staple diet is milk and meat. Because a man may own as many sheep, goats, cattle and camels as he can afford, there is sufficient milk from the many animals to feed his family, except during server droughts. They drink fresh or sour milk, and they use it to produce butter of ghee.

Meat is not a daily food, but forms a regular part of the diet. People are more apt to kill goat and sheep, but during a server drought a bullock or a cow may be killed for food. The meat is cut into strips and hung up until it dries. It is then fried and stored in animal fat. Sometimes the dried meat is pounded into fillets, fried and stored in fat. In both cases, the meat lasts for many months without going bad.

Blood may also be used for food. It is either drunk pure or mixed with milk. The blood comes from the jugular vein in the neck of a living cow or bull. The vein is made to stand out by tying a rope tightly round the cow’s neck. Then the vein is pierced with an arrow and the blood is caught in a gourd. Blood that has clotted is warmed and eaten. But no one bleeds the same cow day after day; one cow may give only a few pints of blood, and even then, maybe only once or twice a year.

To the north of Marsabit there are no permanent rivers, and most of the land is covered by sand and gravel, such as the Chalbi Desert, or by bare lava stones as are found in Dido Galgallu Desert. This is the homeland of the Gabbra, who herd camels. Camels can easily go without water for as long as three weeks. They feed on thorns and leaves and in this poor environment they produce more milk than cattle do. Other hardy stocks kept by the Gabbra are goats and sheep, both of which thrive in arid areas where frequent watering is not possible.

https://advocacy4oromia.org/articles/borana-people-the-largest-oromo-pastoralist-and-kind-people-of-east-africa/

He announces three times that a son is born. Neighbours come with gifts of milk, animal fat and perfumes, while the father distributes some tobacco and makes a sacrifice of coffee berries. During the following four days, dances are held by the women to celebrate the arrival of the new born son.

The Carib Indians were primarily fishing people. They took to sea in their long canoes to catch fish, crabs, and other seafood. Hunters also shot birds and small game.

Authentic Chukchi Recipes:

Reindeer blood soup by Irina Krivoshapkina and Maria Yaglovskaya

Reindeer blood soup is the favorite national dish of the Chukchi. Traditionally, people used to cook it for children, as it contains the whole complex of vitamins, gives strength, improves blood circulation and provides a long-lasting ‘warm-up’ effect. Reindeer blood soup is used in traditional ceremonies and is also offered to guests. We have included the traditional and modern methods.

Traditional method Ingredients:

Reindeer intestines with inner organs (pitiyki)

Reindeer large intestine (nanuvge)

Reindeer blood (mulymul)

Visceral fat (the inner fat around the entrails) (eimyk)

Thoroughly wash and clean the intestines with inner organs, large guts, visceral fat and clean, chop finely, cover with cold water, and boil until thoroughly cooked. Pour the settled reindeer blood very slowly into the boiling broth, stirring steadily. The dish is ready when the broth thickens.

Modern method Ingredients:

Reindeer head

Reindeer blood

Flour

salt

Make a broth by boiling the reindeer head (antlers removed) in water. Remove the froth and impurities from the surface periodically and add salt while cooking. When the head is ready, remove it from the pot and strain. Mix flour with cold water in a separate bowl, add with the settled reindeer blood slowly into the boiling broth, stirring well. Cook until the broth comes to the boil and becomes a chocolate color.

THE FIRST FOUR RIBS by Zhanna Kaurgina and Vlada Kaurgina The Chukchi menu is not that known for its variety. Boiled reindeer meat is a constant daily dish, the favored parts of the animal being the breast parts including brisket, ribs, and the breast section of the backbone. Once the reindeer is slaughtered and processed into smaller parts, the first four ribs are boiled as a delicacy and is the first dish offered to guests. In winter, these ribs are frozen, stored and eaten at a later date. Why are the first four ribs from a reindeer considered to be such a delicacy among Chukchi? Depending on the age and condition of the reindeer, the first four ribs have the following qualities: • Bulk and mass with streaks of fat deposits; • Juiciness which is related to their high oxygen saturation due to formation of the first four ribs in the chest cavity, and as the chest part of the body is stiff, there is an intense accumulation of bone oil in the cartilage and bone tissues, which provide taste and flavor. • The broth produced from its cooking is rich in all healthy substances, is very nourishing and provides long-lasting sensation of satiety. Ingredients: First four ribs of a reindeer Salt Cooking method: Wash the ribs thoroughly and place into a large pot and cover with water. Set over a fire and bring to the boil, removing the froth that rises to the surface. Add salt, and maintain the fire so that the ribs simmer gently for 10-15 minutes.

Buffalo was the food the Comanches loved more than any other. They ate steaks cooked over open fires or boiled in copper kettles. They cut the meat thin, dried it, and stored it for the winter and took it on long trips. They ate the kidneys and the paunch. Children would rush up to a freshly killed animal, begging for its liver and gallbladder. They would then squirt the salty bile from the gallbladder onto the liver and eat it on the spot, warm and dripping blood. If a slain female was giving milk, Comanches would cut into the udder bag and drink the milk mixed with warm blood. One of the greatest delicacies was the warm curdled milk from the stomach of a suckling calf. If warriors were on the trail and short of water, they might drink the warm blood of the buffalo straight from its veins. Entrails were sometimes eaten, stripped of their contents by using two fingers. (If fleeing pursuers, a Comanche would ride his horse till it dropped, cut it open, removed its intestines, wrap them around his neck, and take off on a fresh horse, eating their contents later.) In the absence of buffalo, Comanches would eat whatever was at hand: dry-land terrapins, thrown live into the fire, eaten from the shell with a horned spoon; all manner of small game, even horses if they had to, though they did not, like the Apaches, prefer them. They did not eat fish or birds unless they were starving. They never ate the heart of the buffalo.

S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon, pg. 48 (2010)

_______________________________________________

The Comanche were initially hunter-gatherers. When they lived in the Rocky Mountains, during their migration to the Great Plains, both men and women shared the responsibility of gathering and providing food. When the Comanche reached the plains, hunting came to predominate. Hunting was considered a male activity and was a principal source of prestige. 

For meat, the Comanche hunted buffalo, elk, black bear, pronghorn, and deer. When game was scarce, the men hunted wild mustangs, sometimes eating their own ponies. In later years the Comanche raided Texas ranches and stole longhorn cattle. They did not eat fish or fowl, unless starving, when they would eat virtually any creature they could catch, including armadillos, skunks, rats, lizards, frogs, and grasshoppers. Buffalo meat and other game was prepared and cooked by the women. 

Most meats were roasted over a fire or boiled. To boil fresh or dried meat and vegetables, women dug a pit in the ground, which they lined with animal skins or buffalo stomach and filled with water to make a kind of cooking pot. They placed heated stones in the water until it boiled and had cooked their stew. After they came into contact with the Spanish, the Comanche traded for copper pots and iron kettles, which made cooking easier.

Women used berries and nuts, as well as honey and tallow, to flavor buffalo meat. They stored the tallow in intestine casings or rawhide pouches called oyóotû¿. They especially liked to make a sweet mush of buffalo marrow mixed with crushed mesquite beans.

The Comanches sometimes ate raw meat, especially raw liver flavored with gall. They also drank the milk from the slashed udders of buffalo, deer, and elk. Among their delicacies was the curdled milk from the stomachs of suckling buffalo calves. They also enjoyed buffalo tripe, or stomachs.

Comanche people generally had a light meal in the morning and a large evening meal. During the day they ate whenever they were hungry or when it was convenient. Like other Plains Indians, the Comanche were very hospitable people. They prepared meals whenever a visitor arrived in camp, which led to outsiders' belief that the Comanches ate at all hours of the day or night. Before calling a public event, the chief took a morsel of food, held it to the sky, and then buried it as a peace offering to the Great Spirit. Many families offered thanks as they sat down to eat their meals in their tipis.

Comanche children ate pemmican, but this was primarily a tasty, high-energy food reserved for war parties. Carried in a parfleche pouch, pemmican was eaten only when the men did not have time to hunt. Similarly, in camp, people ate pemmican only when other food was scarce. Traders ate pemmican sliced and dipped in honey, which they called Indian bread.

[The importance of fatty meat is shown in the following Comanche legend, rewritten for a modern audience)

Deer Medicine

from Texas Indian Myths and Legends

by Jane Archer

One time the People camped at the base of a mountain near a rushing stream. Over time a person disappeared, then another. The band grew troubled and took their worries to their medicine makers. After sweat lodge purification, after sage and sweet grass cleansing, the medicine makers held council.
"I do not trust those deer," Medicine Man said.
"I trust them less than you." Medicine Woman looked up at the mountain where the deer lived near a large cave.
"I suspect they are stealing our people."
"And keeping them in their cave."
"To eat," Medicine Man said.
"Our people depend on us to care for them."
"And we must do so.
Medicine Man and Medicine Woman walked up the mountain to the cave of the deer.
Guard Deer stood near four sticks at the dark hole of an entrance.
"Good morning," Medicine Woman said. "How are you?"
"You look plump and well," Medicine Man said.
"What food do you eat?" Medicine Woman asked.
"We eat good food," Guard Deer said. "Would you like to see?"
"Yes, we would."
Guard Deer picked up one of the sticks and knocked on the entrance. "One fat buffalo."
A buffalo trotted out.
"That is impressive," Medicine Woman said.
"Watch this." Guard Deer hit the entrance again. "One buffalo calf."
A buffalo calf walked out.
"I am really impressed," Medicine Man said.
"Now you know how we get our food," Guard Deer said. "You may see no more."
"Thank you," Medicine Woman said.
As the medicine makers walked away, they whispered to each other.
"I do not believe that is all in their cave," Medicine Man said.
"I agree. We must find out what else is in there."
They hid behind a large rock while they considered their problem.
"Maybe we could change the sticks when Guard Deer looks the other way," Medicine Man said.
"Guard Deer is too sharp."
"That is true."
"They must change guards soon and the entrance will be unguarded for a brief time," Medicine Woman said.
"We must strike then."
"Yes."
Without making a sound, they worked their way back to the entrance. Concealed behind rocks and plants, they watched and waited. Soon Guard Deer stepped away to consult the next Guard Deer.
They raced to the entrance.
Medicine Woman grabbed a stick and hit the cave. "Two people."
Two warriors walked out.
Medicine Man placed his hand on the stick, and they struck again. "More men."
Many men ran out of the cave. All of them carried bows with arrows in quivers on their backs.
Deer erupted from all directions, but the warriors fought together to drive them back. When the battle was won by the People, most of the deer lay dead. The medicine makers turned to the deer still alive.
"We are the strongest so hereafter we will eat you," Medicine Man said.
"Your skin and bones, all of your body, will be used to help the People," Medicine Woman added.
Guard Deer raised a head. "So be it."

http://www.texasindians.com/comanche.htm

Habitat and diet

Historically, Copper Inuit lived amongst tundra, rocky hills, outcrops, with some forested areas towards the southern and southwestern range. Here they hunted Arctic ground squirrel, Arctic hare, caribou (barren ground and Peary's herds), grizzly bear, mink, moose, muskox, muskrat, polar bear, wolf, and wolverine. They fished in the extensive network of ponds, lakes, and rivers, including the Coppermine, Rae, and Richardson Rivers, which sustained large populations of fresh water Arctic char (also found in the ocean), grayling, lake trout, and whitefish. The marine waters supported codfish, bearded seal, and ringed seal.[16] Ducks, geese, guillemots, gulls, hawks, longspurs, loons, plovers, ptarmigans, and snow buntings were also part of the Copper Inuit diet. They liked raw but not boiled eggs.[19] They used and cooked food and products from the sea, but kept them separate from those of the land.[20]

Culture > Subsistence

The main food source for the Crow was the American bison which was hunted in a variety of ways. Before the use of horses the bison were hunted on foot and required hunters to stalk close to the bison, often with a wolf-pelt disguise, then pursue the animals quickly on foot before killing them with arrows or lances. The horse allowed the Crow to hunt bison more easily as well as hunt more at one time. Riders would panic the herd into a stampede and shoot the targeted animals with arrows or bullets from horseback or lance them through the heart. In addition to bison the Crow also hunted bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, elk, bear, and other game. Buffalo meat was often roasted or boiled in a stew with prairie turnips. The rump, tongue, liver, heart, and kidneys all were considered delicacies. Dried bison meat was ground with fat and berries to make pemmican.[88] In addition to meat, wild edibles were gathered and eaten such as elderberries, wild turnip, and Saskatoon berries.

The Crow often hunted bison by utilizing buffalo jumps. "Where Buffaloes are Driven Over Cliffs at Long Ridge" was a favorite spot for meat procurement by the Crow Indians for over a century, from 1700 to around 1870 when modern weapons were introduced.[89] The Crow used this place annually in the autumn, a place of multiple cliffs along a ridge that eventually sloped to the creek. Early in the morning the day of the jump a medicine man would stand on the edge of the upper cliff, facing up the ridge. He would take a pair of bison hindquarters and pointing the feet along the lines of stones he would sing his sacred songs and call upon the Great Spirit to make the operation a success.[89] After this invocation the medicine man would give the two head drivers a pouch of incense.[89] As the two head drivers and their helpers headed up the ridge and the long line of stones they would stop and burn incense on the ground repeating this process four times.[89] The ritual was intended to make the animals come to the line where the incense was burned, then bolt back to the ridge area.[89]

As the main traditional activity of the Dolgan people is reindeer herding, unsurprisingly the main component of their diet is reindeer meat, an easily digested and clean food packed with macro and microelements (calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, iron), vitamin B and vitamin PP (nicotinic acid), essential for good health. Reindeer meat can be boiled, dried, smoked, frozen or eaten raw. There are several Dolgan dishes made from reindeer such as kyyl ete (wild reindeer meat), et (boiled meat), amaha (stew made from cut meat and bone marrow), kyos (soup), oiogos mine (rib soup), heliei (meat broth with wheat flour), ulukte (sun dried meat), and others. Beside reindeer meat Dolgan also use bone marrow (boiled or raw), tun’iakh (hooves), tyl (tongue), karak (eyes), hynak (cheeks) etc.), and inner organs (liver, heart, lungs, kidneys, intestines etc.). Blood is used to make chyol (blood sausage). Dolgan consider velvet antlers as a delicacy, which should be slightly grilled on a fire before being eaten. Fishing is an additional seasonal activity, which is also socially and economically important for Dolgan. Fishing is important in summertime, when hunting wild reindeer is difficult. Domesticated reindeer are herded on separate pastures in order to gain weight and keep the wild and domesticated reindeer separate. Dolgan food culture is rich in various fish dishes, such as balyk mine (fish soup), diykula (dried fish), kabardaak (a traditional fish dish), kuumsa mine (brown trout soup), kyspyt (sliced frozen fish), kerdiilek – yukola (a special way to dry fish), tuustak balyk (salted fish), baarky (semi-dried fish). Favored fish for Dolgan are sturgeon, broad whitefish, muksun, nelma and coregonus. Traditionally the broth made from reindeer meat, fish or bird is called min. Min is very easy to cook while herding, migrating, fishing or hunting, because it does not require a lot of time or ingredients to prepare. Herders or hunters can quickly warm themselves from drinking min, and recover their strength. For Dolgan, as for other northern peoples, food is a key factor in maintaining health.

REINDEER EYE SOUP

Dolgan believe that by eating reindeer eyes, people will preserve their visual acuity, their sharpness of sight, and will retain good eye - sight into old age . Good eyesight is obviously very important for hunters and herders living out on the tundra . A symbol of the eye is also used in the Dolgan national costume, which you can see most obviously in the decoration of a man’s hat . The eye also plays the role of a protective amulet . First, you need to skin the reindeer head and cut it into six parts (while reserving the eyes). Wash all parts thoroughly and place in a cas - serole and cover with water . Cook the broth for long time, until all the meat detaches from the bones . Remove all cooked parts of the head from the broth; and detach the eyes from the frontal bone by hand . Filter the broth . Slice the eyes into 5-6 segments and return to the broth . The dish is ready . The entire eye is eaten . For a large family prepare the dish by using several heads

Daily life

Dukhas live differently from most other people in the world. The Dukha's sense of community is structured around the reindeer. The reindeer and the Dukha are dependent on one another. Some Dukha say that if the reindeer disappear, so too will their culture. The reindeer are domesticated and belong to the household. In many ways they are treated like family members and shown respect. The community's chores and activities are centered around the care and feeding of their reindeer.[7] Dukha communities on the taiga are usually a group of tents of two to seven households that move camp to find optimum grazing for the reindeer. Herding tasks are shared amongst the camp with children at a young age learning to care for the reindeer and keeping them safe. The girls and younger women do the milking and make yogurt, cheese, and milk tea. Young men and women and elders help with herding. A few of the men stay with the reindeer in the winter months, living in the open air with their herds to protect them from wolves and other predators. The men also make and repair their hunting tools and reindeer saddles and carts. Since they rarely kill a reindeer, they supplement their diet of reindeer milk products by hunting wild animals from the forest.[12]

The use and management of reindeer

Dukha raise their reindeer primarily for milk. Reindeer milk, reindeer yoghurt and reindeer cheese are the staples of the Dukha diet. Only a few reindeer are slaughtered during the year for meat and pelts. The reindeer also provide transportation. Because the taiga area is typically hilly and covered with forest, reindeer are not used for pulling sledges, but for riding and as pack animals. They take the Dukha for daily grazing, hunting, the collection of firewood, seasonal migrations, visiting relatives and friends, and traveling to the sum for shopping and trade. A 1.5 m long thin stick in the right hand is used as a whip. A rider gets on a tree stump and jumps onto the reindeer from the left side with the stick in the left hand, then transfers the stick to the right hand once the rider is mounted. The Dukha begin training reindeer for riding when the reindeer (called dongor at this age) are two years old. Adults are too heavy for dongor, so it is usually the children’s job to train them. Adults ride on hoodai (three-year-old reindeer) or older ones. They regularly ride on zari (castrated males). Special training is not necessary to train the reindeer as pack animals. The male reindeer usually carry loads weighing about 40 kg (88 lbs.), while females carry up to 30 kg (66.1387 lbs.). 

Reindeer pelts are used for making winter coats. Bags, mats for traveling, and shoes are also made from the skin. Material for shoes is taken from the skin on the reindeer's shin. Reindeer antlers are ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine and have been supplied to China since 1975. During the summer, the antlers are cut off. The reindeer’s two front legs are tied to one hind leg to make the animal fall. The Dukha cut the antlers with a small saw. Because reindeer cannot properly regulate their body temperature when they lose their antlers and easily become exhausted, pregnant female reindeer never have their antlers removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukha_people

Even people as well as Evenki people do not have a word for «hello» or «goodbye» in their languages. When Even meet each other they usually say: yav bultanny? Which means ‘how was the hunt?’ Or yak ukchenek, ‘what’s the news?’ A combination of reindeer herding with fishing and hunting is at the core of Even culture. Since Even people were mostly living in mountainous regions, an important food source is the wild mountain sheep (Ujamkan). But there are also others such as wild reindeer (Bujun), moose (Toki), bear (Nakat), musk-deer, (Buchen), marmot (Chamak), different birds and fish. Nonetheless, reindeer are at the core of Even culture and spiritual life. They say: Oron bidjin – Even bidjin, Oron acha odjin – Even acha odjin (As long as there is reindeer – Even will exist. If reindeer disappear – Even will also disappear). Even use reindeer as transport for hunting and for milking. If hunting or fishing was not successful they would resort to slaughtering their own reindeer for food. The connection to reindeer is very close, so this would only be done as a last resort. A reindeer would live for a long time in the family, especially transport reindeer (Gildak) and people preserve a close connection to every reindeer. 

Nimat - Customary Law Many Indigenous Peoples have the tradition of gifting, sharing and reciprocity in their system of social relations. Formally, gift and gifting are voluntary in these societies, but in practice are required; enabling a system of social relations based on the gift that is wider than just economic relations (Godelier 2007). Nimat is the customary law of Even and Evenki. This law is related to hunting and reindeer herding traditions. In literature it is often written that Nimat is a sharing law, but this is a simplification of this tradition. It is more than just sharing. After a successful hunt, a person who killed an animal(s) would offer this as the gift to a friend or his relative. He usually takes only the stomach with intestines or anything else, which would deteriorate quickly. Other parts of the animal usually stay at the place where it was harvested. Then he went home and told his friend or relative that he has a gift for him (Nimat) and that he can find this gift in a certain place. Then he explains him how it can be found. That person had to go then to find it and bring the game back home and share it among other members of community (Gayun – sharing and distribution of game between members of community). He had to decide which part of the animal(s) everyone would get. (Osenin 2017) Nimat is a fundamental law for Even people and food culture is deeply connected to this law. Game caught by one, is also for others: shared with all, and not only between those who are involved in the hunting, but also visitors will get their share – «Nemada» (share of the hunting without participation in it). Not only relatives but also neighbors, and even random people enjoyed unlimited hospitality and fell into the category of the Mata - a person who got a share of the game after hunting. In the past, this custom, and law in the understanding of Even people, pervaded all areas of their lives: it has an explanation in terms of economy, in particular, distribution practices, and in terms of social life, as a mechanism for establishing friendly and, under favorable circumstances, kinship relations on the exchange. It was also deeply rooted in the mind of a hunter, who believed that hunting success depends largely on the goodwill of the host-spirits. In Even traditions the custom of Nimat was elevated to the level of law. But the punishment for violation of this law would come not from people, but from nature. Even believe that after a successful hunt for a mountain sheep, wild reindeer or any other animal; if you do not share with your relatives or friends, then you will not have hunting luck, you will get nothing. The custom of sharing game is a kind of social relations between people, but also relates to the relationship between the society / individual and nature: the need for sharing caused by the traditions based on Even and Evenki notions of our connection with the earth. This was also an attempt to establish social relations with the world of nature and the spirit world in order to ensure vital functions and continued life. The apparent reason for sharing – the expectation of reciprocity and gift not only from a person, but from the nature/ earth/host-spirits (because the hunter did the «right» thing). The accumulation of moral benefits, exceeds the scope of social links and moves into the sphere of relations between «humans – animals – spirit-owners.» Nimat provides territorial and economic relations between the nomads not only between relatives but also between unrelated clans. Probably, this custom helped Even and Evenki peoples settle Siberia so widely, where they had to live on the land occupied by other ethnic groups. So Even people are a very hospitable people, their hospitality has even been spoken of as being unlimited. They have another custom called Idekhe. This is about the slaughter of reindeer for guests and people close by. When you have a guest or when someone close by to you comes to your camp, reindeer herders make Idekhe.

OKEN’ – REINDEER MILK

Even use reindeer also for milking. They can milk reindeer from July to February. An adult productive female reindeer (Nyamichan) can produce approx. 1 liter of milk per day with a fat content of up to 19%. Even add it to tea. They also beat milk using a whisk (Itaki), which is then added to Even bread and blueberries.

KEBEL – EVEN YOGURT

For Even, the favorite dish made from reindeer milk is Kebel. To make it, fresh reindeer milk is filtered through a dense sieve and cooled down. Then you need to add 1/2 of teaspoon of leaven diluted in a tablespoon of milk and slowly, slowly stir, gradually adding it to 0.5 liters of reindeer milk. Within 15 - 20 minutes the milk will ferment and become a yogurt, then you add blueberry, cloudberry or Even bread and a tasty delicacy is ready. It is usually served for breakfast and you can work for a full day with the reindeer, without feeling hungry. But the most important thing is the leaven preparation: You need fresh abomasum of a just slaughtered reindeer, turn it inside out and, without washing the contents fill it with the fresh reindeer milk. Hang it in the Chora (Even traditional tent) above the fire with smoke and then dry it in the shade. You can also prepare a leaven from the abomasum of the wild mountain sheep – Uyamkan.

CHALMI, HILTA HILEN – STOMACH SOUP

The slaughter of a reindeer (Idekhe) or the occasion of a successful hunt for wild reindeer or mountain sheep means time for a feast for an Even family. The first dish is always made from the intestines of animals – a stomach soup (Chalmi, Hilta hilen). When you slaughter domestic reindeer, you immediately make an incision in the solar plexus and cut a blood vessel located along the spine, this is blood for making blood sausage. It turns out a lot of whey and with that you can make a sausage with a bright color. The entrails should be carefully and completely pulled out from the body so as not to spill the contents of the rumen onto other organs. The rectum (Momikan) and cecum, (Mevki) should be kept for the preparation of blood sausage. Other entrails: rumen (Goodi), abomasum (Orakan) and omasum (heŋŋi) should be washed with warm water. And the small intestine (hilta) and duodenum (Kurikich) are washed very carefully, without washing out the contents because they contain a variety of useful enzymes for human consumption, especially in the small intestine. In the old days, the bouillon from stomach soup without fat used to be given to malnourished people who had been hungry for a long time. It can be lethal to eat immediately after a long period of hunger. To such people, do not give a lot of the stock, only small portions every half an hour to revitalize the flora inside their stomach. After only a day or two, this person could drink more bouillon and eat nonfat cuts of viscera. Gradually he/ she will recover after this dish. Many people have been revived thanks to this knowledge. After washing the intestines, you put them into a large pan of boiling water in a specific order. First the rumen, then the abomasum, the midriff and the duodenum. At the end, you put in the small intestines. The small intestines are not boiled for long and are removed after 2 - 3 minutes, otherwise they will dissolve, and the bouillon will become bitter. After boiling all entrails, they are cut into small pieces and added to the bouillon. This soup is poured into bowls and served hot. Even food culture is diverse and rich and a wealth of knowledge is embedded in the Even food system and it is important to preserve, use and develop this knowledge system. Our food systems are little studied and the taboos and sacred knowledge surrounding it offer rich insights and clues as to how Even people can thrive moving forward into the future.

In Topolinoye 30 years ago an elder reindeer herder was lost. His name was Golikov Dmitry Gavrilovich. Afterward he couldn’t explain how it happened. He just went to search for his missing reindeer, without light, food, tent or any other things. They were looking for him for a long time and had not found him. We thought that he and his riding reindeer had been killed by a bear or that there had been an accident. After 1.5 months, this herder came by himself into the camp, which was 700 km away from his herd. He was exhausted and had been starving for a long time. Reindeer herders immediately slaughtered a reindeer and made a bouillon from the stomach soup to give to him. He survived. All reindeer herders are aware of this method from their parents. Story told by Maria Pogodaeva

The Even have traditionally been reindeer herders and hunters. Originally reindeer were used primarily as beasts of burden but as their traditional hunting methods changed they began to rely more on them as a source of food and hides. Today, some Even maintain very large herds of reindeer, with the largest in the 1990s having around 2,000 or so animals. The migration routes are often well defined and in many cases have been followed for centuries by particular clan groups or ethnic groups.

The Even eat nearly every part of the reindeer, including marrow, tendons, gristle and the soft parts of the hooves and horns. They regard eating the meat and tissues raw—particularly the lungs, kidneys and liver—as healthy. They also eat gathered plants, locusts, berries and nuts. Sufferers of frostbite were traditionally treated by wrapping them in the carcass of a freshly killed reindeer. Burns were treated with reindeer blood.

Even Hunting Life

The Even hunted of deer, elks (moose), bears, rabbits, foxes, mountain goats, musk deer and other animals for meat and for fur. When hunting wild reindeer they employed a domesticated reindeer attached with a lasso that would entangle any reindeer that tried to fight it. This deer would be maneuvered by a hunter to the leader of the herd who would try to battle it.

Before firearms became widely used the Even hunted bears alone with a spear and knife. The hunter encouraged the bear to charge and when it did the hunter threw a piece of cloth in the air to get the animal to rise up on its hind legs, leaving its chest area exposed. The hunter then kneeled and extended the spear forward. When the bear tried to lung for the hunter it impaled itself on the spear. The hunter usually had a dog with him whose purpose was to distract the bear if something went wrong with the hunt, allowing the hunter to escape.

The Even used powerful bows when hunting elk (moose) and crossbow-like contraptions to hunt small animals. Mountain goats were ambushed from a hiding place, deer were often killed only after being wounded and chased, sometimes for several days. In the winter the Even followed animals and track them on skis. The Even also fished and hunted nerpas (seals). During the salmon migration season they sectioned off parts of rivers and caught large number of fishing. To catch other kinds of fish they use square and conical nets.

Evenki food culture is mainly based on wild reindeer. Evenki also herd reindeer, but prefer to use their domesticated animals for hunting and transportation. For Evenki to eat their own animals would be a last resort. Other popular foods are mountain birds, water-fowl, occasionally bear and elk, and fish. In summer and early autumn the Evenki diet is complemented by reindeer milk...

Here we present two Evenki traditional dishes: Kapka and Buyuren. These two are essential dishes for Evenki reindeer herders in the southern part of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia).

KAPKA

The term of this ancient dish «kapka» is used both for the designation the dish, and for the reindeer trachea. The dish is common among Evenki reindeer herding communities in this region, specifically the Neryungri and Olekminsky districts. The process of making the dish: When butchering the reindeer, you use the entire reindeer head to get the primary ingredients for kapka. You will need the trachea, lips, ears, cheeks, meat and muscles around the eyes, and different parts of meat (usually some meat with sinews). Separate all the ingredients from the skin and bones, rinse and cut into pieces. Fill the trachea with the cut-up ingredients. Connect the ends of trachea together to make a ring (by using a strong thread). Use a skewer made from willow to insert into the trachea and stake it near an open fire for 45-50 minutes, periodically turning the kapka, in order that it cooks evenly. After 45-50 minutes remove from near the fire, let it cool and slice. Place the sliced pieces of kapka on a pan and keep near the stove in order that they became drier (but do not fry). Women prepared kapka to give to their men, when they were going hunting or herding reindeer. They are quick to make and serve as a highly nutritious snack, which can be conserved for a year or longer. Traditionally, it was saved to use in bad times, when there was not enough meat to eat. People could boil it and make soups, or eat it as a snack. It is important to note, that during the process of cooking, no salt was added to kapka. Because once it is salted, it quickly becomes moist. Once cooked kapka was conserved in cotton bags, usually kept away from heat, or outside of the tent in special packs (immek) made of birch bark and reindeer skin. Immek is used for keeping and transporting different products, such as wheat flour and other perishables. There were no special occasions to cook kapka, though herders tried to make it while the reindeer meat was still fresh. In addition, it did not matter whether the reindeer was a female or male, but that the important rule in Evenki culture be followed – it is forbidden to eat reindeer calves. We (the authors) chose to present this dish, as we think it is important to show that it is not only meat which is used from the reindeer. Every part is important, and can be cooked. And kapka is both rich in nutrients and flavor.

BUYUREN – BLOOD SAUSAGE

Reindeer blood sausage (in Evenki language buyuren, buyukse, beyuhe, and subai in the Yakut language) is a popular dish for all reindeer herding peoples in the circumpolar North. Nonetheless, blood sausages are quite different in various reindeer herding regions and have different specifics in the process of cooking, in textures and even colors. Evenki reindeer herders usually make very soft sausages, sometimes of a very light color. The darker color sausage is less tasty, but not less healthy. Actually, the taste of blood sausages depends on the amount of blood and the fat content of the intestines. There are just two main ingredients for this dish:

fresh reindeer blood and intestines.

During the process of slaughtering, Evenki herders always collected the blood, usually the amount is about 5 liters, approximately 3 liters of which would be used for blood sausages. The blood is collected in a big bowl. One should let it be still for a while. Considering the fact that blood tends to coagulate, you should first slightly cut the very first layer of the blood with a knife. Then squish the coagulated pieces with your hands while the blood is still warm, in order to get more liquid blood. Do not stir the blood. Then filter the whole bowl, giving you only pure blood and let it be rest for approximately 8 hours (In some regions they let it rest for 5-6 hours). That which is left in the filter is given to the dogs. While the blood is standing, it starts to divide itself into three layers. The first layer is plasma - a very light mass on top. You use this first layer to make light blood sausages. The second layer can also be used for sausages or mixed with plasma, then they will have a darker color, but still soft. The blood from the second layer can also be fried with onions, or other vegetables. It is a very delicious and healthy dish especially for those who have anemia or low hemoglobin. The bottom layer is also boiled for dogs. While the blood is resting so that it divides into layers, you can clean the intestines, wash them and start selecting. The thin ones are sometimes used for sausages. You need to check that the intestines are not broken by blowing into them to check that there are no holes. Intact intestines can be filled with plasma or blood. Bring the ends of the intestine together and use a thread to connect them. Reindeer herders in the Aldan region also add salt, black pepper and garlic to the sausage. Place the intestines with blood into boiling water for 15-20 minutes. Add salt. Boil over a small fire, otherwise the sausage might rupture. A little bit later, poke the sausage with a toothpick to let some air out. Slice the cooked sausage and serve hot. Blood sausages usually were eaten right after they were cooked. But these days, raw sausages can be frozen and cooked later when preferred. However, it is important to remember, that only raw sausage can be put in a freezer, and that frozen sausages should defrost a little before cooking.

Most people lived traditionally, working at fishing, sheep raising, and farming.

Fish was abundant, and many men went to sea daily. Cod, lobsters, crabs, oysters, and clams were readily available.

The gaucho diet was composed almost entirely of beef while on the range, supplemented by yerba mate (erva-mate in Portuguese), an herbal infusion made from the leaves of a South American tree, a type of holly rich in caffeine and nutrients.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-evolution-of-charles-darwin-110234034/

Book about adventures with a Gaucho (lots of meat eating)

https://books.google.com/books?id=5yWgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA475&lpg=PA475&dq=gaucho+health+1880&source=bl&ots=PYcZmgUN5J&sig=ACfU3U3RJoLWQpGTw_J8nKoZMnS-cRaGww&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid8K7mtsPqAhU-l3IEHSv3AOgQ6AEwBHoECGUQAQ#v=onepage&q=gaucho%20health%201880&f=false

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23648/23648-h/23648-h.htm

As a young girl I travelled throughout the land with my father learning about the importance of the caribou (vadzaih), being taught how to identify animal tracks and different food sources of the caribou and being taught stories and proverbs. One such is a rite of passage for manhood in Gwich’in culture, which is when a boy hunts his first caribou, which then must be given away and shared with community members, specifically elders. Another is that half of our Gwich’in heart is that of a caribou, as our reliance on the animal is so large, that we cannot exist without them. Gwich’in were originally a semi-nomadic people, following the caribou, which we depended on for food, shelter, clothing, tools, and weapons. My aunty vividly remembers living on the land with her grandparents for months at a time and all of her clothing being made out of caribou hides, from her shirt to her jacket to her pants, and even her toboggan, and watching her grandfather make snowshoes from caribou sinew and willows. Other animals and plants harvested for Gwich’in sustenance were and still are big game such as moose, waterfowl such as ducks, geese and swans, as well as small game like ptarmigans, rabbits, and grouse, including an abundance of beloved berries such as cranberries, blueberries, and cloudberries. No part of an animal is ever to be wasted and there is to be no disrespect when it comes to harvesting and handling an animal, including when it comes to the care of the land. The decline of the caribou due to over-hunting, climate change, mining exploration and development, inefficiency and or absence of harvest management and land-use planning, are all grave threats to the survival of the caribou, and therefore also us Gwich’in. Critical calving grounds inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are threated by development in Alaska. Different caribou dishes loved and enjoyed include caribou marrow, ribs, heart, intestines, soup, stew, and dry meat (nilii gaih). Two different recipes that I would like to share are itsuu (pemmican) and nilii gaih (dry meat).

I have chosen these two dishes for their cultural and personal significance. Itsuu is traditionally a ceremonial dish, gifted during a period of mourning and nilii gaih is a personal favorite of mine, prized for its taste and unique flavor. Both dishes are prepared seasonally by either men or women, and predate flour. They are also favored due to their convenience when travelling long distances. Itsuu is more commonly known by the Cree word ‘pemmican’ and is a traditional Gwich’in ceremonial dish. Itsuu is a sweet tasting and filling comfort food and the animal fat in the dish is very sustaining. Traditionally, Itsuu is made with frozen caribou fat mixed with left over caribou dry meat with local berries. A contemporary way to make itsuu is with boiled caribou meat, grounded up with added sugar and berries with melted margarine then formed into meatballs and frozen. A story that I have about itsuu is when my uncle’s common-law partner passed away, my father gifted him itsuu and this was one of my first traditional Gwich’in teachings. Nilii gaih, or dry meat is another beloved delicacy made by slicing any wild meat (specifically caribou meat) very thinly and then drying it on a rack, turning it over periodically. Some people prefer to pound the meat to make it softer.

Food is the center of Inuit culture and takes years of education to learn how to obtain and prepare . Many points have to be included when considering our foods – the passage of our Indigenous Knowledge1 , physical, mental and regulatory accessibility to foods, weather conditions, timing of gathering and preparation, funding for equipment and fuel, sharing, language, social networks, and respect are just a few (ICC Alaska. 2015). Our foods, recipes – are a connection from past to present . As one of the authors points out, it is not possible to sum up all that is involved in food preparation in a single recipe . However, we hope the below recipes (our Indigenous Knowledge) will provide you with a sense of our niqipiaq/neqpiat (real food: Inupiaq/Yup’ik). Referred to as Inuit internationally, Iñupiat, Saint Lawrence Island Yup’ik, Yup’ik and Cup’ik make up four Inuit regions within Alaska (see figure 1). A recipe has been provided from each of these regions, by Eilene Adams (North Slope), Cyrus Harris (Northwest Arctic), Sandy and Marjorie Tahbone (Bering Strait) and Sonita Cleveland (YukonKuskokwim).

TUTTU (CARIBOU) SOUP By Eilene Adams, Barrow, Alaska

Tuttu soup is a favorite dish of all ages . People have been eating Tuttu soup for as long as we know . We all grew up eating Aaka’s (grandma’s) Tuttu soup daily – whenever caribou is available . We like to hunt caribou in the fall, when they have more fat . Caribou brings both physical and mental health to our people – we have learned to use all parts of the caribou for survival . This is part of our value system and how we respect our environment . All parts of the caribou are used for food, clothing and tools . Antlers are used to make tools, sinew is used to make boots and even as dental floss, the stomach lining is used to waterproof boots, gloves and other clothing items . Today we include ingredients that are bought from the store, such as flour. But it does not have to be made with flour and at one time no one used flour. 

Ingredients: Caribou meat (brisket and hind quarter are preferable, but any caribou meat will work), 1 cup of rice, ½ cup of flour, one onion. Boil caribou meat until tender - add rice, onion and cook for about ten minutes . Next add flour and cook another ten minutes. Some people like to also add noodles, potatoes, carrots or other vegetables.

MIPKUQ (BLACK MEAT IN SEAL OIL) – «IÑUPIAT SOUL FOOD» Provided by Cyrus «Naunġaq» Harris, Maniilaq Association

Mipkuq is dried ugruk (bearded seal) meat preserved in seal oil, and for thousands of years it has been essential to the diet of Iñupiat. Mipkuq perfectly suits the Arctic region. It provides a source of energy-dense lean protein, packed with heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and has a long shelf life that provides Iñupiat nourishment throughout the harsh winter or, in the early days, when other foods were not readily available. In the summer, when land fast ice is gone and there are offshore ice floes,teams of hunters harvest several adult ugruk on the sea ice and bring them back to camp. Adult ugruk grow 7–8 feet (2.0–2.5 m) in length and weigh 575–800 pounds (260–360 kg), which requires teamwork to transport and process. Delicious, nutritious and energy-dense, Mipkuq is highly sought after and present at nearly every meal and shared or traded with friends and extended family. It is used as a side dish, dipping sauce, or ingredient for other types of niqipaq (real food). In addition to physically sustaining Iñupiat people, Mipkuq also sustains Iñupiat spirituality. Traditional Iñupiat stories have called for the hunter to fill their mouth with seawater, which is then transferred into the mouth of the captured ugruk to return their spirit back to the wild. This practice was said to bring good fortune in future ugruk harvests for generations to come. It is also customary to give the season’s first catch to an elder as a sign of respect and gratitude. This reflects the Iñupiat Ilitqusiat (values) and sense of community associated with preparing, sharing, and consuming niqipaq foods such as Mipkuq.

MIPKUQ (BLACK MEAT IN SEAL OIL)

Ingredients: • Front straps, back straps and blubber from one adult ugruk Equipment: • Knives/Ulu/Gaffe •  Flat cutting board (for butchering the ugruk) • Iññisaq (meat drying rack) • Qavrak board (a board for separating blubber from skin) • 30 gallon rendering bucket • Breathable cover for rendering bucket (game bag, cheesecloth, etc.) • 4 ft. debarked spruce stirring stick •  Pot (for boiling meat) • 5 gallon buckets for Mipkuq storage Harvest, gut, and rinse the ugruk. Once the cleaned ugruk is hauled to camp, place it on a flat cutting board and remove the skin/blubber from around the seal meat. Let the skin/ blubber lay out on the cutting board overnight to dry. Carefully trim any additional meat attached to the blubber so that the blubber is clean. Separate the blubber from the skin (qavrak) using the qavrak board, and cut blubber into 1” x 3” looped strips. Trim and discard low quality blubber where blood has soaked into the blubber. Place good quality blubber strips in the 30 gallon rendering bucket, and cover with a breathable covering to allow for air exchange and to protect from insects. Closely monitor and stir the blubber/oil at least two times per day and let the oil render at ambient outdoor Arctic temperatures (~ 60o F or 16o C) in a protected area away from dust and rain. Oil rendering times can vary, with an approximate rendering time between one to two weeks. In the old days, blubber strips would traditionally be rendered within the intact sealskin hide called a seal ‘poke’. The black meat is made from the seal front and back straps. To prepare the black meat, hang the harvested ugruk meat to dry in the iññisaq for two to three days. This allows the meat to form a dry outer layer and develop a black color that indicates a taste that is not overly «gamey» or «fishy». The back straps are then filleted into an approximately 1/2” thick continuous blanket of meat and hung in the iññisaq to dry. Each day throughout the Mipkuq making process, the back strap meat blanket is monitored and turned over daily. For the front straps, after the initial 2-3 day drying period, they are cut into long 1” thick strips and hung back up to dry. Once the front strap strips reach 50% dryness, those strips are boiled in a large pot of water for approximately 15 minutes. After cooking, re-hang the cooked front strap strips in the iññisaq to dry for several more days. Once the cooked front strap strips and back straps have dried sufficiently, remove the black meat from the iññisaq and cut it into serving size portions (about 4 inches in length). Evenly distribute the black meat portions among 5 gallon buckets filled with the freshly rendered seal oil. The fresh Mipkuq is stored in a siġḷuaq, or underground cooler, for 3-7 days to give the black meat time to absorb the oil. Once the Mipkuq is good, it is stored in the freezer. The last step in the process is to feed your Iñupiat soul and enjoy your fresh Mipkuq with family, friends, and community members! The Maniilaq Association is currently working on a collaborative project to establish a regulatory approved process to make Mipkuq and routinely serve it to elders at our long-term care center.

THE BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE WAY TO PREPARE UGRUK (BEARDED SEAL) By Sandy and Marjorie Tahbone, Nome, Alaska

It is rare (this day and age) that I will get fresh seal meat other than in spring; which is the time when many seals are harvested in our community and the majority of the meat is dried and stored in seal oil with rendered blubber. And having fresh boiled seal meat, blubber, and intestines is mouth-watering and I look forward to preparing this dish every spring. It is rather difficult, for me to explain how to cook native food. It is not like you can go to the store and pick up a few pounds of meat and intestines and they are ready to cook. If this were the case, I would say perhaps for 4 servings you would need 4 pounds of rib meat for boiling, 2 pounds of blubber, and a yard of guts! Knowledge gained through years of processing is hard, for me, to pass on in written form and trying to do it using very few words makes it more difficult. I have given directions for a person who has knowledge about processing bearded seal. Ingredients: Seal meat, Seal blubber, Seal Intestines, Onion, Potatoes (optional), Salt, Water This dish is prepared by slowly or gently boiling the meat, blubber, and intestines. The meat does not take that long to cook and is preferred medium to rare, but is okay to cook well done; so you will remove meat when done and continue cooking the blubber and intestines. The portions depend on how many people you are going to feed, so you will need to use your own judgment and common sense by adding more or less of the ingredients. When I am processing bearded seal in the spring for dry meat I dry the meat with no blubber on the meat taking the time to get every bit of fat off the meat before I hang it for drying; and save the meat that is hard to remove fat for cooking (the flap of meat that covers the ribs). I also save the ribs for cooking as well, especially if the seal is young and fat runs through the rib meat and is not good for drying. I prepare the intestines for cooking by first running water through the entire intestine for the initial cleaning then cutting them into two foot sections and turning them inside out for final cleaning. After the intestines are cleaned I cut them into 6-8 inch pieces for cooking. Prepare the blubber by removing it from the hide and if the blubber has been exposed to air for a time you will need to remove the top and cut it into 1-inch wide and 6-inch long sections for cooking. Cooking time for bearded seal meat is short not like cooking walrus. You can either use fresh or frozen seal meat, blubber and intestines. Prepare seal meat, blubber, and intestines as described above. Chop onions and quarter the potatoes. Put all ingredients in a pot and cover with water. Boil slowly, taking the meat out when desired rare/medium/etc. Continue cooking until the potatoes are cooked (fork tender). Take everything out of the pot and put on a serving platter. Serve the broth in cups and enjoy with some fresh spring greens in seal oil.

TUNUQ (ANIMAL FAT) AKUTAQ By Sonita Cleveland, Quinhagak, Alaska There are many ways to make akutaq. My favorite is tunuq akutaq because it is something different and provides a gamey taste that other types of akutaq do not. We eat it often and many grow up eating different types of akutaq. I watched my grandma make akutaq and she taught me how to make it. As my grandma taught me she always told me food shouldn’t be wasted: if we have it, it should be eaten. Now when I make it, it is like I am not doing it by myself. My entire family likes tunuq akutaq and so we eat it often. We mostly make tunuq akutaq around the fall when we go moose hunting. If there is enough fat, we store it to make food, such as akutaq. Making tunuq akutaq begins with rendering the tunuq. When we first get the moose or caribou or reindeer, we cut the pieces of moose or reindeer fat into small chunks, and we lay them across a baking sheet or cake sheet and bake for 2 to 3 hours at around 250 F, until it is rendered. When it is rendered, we take it out and pour it into another baking sheet and let that harden. Then we break it into chunks with an uluaq and freeze them and wrap them in foil, saran wrap, or ziploc bags and put in the freezer. When it is time to make akutaq the tunuq is taken from the freezer and melted or if the tunuq is fresh, we can render some to use. Some people melt the tunuq in a frying pan. I don’t like the slightly burnt taste it that a frying pan gives and so we put chunks of fat in a big cake pan and bake it on a low heat for a few hours. From spring to fall, we collect different berries to store. For this recipe, we often use blackberries or cranberries. Every time we want tunuq akutaq, we just take some berries and tunuq out of the freezer. Ingredients: 1 cup sugar – melted 1 ½ Crisco 1 ½ tunuq 3 cups of berries I like to use equal amounts of Crisco and rendered fat, a hand full sugar, and berries. First, whip up the sugar and Crisco until it is blended by hand, pour in the melted rendered tunuq and keep mixing. Lastly, add the berries. While mixing all of the ingredients together, the akutaq begins to stiffen – this is when it is ready to eat. Sometimes people put in white fish. We boil the white fish first, take bones out, lay it across a cookie sheet – or just use it. Chum salmon or halibut is sometimes used in place of whitefish. Many people today make akutaq with only Crisco although this was not the case long ago, as people did use Crisco or sugar. I prefer tunuq akutaq over Crisco akutaq because it keeps us full and has a better flavor. Akutaq is nutritious, despite the Crisco – these are natural oils and it is our organic food. When going out to get wood or fish, grandma always told me to taquaq (take food with) such as dried fish and akutaq to keep you warm, full, and to have energy. The older people we invite, like the elders, really like it when we make them tunuq akutaq. It is a rare treat for them and many say, ‘I remember my mom making this when I was younger.’ I know by eating it, it will give them memories of when they were younger. I am named after my grandma’s mom. When my uncle had the akutaq that my grandma had taught me to make, he said, ‘you take after your name sake.’ This is part of our knowledge passing through our generations. Unfortunately, many of the younger generation do not know how to make tunuq akutaq. As I get older, I will teach the younger generations.

In his primitive state he has provided an example of physical excellence and dental perfection such as has seldom been excelled by any race in the past or present. We are concerned to know the secret of this great achievement since his circumscribed life greatly reduces the factors that may enter as controlling units in molding this excellence. While we are primarily concerned in this study with the characteristics of the Eskimo dentition and facial form and the effect upon it of his contact with modern civilization, we are also deeply concerned to know the formula of his nutrition in order that we may learn from it the secrets that will not only aid the unfortunate modern or so-called civilized races, but will also, if possible, provide means for assisting in their preservation.

Weston Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939)

We are particularly concerned with the foods used by these primitive Eskimos. They almost always have their homes on or near deep water. Their skill in handling their kayaks is most remarkable. During the salmon running season they store large quantities of dried salmon. They spear many of these fish from their kayaks; even young boys are very skillful. They land salmon so large that they can hardly lift them. They are expert in spearing seals from these light crafts. Seal oil provides a very important part of their nutrition. As each piece of fish is broken off, it is dipped in seal oil. I obtained some seal oil from them and brought it to my laboratory for analyzing for its vitamin content. It proved to be one of the richest foods in vitamin A that I have found.

The fish are hung on racks in the wind for drying. Fish eggs are also spread out to dry, as shown in Fig. 13. These foods constitute a very important part of the nutrition of the small children after they are weaned. Naturally, the drifting sands of the bleak Bering Straits lodge upon and cling to the moist surfaces of the fish that are hung up to dry. This constitutes the principal cause for the excessive wear of the Eskimos’ teeth in both men and women.

The food of these Eskimos in their native state includes caribou, ground nuts which are gathered by mice and stored in caches, kelp which is gathered in season and stored for winter use, berries including cranberries which are preserved by freezing, blossoms of flowers preserved in seal oil, sorrel grass preserved in seal oil, and quantities of frozen fish. Another important food factor consists of the organs of the large animals of the sea, including certain layers of the skin of one of the species of whale, which has been found to be very high in vitamin C.

Ibid.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Fat of the Land (1956, originally published in 1946)

If inexperienced in primitive cultures, one is likely to misinterpret general statements about food. I might tell you, correctly, that the chief food of a certain group of Eskimos with whom I lived was caribou meat, with perhaps 30 per cent fish, 10 per cent seal meat, and 5 or 10 per cent made up of polar bear, rabbits, birds, and eggs. This might lead one to visualize meals where there would be a fish course followed by a meat course, and where we would breakfast at least occasionally on eggs. Such is most unlikely to be the rase, with primitive peoples. If 50 per cent of the year’s food is caribou meat, the primitive likely eats practically nothing, but caribou during approximately half the year, seldom tasting this meat the rest of the twelve months. His fish percentages will come in similarly restricted periods, and they are likely to be fish exclusively. The eggs, far from being breakfasts distributed through several months, would be occasional days of nothing but eggs during only one month of the year, in the spring.

“Esquimo Teeth Prove Health of Meat Diet,” The Harvard Crimson (1929)

By means of some 90 models of Eskimo teeth, Dr. Adelbert Fernald, Curator of the Harvard Dental School Museum, has proved that eating a strictly meat diet is the ideal way in which to keep the human mouth in a healthy condition, and that it is due to the fact that civilized people do not eat enough meat that they as a rule have decayed teeth.

Commander Donald B. MacMillan, the noted Arctic explorer, obtained about 90 impressions of the teeth of the Eskimos of Smith Sound, “the meat eaters,” who live the farthest north of any human beings. He did this at the request of Dr. Fernald, who desired the models for the Dental School Museum. The impressions were made on one of MacMillan’s most recent Artic expeditions. From the impressions, models have been constructed. Commander MacMillan said that “the Smith Sound Eskimos average about four ounces of vegetable matter each year per capita.”

Only one tooth of the 616 contained in the models is deformed. All the models represent mouths and teeth wonderfully developed. A more definite proof of the efficacy of a meat diet in maintaining healthful teeth could not be desired.

Out of the 616 teeth only seven are missing, while Dr. Fernald states that of the same number of teeth in the mouths of New England people, he would expect to find more than 100 missing.

In connection with the securing of the Eskimo teeth models from Commander MacMillan, Dr. Fernald arranged with Professor Hooton of the Peabody Museum at Harvard to secure impressions of the teeth of Yucatan natives during a southern expedition. These people are famous as vegetable eaters. Most of them eat no meat whatever. It was found that their teeth were very much decayed. At a surprisingly early age, their teeth lost all semblance of even a normally healthy condition, and most of them, when middle aged, had practically no teeth, whatever. It has been the experience of most dentists that those people who have the healthiest teeth are those who eat the most meat, which points to the same conclusion as Dr. Fernald’s researches.

Many of the models of the Eskimo teeth are perfect in every way, not having the slightest defect either of form or condition. Dr. Fernald states that is the 32 years of his dental practice he has seen only one set of teeth which were perfect in every respect.

Dr. Fernald says “Studying the models of these peoples’ mouth in the interest of anthropology and ethnology, as well as from an orthodontic standpoint. I consider extremely valuable, as much more data, can be obtained from models of a living person than from skulls. For instance, if the models show that the gums are apparently firm and tight around the teeth and have not receded that alone indicates to some extent a healthy mouth. From the fact that the arches are so even and well developed I should say that these people with so large arches are not mouth breathers, and therefore are not suffering from adenoids, enlarged tousils, and so forth.

https://youtu.be/iSZlqdWqQKA?t=325

Authentic Koryak Recipes and Traditions:

TOLKUSHA AND THE FESTIVAL OF MILANƔӘT: COASTAL KORYAK

In November or early December the coastal Koryak – the Nymylans celebrate the festival of Milanɣәt - the holiday of the Ringed Seal. The meaning of this holiday is to guide the spirits of marine mammals that have been hunted during the season, back to the sea. Every family that celebrates this holiday cooks special dishes, in particular tolkusha (tilqәtil). During the festival, all the guests that come to the feast are considered to be the seals. And during this festival, people meet each other with a cry «ololo» because ringed seals emit such sounds when resting on land. That is why this holiday is also known with the name Hololo or Ololo. When the master of the feast (a hunter or elder of the family) performs the rite of taking the seals back to the sea, small figures of seals are made from twigs of alder, and bound with sedge grass (lәˀutaŋ). Such seal figures are ritually fed with tolkusha, watered and sent to the fire. Almost all the rites are performed with fire. Everybody is having fun, playing the tambourine, dancing and showing to the seals who are ‘returning home’ that they had a good time with delicious food at the festival. Upon returning home, these seals would tell their friends, other marine mammals, about this holiday and would always come back again the next year. Thereby people secure hunting luck for the following season. This dish has a very sweet taste due to jiwjirˀu and also fortified and nutrition and vitamins. It is always served as a dessert. For Milanɣәt many other meals are also prepared, for example, kilikil. To make kilikil, boil fish, then mash it, remove the bones and add crowberries (ljәɣiˀәvәnˀu). The resulting mass is infused with mәtqәmәt - liquid ringed seal fat. One of the most common festive foods of any holiday, including Milanɣәt, is tavˀal – dried fish, yukola [a sun-cured fish dish, see Yukagir chapter]. It is especially tasty when eaten together with valival – ringed seal fat. Tavˀal is prepared in the summer, during the main run of salmonids. The Koryak make Yukola from salmon, Arctic char, trout or other fish. The dorsal and ridges are cut off, and only the fillet is separated and hung to dry.

FESTIVE FOOD AT QOJAŊAJTӘK: REINDEER HERDING KORYAK

The nomadic Koryak hold their holiday called qojaŋajtәk (qojaŋajtatәk) in the autumn, during the waxing moon. Qojaŋajtәk literally means ‘to move the reindeer’. Women prepare Cencitkuwәtwәt, is a sacrificial green colored gruel made from the ’river beauty’ (here called ‘reindeer leaves’). It is harvested in summer, dried and then ground on a stone mortar. In the village of Achayvayam this is called qozjawәtwәto. The resulting mass is used for tolkusha and crowberries are added into it. While the coastal Koryak add ringed seal fat, the nomadic Koryak add reindeer fat to tolkusha. After certain rituals, yukola is eaten. For the qojaŋajtәk holiday, it is made from Arctic char with the head still on. It is called lewtetewˀel and literally means ‘sun-cured fish with fish head’. For qojaŋajtәk, sacrificial reindeer are slaughtered, and Qәmәl (bone marrow from the rear legs) is eaten raw. Everyone except male children eat the bone marrow. While girls are allowed to eat large amounts, boys are not, so that they do not lose their appetite, as they need to build their strength to herd the reindeer when they grow up. The meat of the sacrificial reindeer is laid out on a sled. The sacrificial meat (inelәtˀul), the lungs (zitcat), liver (pontan) and meat from the spine (zavjaw) are baked in the embers of the fire, which should be situated on the Eastern side of the entrance of the yaranga (the traditional Koryak tent). Then kinuŋi - meat boiled in a cauldron over the fire – is eaten. Half of the raw meat is hung on poles outside and after 2-3 days the dried meat is brought into the Yaranga where it is smoked over the fire and eaten in winter. A ritual sausage zezjat is made from the third stomach of the sacrificial reindeer. It contains boiled bone fat from the broken leg bones of a reindeer. Zezjat is considered to be a substitute for a live reindeer in a bloodless sacrifice during the winter and spring holidays. Part of the sausage can be eaten in the morning. During the holiday at the thanksgiving ceremony to the fire, ‘dried toadstools’ (wapaq) are a vital ingredient. Toadstools are collected in the summer, and removed completely with the top intact with care being taken not to touch it. They are strung out on a thread and dried in the Yaranga. The consumption of dried toadstools is considered to be essential during thanksgiving ceremony. In the early morning, a ritual blood soup called mŋeˀәpaŋa (literally, ‘fire soup’) is made, which no holiday can do without. To prepare the blood soup you need clean water and blood, which is boiled on a slow fire until a certain sound is heard. In connection with the birth of children, coastal Koryak hold the feast of Anaŋavisqatin («in celebration of women»). Here taknonoikau (bringer of happiness) is prepared, by first frying flour until brown, to which coastal Koryak add the blood, meat and marine mammal fat. Nomadic Koryak add reindeer meat, blood, and fat. Eating this cereal is supposed to provide a prosperous life for the newborn child. Considering the parlous situation of Koryak languages, the enduring traditions of Koryak food culture, their connection with rituals, celebrations and festivals, their rich terminology and methods and purpose of particular foods may assist the preservation and development of the Koryak language. Koryak traditions and ceremonies and all connected activities, including the names of dishes, ingredients, and so on, remained unalterable due to the sacredness of the rites themselves. In this way, these foods, their memories and terminologies act as a storehouse for the Koryak people and culture. The importance of these ancient and unchanging food traditions of the Koryak are a vital part of their desire to remain as a thriving and vibrant culture in a period of rapid change.

Meat in various forms has always been an essential part of Kyrgyz cuisine. Among the most popular meat dishes are horse-meat sausages (kazy or chuchuk), roasted sheep's liver, beshbarmak (a dish containing boiled and shredded meat with thin noodles), and various other delicacies made from horse meat.

Beshbarmak

Beshbarmak is the Kyrgyz national dish, although it is also common in Kazakhstan and in Xinjiang (where it is called narin). It consists of horse meat (or mutton/beef) boiled in its own broth for several hours and served over homemade noodles sprinkled with parsley. Beshbarmak means "Five Fingers" in the Kyrgyz language, and is so called probably because the dish is typically eaten with the hands. Beshbarmak is most often made during a feast to celebrate the birth of a new child, an important birthday, or to mourn a death in the family, either at a funeral or on an anniversary. If mutton is used instead of horse meat, a boiled sheep's head is placed on the table in front of the most honored guest, who cuts bits and parts from the head and offers them around to the other guests at the table.[1]

Dimlama

Dimlama is a stew consisting of meat, potatoes, onions, vegetables and sometimes fruits.

Kuurdak

Kuurdak is one of the main meat dishes.

Shashlik

Skewered chunks of mutton grilled over smoking coals that come with raw sliced onions, is served in restaurants and often sold on the street. The meat is usually marinated for hours before cooking. Shashlyk can also be made from beef, chicken, and fish. Each shashlik typically has a fat-to-meat ratio of one-to-one.

Shorpo[edit]

Shorpo (or sorpo) is a meat soup.

Paloo

Cooking paloo

Paloo (Kyrgyz: палоо or күрүч/аш) is the Kyrgyz version of what is generally referred to as plov in Central Asian cuisine. It consists of pieces of meat (generally mutton or beef, but sometimes chicken) fried in a large qazan (a cast-iron cauldron) and mixed with fried shredded carrots, jiucai(garlic chives) and cooked rice. The dish is garnished with whole fried garlic cloves and hot red peppers. Uzgen paloo is made with locally grown rice from the southern Uzgen District of Kyrgyzstan. Shirin paloo, a close relative of shirin plov in Azerbaijani cuisine,[citation needed] is a vegetarian dish in which meat is replaced with dried fruits, such as prunes, apricots, and raisins.

Paloo is the Kyrgyzified form of the Persian word polow or polo, related in etymology to pilaf. In Russian the dish is called plov (Russian: плов), in Turkish pilav, in Turkic languages ash, and in Tajik osh.

https://www.indonesia.travel/us/en/destinations/bali-nusa-tenggara/flores/the-whale-hunt-of-lamalera

Around the world, the village of Lamalera on the island of Lembata on Flores is known as the home of traditional whale hunting. Portuguese documents dating back to 1643 already mention that these heroic hunts were sighted then.  Experience Indonesia in 360

In Lamalera, villagers hunt large sea animals, like whales, manta rays and sometimes dolphins to provide food and a living for the entire village, which they undertake on simple sailboats and following ancient beliefs, taboos and tradition.

It is for these reasons, therefore, that the Lamalera whale hunts are until this day exempt from the international ban on whaling, considering the traditional way this is still done and the fact that hunting these giant ocean creatures help villagers support their subsistence economy.

Annually, whales migrate between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific during May through October, when these giant sea animals pass the Savu sea right at the doorstep of the island of Lembata. For Lembata, therefore, whale hunting starts on 1 May reaching its peak in July.

When a whale hunt is decided, a number of boats parked on the beach are released from their simple shelters, cheered on by the entire village , and a troupe of boats will set sail together to catch their harvest.

Before that, however, everyone gathers to attend a dedicated mass led by the local Catholic priest to pray for a succesful and safe expedition. For, the majority of the inhabitants here are Catholic.

The actual whaling is still done on traditonally flimsy wooden boats, called peledang. These are manned by between 7 – 14 helmsmen, oarsmen and harpooner, where each is assigned his special duties. The most agile of the team stands on the bow ready with a barbed harpoon.

When a whale or manta is sighted, he throws his harpoon into the animal jumping down on the harpoon itself so as to give it his additional weight.  When the target is a huge sperm whale and it is a hit, other team members throw more harpoons on the prey. And when it is finally disabled, together all team members heave up the heavy body onto the boat.  Other villages who also hunt for whales are from the Lamakera village on the island of Solor, but the Lamalera village is the most well known. During one season, islanders may catch between 15 to 20 whales.

There are taboos for the Lamaleras when it comes to whale hunting. For example, it is forbidden to hunt pregnant whales, young whales, and mating whales. This capacity to recognize these specific taboos can only be learnt through extensive periods of experience. Unfortunately, some elders worry that the tradition is vanishing as youngsters tend to separate tradition from convenient modernity, so that future generations will no longer adhere to such precious traditional values.

The land, much of it on steep hillsides rising from the river, produced

the winter's hay for the cattle and rye for the people. Most households kept

goats and cows; the animals grazed in summer on glacial slopes. Cheese

and butter were made from fresh summer milk for use all year, and garden

greens were grown in summer. Whole-rye bread, made in large, stone, com-

munity baking ovens, was a staple all year, as was milk. Most families ate

meat once a week, usually on Sunday, when an animal was slaughtered.

Bones and scraps were used to make soups during the week.

Formerly, the warriors used this food exclusively. These three sources, milk, blood and meat provide them with liberal supplies of body-building minerals and the special vitamins, both fat-soluble and water soluble.

As pastoralists, the Maasai live exclusively on their farm products. Traditionally, they rely primarily on fresh or curdled milk, blood, and meat from cattle for protein, also believing that it supports their immune system. Some Maasai drink cattle blood on special occasions, such as the circumcision of a child or the birth of a baby; it also is given to drunken elders to alleviate intoxication and hangover. Although their diet is rich in saturated fat, the Maasai have low levels of cholesterol and a low incidence of heart disease, which is said to be the result of a unique genetic adaptation reflecting centuries, if not millennia, of a largely milk-based diet. The Maasai also obtain additional food items, honey being among them, as well as buffalo hides for shields, Kudu horn trumpets, and other items normally associated with hunters and gatherers

Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[43] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[44]

All of the Maasai's needs for food are met by their cattle. They eat the meat, drink the milk daily, and drink the blood on occasion. Bulls, goats, and lambs are slaughtered for meat on special occasions and for ceremonies.

"most of them lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, while some even went beyond that age- they ate boiled flesh, and had for their drink nothing but milk."

The food of the Mongols also consists of milk prepared in various ways, either as butter, curds, whey, or kumiss. The curds are made from the unskimmed milk, which is gently simmered over a slow fire, and then allowed to stand for some time, after which the thick cream is skimmed of and dried, and roasted millet often added to it. The whey is prepared from sour skimmed milk, and is made into small dry lumps of cheese. Lastly, the kumiss (tarasum), is prepared from mares’ or sheep’s milk; all through the summer it is considered the greatest luxury, and Mongols are in the habit of constantly riding to visit their friends and taste the tarasum till they generally become intoxicated. They are all inclined to indulge too freely, although drunkenness is not so rife among them as it is in some more civilised countries.

Tea and milk consitute the chief food of the Mongols all the tear round, but they are equally fond of mutton. The highest praise they can bestow on any food is to say that it is ‘as good as mutton.’ Sheep, like camels, are sacred; indeed all their domestic animals are emblems of some good qualities. The favourite part is the tail which is pure fat. In autumn, when the grass is of the poorest description, the sheep fatten wonderfully, and the fatter the better for Mongol taste.[1] No part of the slaughtered animal is wasted, but everything is eaten up with the utmost relish.

The gluttony of this people exceeds all description. A Mongol will eat more than ten pounds of meat at one sittings, but some have been known to devour an average-sized sheep in the course of twenty-four hours! On a journey, when provisions are economised, a leg of mutton is the ordinary daily ration for one man, and although he can live for days without food, yet, when once he gets it, he will eat enough for seven.

They always boil their mutton, only roasting the breast as a delicacy. On a winter’s journey, when the frozen meat requires extra time for cooking, they eat it half raw, slicing off pieces from the surface, and returning it again to the pot. When travelling and pressed for time, they take a piece of mutton and place it on the back of the camel, underneath the saddle, to preserve it from the frost, whence it is brought out during the journey and eaten, covered with camel’s hair and reeking with sweat; but this is no test of a Mongol’s appetite. […]

They eat with their fingers, which are always disgustingly dirty; raising a large piece of meat and seizing it in their teeth, they cut off with a knife, close to the mouth, the portion remaining in the hand. The bones are licked clean, and sometimes cracked for the sake of the marrow; the shoulder-blade of mutton is always broken and thrown aside, it being considered unlucky to leave it unbroken.

On special occasions they eat the flesh of goats and horses; beef rarely, and camels’ flesh more rarely still. The lamas will touch none of this meat, but have no objection to carrion, particularly if the dead animal is at all fat. 

Fowl or fish they consider unclean, and their dislike to them is so great that one of our guides nearly turned sick on seeing us eat boiled duck at Koko-nor; this shows how relative are the ideas of people even in matters which apparently concern the senses. The very Mongol, born and bred amid frightful squalor, who could relish carrion, shuddered when he saw us eat duck à l’Européenne.

Their only occupation and source of wealth is cattle-breeding, and their riches are counted by the number of their live stock, sheep, horses, camels, oxen, and a few goats—the proportion varying in different parts of Mongolia. Thus, the best camels are bred among the Khalkas; the Chakhar country is famous for its horses, Ala-shan for its goats; and in Koko-nor the yak is a substitute for the cow.

[1]: They have a remarkable way of killing their sheep: they slit up the creature’s stomach, thrust their hand in, and seize hold of the heart, squeezing it till the animal dies.

Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky, Travels in Eastern High Asia, Vol. I: Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet, pg. 53-57 (1876)

In their dress and way of living the Massagetae are like the Scythians. Some ride, some do not-for they use both infantry and cavalry. They have archers and spearmen and are accustomed to carry the 'sagaris', or battle axe. The only metals they use are gold and bronze: bronze for spearheads, arrowpoints, and battle-axe, and gold for headgear, belts and girdles. Similarly they give their horses bronze breastplates, and use gold about the bridle, bit, and cheek-pieces... They have only one way of determining the appropriate time to die, namely this: when a man is very old, all his relatives give a party and include him in a general sacrifice of cattle; then they boil the flesh and eat it. This they consider to be the best sort of death. Those who die of disease are not eaten but buried, and it is held a misfortune not to have lived long enough to be sacrificed. They have no agriculture, but live on meat and fish, of which there is an abundant supply in the Araxes. They are milk-drinkers. The only god they worship is the sun, to which they sacrifice horses: the idea behind this is to offer the swiftest of mortal creatures to the swiftest of gods. (Hdt. I. 215-16 emphasis by author).

Overall, average wear rates were generally low to moderate throughout all the samples, based on the wear scoring stages from 1 to 8 by Smith (1984). With the exception of Sample 1 WMON (the older age sample), only Sample 9 KYR had an average Mi score which was higher than S. These scores are suggestive of diets which are generally low in abrasive materials. Examples of abrasive particles which can be found in food are cellulose plant fibres, mineral from bone, collagen from animal tissue and gritty contaminants from food processing techniques such as grinding stones (Hillson 1979). http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14581/1/569193.pdf

"The Chinese noted with surprise and disgust the ability of the Mongol warriors to survive on little food and water for long periods; according to one, the entire army could camp without a single puff of smoke since they needed no fires to cook. Compared to the Jurched soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones. Unlike the Jurched soldiers, who were dependent on a heavy carbohydrate diet, the Mongols could more easily go a day or two without food." -- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The knowledge of raw eating: Nayabad - or how to determine the right reindeer for raw eating. 

 Ӈayabad (ngayabad) is fresh fish or reindeer meat, slaughtered in the traditional way and eaten only in raw (fresh or frozen) form. Ӈayabarma - is the traditional Nenets social meal that consists of freshly slaughtered reindeer meat and blood. For reindeer ŋayabad, herders choose a healthy and fat reindeer. Females without a calf (vaŋg ty) are considered especially good for slaughtering and eating raw. Ŋayabad has a lot of social and religious values. It is carried out on each of the important event of Nenets life, such as births, weddings, when slaughtering a reindeer for clothing, sacrifices on sacred places, funerals, etc. In the chum (the traditional tent), a share of ŋayabad - meat and drink - is also given to long-dead ancestors, whose images are represented by sacral dolls (sidryaŋg and ŋytarma). Near the fire, some food should also be left for the spirit of fire hostess (tu’ khada). Nenets herders chose a healthy reindeer for raw eating due to their deep knowledge about both the herd welfare and each reindeer’s health and condition. Herders determine the health of their reindeer by its appearance at that moment, and also memorize their behavior and well-being through out the previous years: the length of antlers in the summer in comparison to previous years; how quickly the horns fall and the hair sheds in the spring; how reindeer breathes during the summer heat (if a reindeer was panting without a shortness of breath it indicates the presence of some diseases). Herders also consider if necessary vaccinations (against rabies, gadflies, anthrax, etc.) were done. Slaughtering a Reindeer for Raw Eating On the Yamal tundra, reindeer are slaughtered from mid August to April. Slaughtering from spring to late summer is not recommended, as after a long winter the reindeer are exhausted and their meat is considered to be of poor quality. The method of slaughtering reindeer is an important factor in determining the meat quality. For raw eating, an ancient traditional method is used: strangulation. A reindeer is strangled by a lasso (tynzya’) which is tightened on both sides by two men, while the third one pulls a rope tied to the animal’s right (or left) foot. This method is considered by herders to cause less suffering to the animal and ensures the juiciness and good taste of the meat. Strangulation ensures that not a drop of blood is lost, and blood for the Nenets is very valuable. The second slaughtering method is thought to have been borrowed from other Indigenous people, probably from the Khanty (T.V. Sinitsyn, 1960: 69). It became widely practiced since the 1960s, with the mass slaughter and processing of reindeer in the Soviet state farms (Rus sovkhozy). According to eyewitnesses, at first the Nenets did not want to look at the killing of their reindeer in this unconventional way, namely by knocking them senseless with a blow to the head by an ax and by a knife into the heart and Nenets initially refused to eat the meat of a reindeer slaughtered in this way. Today, outside the official slaughterhouses the second method can be used in case of emergency, when a herder is alone in the tundra and help is not near at hand. For family use, clothing and food, including raw eating, Nenets herders will always use their traditional method of slaughtering. The ancient traditions in the process of removing reindeer skins and butchering carcasses are similar among the many Indigenous Peoples of Siberia. In Nenets culture, skinning as well as slaughtering the reindeer has always been a task for men. This is normally done by two people. First, an incision is made below the knee of a front leg, and then, holding the knife blade up, a cut from the knee to the belly and further from the belly to the neck is made. The next step is that the rear legs are cut in the same way and the knife goes almost up to the chest, and then to the tail. After this, the skin should be easily and quickly separated from the carcass, holding the skin in the left hand while pushing the fist of the right hand under the skin. After opening the abdomen with a knife, the kidneys (suik) are pulled out and given to children or guests as a delicacy. Then the stomach is taken out and its contents should be poured or squeezed out. The stomach contents (tiv) have healing properties: it helps to remove rheumatic pain and should be applied fresh and warm on stricken joints. Stomach contents can also be used in the processing the skins. The stomach is then filled with blood and/or meat in order to preserve it. In the summer time it should be rinsed with water. The guests and the family sit in the chum according to their recognized social status. The most honored man or guest would sit at the middle of the table. Women and children sit si’nyana around the table toward the back of the chum. Neighbors are also invited to the feast, and they are also given reindeer meat.

What to Eat & Not to Eat for ŋaybad?

Ӈayabad is always a kind of feast and is done to mark a special day. The whole family and guests gather around a slaughtered reindeer. Each person cuts off a piece of meat or other delicacies and dips it into the warm blood before putting it their mouth. The first things to be eaten after slaughter are the lymphatic nodes (syabkha). While still warm, they are often given to children, as they are easy to chew. Traditionally, for ŋayabad Nenets eat the ears, liver, kidney, larynx, adenoid glands, thymus, the meat of the cervical vertebrae (only from calves), lungs, pancreas, meat secretions from the back (makhey), fat from the back (in the autumn - winter period), bone marrow and neck meat. During ŋayabad the meat is eaten only from one side of the carcass (flesh from buttock, ribs, shoulder, etc.). The other side is left for boiling or preserving in other traditional ways. The head is a stand-alone dish that is usually served to children. In winter the reindeer head is a dish that is left to be prepared later – because it requires quite some time to butcher, which is not always convenient in cold weather. In the summer the head is often eaten immediately and for ŋayabad goes all the parts: the eyes (nyaŋuy ŋyamsa), brains, palate (paydy ŋyamsa), ears, the fat from the eyes, cheeks, the chin, and the brains are also eaten raw. Children are usually given raw kidneys, raw liver slices and ribs, because they are the tastiest morsels. Nenets regard reindeer meat that is still warm after slaughtering to be a delicacy. The tastiest parts of reindeer are the thymus (ŋaramz’), liver (myd), kidney (syuik), trachea (hungo), tongue (nyamyu), the lower lip (pibtya’), as well as the marrow of long bones (kheva). Immediately after slaughtering, the Nenets drink warm fresh blood, and it is considered as being very beneficial for human health. What is not eaten raw? The Nenets eat only reindeer meat and fish raw (but not all species of fish). For example, pike is never eaten raw, and although considered a delicacy in many other places burbot is not eaten at all by Yamal Nenets, except its liver, which is highly prized. In addition, they do not eat raw migratory game, nor local mammals like hare, moose, bear, etc. This is likely due to the fact that being so closely coupled to their reindeer, herders have a very good knowledge about the health of each animal in their herd (both past and present). Nenets do not eat certain parts of reindeer raw: the meat from the spinal bones of an adult reindeer, meat from the breastbone, legs, neck and ribs are never eaten raw, but are boiled in a soup. As are the heart, tongue, first and second stomachs. These parts are used to cook a traditional Nenets soup called «Ya». In addition, the heart of the reindeer is considered sacred, and it must not be either eaten raw nor cut across the muscles - it is considered to be a taboo.

THE BENEFITS OF RAW EATING IN THE NENETS DIET

Raw eating occupies a special place in the Nenets traditional diet, because raw reindeer meat and blood contains a lot of the vitamins and minerals needed to survive and be healthy in the harsh conditions of the North. Thanks to the raw eating of meat, fat, and blood the human body compensates for the lack of essential vitamins and nutrients in the Arctic. If a Nenets does not get to eat raw meat and drink blood, she or he will experience feelings of hunger or stress. Therefore, for the Yamal Nenets, consumption of raw meat is their ‘anti-stress diet’, as it is their only all-year round source on the tundra of many minerals and vitamins, in particular Vitamin C. Even in modern times, it is still difficult (and expensive), to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to the nomadic herders of Yamal. If slaughtered in the traditional way reindeer meat has a special soft, pleasant taste. If frozen, reindeer meat should be unfrozen once and eaten or consumed while still frozen and sliced nicely. The consumption of fresh and still warm blood is very important for maintaining good health. About a healthy person, the Nenets have a special saying ‘Yan khamortada veyarida yargu’, that literally means: ‘there is no dripping blood’, i.e. «in the pink of health», describing someone who is the very picture of health, and this is obtained through the raw-eating of meat and blood of a healthy reindeer. Nenets and other peoples of the North have never suffered from scurvy (lack of Vit. C) or beriberi (lack of Vit. B). Reindeer blood is the best cure for scurvy. The raw marrow of reindeer leg bones is a true delicacy, which is not found in good restaurants, and will keep a person feeling full for many hours. What is High Quality Meat for Nenets? Nenets eat freshly slaughtered raw meat, and have a deep knowledge about how to judge if the meat is safe and of high quality, and how to adhere to certain conditions in order that it retain that quality. The best ŋayabad is from healthy well-fed reindeer (usually this is in the autumn and winter). Due to lengthy migration routes (up to 700 km toward the summer pastures) reindeer at that time are less well nourished. For example, Nenets do not usually slaughter ŋayabad in late spring and summer when reindeer have completed a long winter and a lengthy migration. The next important factor in selecting reindeer for ŋayabad is the absence of diseases that could be judged by the condition and appearance of the internal organs and meat, by blood clotting, by the presence of parasites that could be observed on the meat and organs. Nenets have a particular technique when eating raw: meat from the organs should be sliced in the hand before dipping into the blood and eaten.

TRADITIONAL WAYS TO PRESERVE MEAT

The traditional methods for preserving fresh meat vary depending on the season and the time of year. For example, in late summer, the meat is salted in wooden barrels or tanks and placed in pits that have been dug to serve as a refrigerator. Wild rosemary is used to cover the meat containers to deter insects. Another traditional way to preserve reindeer meat is smoking, which takes place inside the chum in the summer. Raw meat is hung on the crossbar in the chum, not directly above the fire. In summer, the fire is usually smoky as the wood (mostly willow, also some Arctic birch) is wet. This smoke dries the meat hard (in Nenets syamdravy) quickly and it can be saved for a long time. Another traditional method to preserve meat is by air and sunlight drying that is done outside the chum. One traditional way of preserving raw meat may be at risk due to climate change: During the spring thaw, salted raw meat could be placed in the snow on slopes that were in the shadows, where it could remain until the summer warmth. Due to the fact that in more recent years, the summer has been arriving several weeks earlier and heat waves have been extreme, this method of raw meat preservation has hardly been used in recent years. In late autumn reindeer meat is salted in barrels or containers, and left in sledges along migration routes at the spring campsites. The meat is preserved well and still tastes very good raw. Nenets use it in spring – 6 months later they return to these places during their migration to the summer pastures. Also in the autumn, when there is a busy season of slaughtering well fed reindeer in the traditional way and there is a lot of raw meat, it is folded into reindeer stomachs and put in the sledge. In winter, the meat is kept frozen on individual sleds. The meat can be preserved in this way until the warm weather comes in spring. These frozen stomachs can be sawn into pieces when needed and used for ŋaybad.

Reindeer meat that has been slaughtered, butchered, packed and frozen in a modern slaughterhouse, do not meet the Nenets requirements for raw eating. The qualities of taste cannot be compared with the traditional Nenets frozen ŋayabad. This limits opportunities for Nenets who are not practicing the nomadic way of life, for example children and youth at schools and universities, and who still long for raw meat and blood. This causes extra stress to those who are, for whatever reason, away from the reindeer and the land.

Hoffman, a world-renowned specialist in game meat and an avid carnivore, is critical of the anti-meat sentiments that have become more prominent in recent years.

"Meat, both red and fish, contains all the required amino acids in the correct ratios," he says. "After all, we eat muscle to build muscle. In addition, it contains all the minerals; it is particularly a good source of highly bioavailable iron. We now know that in Europe, a large number of teenage girls that are vegetarian become anemic when they reach puberty."

Except for liver, most meat does not contain much Vitamin C. Still, scurvy is almost nonexistent in traditional Arctic cultures. That is because reindeer and other game meats contain higher levels of Vitamin C than do other meats, because the natives eat the liver, and because the natives' diet is supplemented with cloudberries and cranberries. The fact that much of the meat and the fish are eaten raw is also important.

"Every time you process or cook something -- anything -- you are likely to be losing nutrients at every step," says Harriet V. Kuhnlein, professor of human nutrition at the Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment at McGill University in Montreal. "As long as this meat is still microbiologically safe, it is at its best raw or frozen fresh."

Nenet Tribe (Part 1 of 3) https://youtu.be/TGtinXa2Alw 

Nenet Tribe (Part 2 of 3) https://youtu.be/PetlInMD84Y 

Nenet Tribe (Part 3 of 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONFmWtpR9DA

Reindeer meat is the most important part of the Nenets’ diet. It is eaten raw, frozen or boiled, together with the blood of a freshly slaughtered reindeer, which is rich in vitamins.

Every Nenets has a sacred reindeer, which must not be harnessed or slaughtered until it is no longer able to walk. Picture © Steve Morgan https://www.survivalinternational.org/galleries/nenet

The impact of traditional nutrition on reduction of the chronic nonobstructive bronchitis risk in the indigenous peoples living in tundra of the Arctic zone in Western Siberia, Russia

Sergey Andronov, Andrei Lobanov, Andrei Popov, Lilia Lobanova, Ruslan Kochkin, Elena Bogdanova, Irina ProtasovaEuropean Respiratory Journal 2018 52: PA796; DOI: 10.1183/13993003.congress-2018.PA796

https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/52/suppl_62/PA796

Abstract

Indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic zone the use of an open hearth, portable stoves for heating leads to a high load of pollutants, that combined with the cold what can cause the activation of peroxidation. It is possible to prevent activation with the help of traditional nutrition (raw fish, venison), with high antioxidant activity (vitamins A, ω-3).

Our study aimed to develop risk models to determine the minimum sufficient rates of venison and fish consumption and to prevent the development of chronic nonobstructive bronchitis in reindeer herders.

616 reindeer herders (26.8% of men) aged 30-59 (mean age – 42.2), that is 8.0% of the total adult population of the district, participated in a cross-sectional study. The analysis of the diet was conducted using questionnaires. Nonlinear logit regression was used to build risk models. Permissible minimum amount of venison and fish was calculated to reduce the risk. The diagnosis of chronic nonobstructive bronchitis was established according to WHO definition. Lung function was assessed by a dry spirometer (SpiroUSB ML 2525 CareFusion, UK).

To reduce the risk of developing chronic nonobstructive bronchitis, minimum sufficient daily portion of deer meat should be at least 190 grams (OR=1.5), cheek – 158 grams (OR=1.5), pikes – 40 grams (OR=4.2, 95% CI–1.3–10.2). Eating venison and pike 2 times a week, a cheek – every other day is considered to be enough.

To conclude, adequate use of traditional food reduces the risk of chronic nonobstructive bronchitis.

• [Netsilik Eskimo] Stalking a Seal On Spring Ice- Part 1 This short documentary on the Netsilik Inuit depicts life in an Inuit camp on the shore of Pelly Bay in early summer. A hunter catches a seal and drags it back to camp, where he and his wife cut it up. There is a use for everything--blubber, hide, fur, even the intestines.

• Netsilik Eskimo - full playlist

The larger part of their caloric intake was from game (the guanaco being the prime source), and only minimal use was made of vegetable foods.

Ecological conditions 

The vast Great Plains region is marked by the paucity of water. The western portion lies in the rainshadow of the Rocky Mountains. Rivers drain east to the Great Lakes, or southeast to the Mississippi basin which provides a conduit for moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Some rivers disappear into underground aquifers. Agriculture is precarious except in larger river floodplains. Grazing animals are forced constantly to move, and formerly with them, dependent human societies like the Blackfoot. Herding remains ecologically feasible today, with bison herds now supplanted by cattle. Major subsistence species included bison, cervids (also for clothing), and wild or partially cultivated plant foods. Population density was necessarily low. Kroeber (1939:78) argued that possibilities for a Plains culture did not exist before the horse, that the region was economically marginal. Archaeology contradicts this inference, except for reduced habitation during the Altithermal period (c. 3000-2000 BC) (Schlesier 1994). Archaeological work since the 1950s demonstrates the central importance of the bison drive in the long-term Plains economy. Impounding herds was the core of subsistence until conquest (Verbicky-Todd 1984).

The Blackfoot Nation 

Let us now examine one of Wissler’s “typical” mid-nineteenth-century Plains tribes, the Nitsitapii or Blackfoot, who occupied the northwestern Plains (present-day Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana) from at least the fourteenth century. 

Subsistence 

The Blackfoot dwelt in tipis secured against the wind by rocks, which left innumerable “tipi rings.” Blackfoot moved in relation to the wild herds, transporting their shelters with dog-pulled travois (Bozell 1988). They relied upon the bison pound, a corral toward which a herd was enticed by a young man singing a spiritually potent song in the mode of a bleating calf; meanwhile, in camp, spiritually adept adults prayed over an iniskim, usually a fossilized ammonite possibly resembling a sleeping bison. Close to the pound, V-shaped lines of rock or brush piles hid the main hunting team. As the herd entered this funnel the whole band jumped up, waving robes and shouting, to stampede the herd either over a bluff or up a closed ravine to the corral where men waited to kill the milling animals with clubs and bows and arrows. From a few dozen to two hundred bison would be killed. There was no way to let the surplus escape. 

All able-bodied adults worked to process the kill. One source reported six-person teams working on each carcass. Stomach contents and organs were eaten fresh. Most flesh was dried in thin strips, bones were cracked for marrow, chopped and boiled to extract fat. Pemmican (dried meat and rendered fat combined, often with dried berries) was packed into hide bags for storage. Pemmican, or simple dried meat, may have been a prehistoric trade item, downriver to farming towns (Brink 1990, Kehoe 1973). The historic fur trade brigades depended on tons of pemmican traded by Plains hunters. 

Hunters or pastoralists? 

Blackfoot bands, like other Plains Nations, burned large stretches of grassland to improve forage for the wild herds. In the less arid eastern prairies, burning also prevented reversion to forest. (Seasonal grass burning has been associated with the name “Blackfoot,” from moccasin soles blackened by walking over burned land. One of the confederated Nitsitapii groups is the Siksika [Blackfoot].) 

In the sense that the Blackfoot and other Plains Nations managed pasture and corraled herds in order to slaughter them, they could be considered pastoralists, although no one, including modern “buffalo ranchers,” has succeeded in domesticating bison. The strategy of maximizing forage, moving with the herds’ annual round, and seducing the lead cows to slaughter with a bleating calf song was highly efficient for exploiting this unique, rich, renewable resource. 

When horses were adopted in the seventeenth (southern Plains) and eighteenth (northern Plains) centuries (Ewers 1955:3–10) families could carry more possessions further, but the horse elaborated, rather than supplanted, the basic impounding method of hunting (Morgan 1991:154–8). Politically, horses enabled rapid attacks and retreats, ideally far from home camps, during the years of endemic warfare of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Social relations and residential patterns 

The band/residential group was the unit task force for obtaining bison. With ten to twenty tipis (80– 160 persons), its nucleus was twenty to forty able-bodied men and an equal number of able-bodied women. The band followed its prey onto the grasslands in spring, rendezvoused with other bands in early summer, and returned to sheltered stream valleys in autumn (Epp 1988). Bands had a core of close kin, though one was free to move, even to join a band of another Nation (Sharrock 1974). 

Certain families considered themselves of higher status, training their children to exercise leadership; well dressed, they were absolved from daily drudgery. Such families maintained their relative economic advantage by lending horses to others, receiving in return a share of the hunted, raided, or harvested produce. I’nssimaa, daughter of one such family, recalled she accompanied cousins to the hunt because “Father would never get a chance to go because he had two fast buffalo horses and some one [sic] would ask to borrow them and they would bring him meat” (Kehoe 1996:392).

Invertebrates

Invertebrates, in consideration here as most frequently harvested include three scientific phyla: a) mollusks such as bivalves (e.g. clams and mussels), gastropods (e.g., snails, limpets, and abalone), cephalopods (octopi and squid), and chitons; b) arthropods, which include crabs, shrimp, and barnacles; and c) echinoderms such as sea urchins. The conventional term “shellfish” is a category that subsumes many of these taxa, regardless of the presence or kind of shell they bear, but is avoided here given its different connotations when considered in scientific, socio-cultural, or commericial harvest contexts. Regardless, invertebrates have played a continuously important role in traditional Quileute subsistence extending back millennia. Their remains – the shells of mollusks (and their beaks, in the case of cephalopods) and arthropods, and the tests, spines, and other hard parts of sea urchins – comprise a substantial volume of archaeological middens along the coast, and are also found inland on former shorelines elevated by tectonic processes above modern sea level (Duncan 1981; Wessen 1994; Wessen and Huelsbeck 2015). Ethnohistoric observations and ethnographic studies indicate that invertebrates were an important part of the traditional diet and economy, consumed locally and processed for trade with other Tribes (Ray 1954), and retain importance to the Tribal community today. A tremendous amount of traditional knowledge supports historic and modern collecting of these animals, by directing gathering practices in the right seasons and with the right methods to help ensure safe and sustainable harvests (Shaffer et al. 2004:11-17). The variety of traditionally harvested invertebrates mirrors their biogeographic diversity in the littoral, and to a lesser extent nearshore, environment. Most bivalves are sessile, or immobile, during most of their lifespan, and serve as a year-round, easily procured and nutritious resource. Other invertebrates such as crab and octopus move throughout the nearshore environment and supplemented the traditional diet as well. Although almost 100 distinct invertebrate taxa have been identified in the local archaeological record, both archaeological and ethnographic data indicate oysters, mussels, clams (especially littleneck, butter, and razor clams, as well as blue mussels), chitons, and octopus were the most intensively harvested invertebrate taxa in early times. Today crab is a major commercially harvested species by the Quileute. Bivalves are extremely sensitive to habitat perturbations because they are primarily sessile animals that filter the sea water in which they live for sustenance. Shells from shell midden sites yield environmental proxies such as molecular isotopes in certain ratios and changing widths of growth rings in single individuals, making them valuable indicators of the environmental conditions of a shoreline at a specific point in time. Shell deposits, whether cultural middens or former natural death assemblages, found in places that are no longer active shorelines may reflect either gradual environmental change such as rising sea levels or abrupt changes such as tectonic uplift. Replacement of a substrate type (e.g., mud, sand, gravel) that a particular invertebrate taxon relies upon may occur as erosion increases or decreases, which may be tied to changes in sea level, wave fetch patterns, and/or sediment sources located elsewhere along the shoreline. Some invertebrates are dependent upon lower intertidal kelp beds, particularly sea urchin whose health is directly connected to the health and abundance of kelp beds that are sensitive to sedimentation (Shaffer et al. 2004:14). A reduction in the abundance and individual size of blue mussels is attributed by Quileute elders to changes in nutrient availability, nor are certain kinds of chiton seen at the same numbers as they were in the past (Shaffer et al. 2004:15). In some cases, non-Native recreational harvest of certain invertebrate taxa has also likely contributed to their decline, as in the case of littleneck and butter clams between La Push and the mouth of the Hoh River (Shaffer at al. 2004:16). Given anticipated climate change over the coming decades that will entail changes in sea level, as well as temperature, salinity, and acidification of marine waters, this traditional resource will likely undergo negative biological impacts. Utilization of a diverse array of shellfish taxa and various invertebrate habitats has been a hallmark of traditional harvest, which may mitigate the effects of climate change to some extent.

Fish

Traditional use of fish by the Quileute includes species considered ecological keystones, such as salmon (chinook, coho, and sockeye; less so the steelhead in treaty times, although extensively today) and smelt (surf smelt and night smelt especially) (Powell et al. 1996:I-16; Powell et al. 1998:B26), and other commercially important species such as halibut and black cod (sablefish). Other taxa that have received less attention by industry and fisheries scientists were still important sources of food and bait, such as sculpin and surfperch. The archaeological record, as seen at Ozette and La Push, suggests focus on harvesting fish in the open water. The small numbers of herring identified at Ozette and smelt at La Push indicate a recovery bias that likely does not reflect the importance of these small keystone species that were important prey for humans, as well as larger fish and sea mammals (Huelsbeck 1994a; Wessen 2006). Ethnohistoric observations and ethnographic studies indicate that anadromous fish, principally salmon (primarily Chinook and coho), were an important component of the traditional economy. The places along rivers where fish were harvested were named and identified with specific families, with rapids being the focal fishing places. The traditional fishing practice included a variety of traps, tools, and nets. Fish were smoked for storage using vine maple or alder (Ray 1954). Other fish noted in ethnographic research include steelhead, halibut, flounder, cod, sturgeon, as well as silver eels (e.g., Ray 1954). Fish that were caught in the open ocean were harvested using a variety of different lines and hooks. Today, black cod and halibut are the most important open-water fish for Quileute commercial harvest. Although black cod bones have yet to be identified in shell midden remains along Washington’s outer coast, recent analysis of fish remains elsewhere on the Olympic Peninsula indicate this may be a product of persistent mis-identification on the part of archaeologists (Nims 2016), and that local shell middens may indeed contain a record of pre-contact use of this fish. Response of certain fish taxa to environmental change has been the focus of study by fisheries scientists for decades, although the progress made in understanding patterns such as salmonid return rates and climate forcing mechanisms has yet to be well understood in terms of these patterns’ effects on traditional fisheries. Pre-contact fishing patterns as seen in the archaeological record show general continuity through time in fishing patterns; with differences in fish bone assemblages between houses excavated at Ozette attributed to social differences and contemporaneous families harvesting in different family-owned fishing territories (Huelsbeck 1994a:86). Unpredictable weather makes fishing in the oceans more dangerous; fishermen report that glaciers and icefields on coastal mountain ranges were used as landmarks, and their decline has made traditional navigation more difficult (Papiez 2009).

Birds

Traditional use of birds in this region is known from relatively small but taxonomically diverse archaeological assemblages from Ozette and La Push, and passing mention in ethnographic notes. Although interpretations of archaeological data based on specimen counts and meat weight estimates suggest that bird hunting was secondary to sea mammal harvesting and fin-fishing in terms of importance in the seasonal subsistence cycle, their importance in terms of taste and non-food uses is highlighted in ethnohistoric observations (e.g., DePuydt 1994:249; Swan 1869). Pelagic birds, notably albatross, are relatively well-represented in pre-contact Quileute shell middens (Schalk 2014; Wessen 2006), and albatross is specifically mentioned by James Swan as a species given to him by a Quileute chief (Boxberger testimony, US v Washington, Subproceeding 09-1, 3/12 Tr. pp. 112:25- 114:7). Because their traditional territory includes the major ecotone where open ocean meets the rivers, prairies, wetlands and uplands of the Olympic Peninsula, the Quileute had access to waterfowl and other resident birds available year-round as well as birds that usually spend their time well out over the open ocean or trans-continental migration routes. Bird species reported as prey include ducks (including shaggy ducks), geese, grouse, as well as gulls as sources of eggs. Migratory bird hunting began in May, and these were shot with arrows or snared, while gull eggs were collected in June, especially from the offshore islands. The more local archaeological bird bone assemblages show a variety of species that served the needs for food, as well as bones, feathers, and other anatomical parts for making tools, clothing, and other items. However, these assemblages do not shed light on changes in bird procurement or the health of their populations over time (DePuydt 1994; Duncan 1981). Some bird taxa have historically become more abundant, but as a result of environmental change and not in a way that benefits traditional subsistence. For example, some Canada geese have become resident to the region as farmland has increased and provide a year-round source of food for the geese (Shaffer et al. 2004:27).

Marine Mammals

Marine mammals have always played a central role in traditional lifeways of the Quileute and other northern coastal Washington Tribes, setting these groups apart from other Native groups in Washington and the southern Northwest Coast. Marine mammals, most notably whales and fur seals, are well-represented in both the local archaeological and ethnographic records, and have been the focus of modern fisheries biologists for several decades. For these reasons, the relationship between coastal Washington Native peoples and marine mammal resources is perhaps one of the most informative lines of evidence for traditional adaptations to environmental change. Archaeological data sets provide insight into change over time in the methods and targets of traditional sea mammal harvest. The Ozette assemblage is the largest and most thoroughly studied archaeological assemblage of marine mammal bones in the region (e.g., Gustafson 1968; Huelsbeck 1994a), although the shell midden at La Push exhibits the same general taxonomic profile indicating a focus on marine mammals including fur seals and whales (Duncan 1981; Reagan 1917). Archaeological and ethnographic evidence demonstrates over 900 years of regular fur sealing up to 50 miles offshore by the Quileute people. Over 90% of the mammal bones in the La Push midden are fur seal bones (Wessen 2006). Fur seal biology demonstrates a centuries-old migratory path 30- 60 miles offshore of the Washington coast (Trites and Roberson 2014). Ethnohistoric observations and ethnographic studies indicate that the Quileute were a renowned whaling group, and that whaling was an extremely important activity in the traditional economy and “considered the highest occupation” (Andrade 1931; Frachtenberg 1916; Howeattle and Payne 1916). A diverse and technologically sophisticated material culture was used to harvest whales, including canoes, paddles, harpoons, and floats. One of the more iconic whale species along the coast of Washington, the gray whale, was traditionally hunted in May during the seasonal round. Other species, such as finback whales and humpback whales, were also traditionally hunted on an annual basis. The cultural significance of whaling was emphasized by the high degree of ritualized behavior associated with it, and the specific rules which determined the sharing of the meat with those who contributed to the hunt (Frachtenberg 1916; Singh 1966:44,79). Alongside whaling, harvest of sea lions, hair seals, sea otters, and porpoises was an important part of the traditional economy (Singh 1966). They were usually harvested from March to July during the seasonal round. There was an important spiritual component to sealing, such as avoidance of certain foods on the part of the sealer, which was as important as mastery of equipment and skill in pursuing these prey.

Terrestrial Mammals

Harvesting of terrestrial mammals was an important part of the traditional economy of the Quileute and other Tribes on the Olympic Peninsula. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggest the importance of some of these species, such as elk, deer and bear, were seasonally hunted and interwoven within the social fabric of Quileute culture (Ray 1954). The presence of terrestrial mammal remains in archaeological shell midden deposits confirm hunting forays along the coast and into the interior to capture mammals both large (bear, elk, and deer) and small (e.g., beaver, raccoon), but in much smaller proportions than marine mammals. As noted above, some of this may be from the various biases inherent in data only available from coastal shell midden deposits.

Ethnohistoric observations and ethnographic studies contribute additional insight on traditional use of land mammals. They indicate that elk were hunted with bows, traps, and were also driven, and their meat was dried. Deer hunting areas have been identified, and sometimes associated with specific families. Elk and blacktail deer were traditionally hunted from June to August using bows, arrows, drives, and snares (Singh 1966: 65), and elk hides were trade items and used to construct temporary hunting shelters. An effort was made to hunt elk near canoe landings, for ease of transport back to camps and villages. Mature elk were preferred for their higher quantities of fat; elk hunting required spiritual expertise and assistance. Deer and bear were also trapped, with specialized deadfalls designed for bear in the late fall (Singh 1966: 42). The meat of elk, deer, and bear was often wind- or sun-dried and sometimes smoked as well, with the fat cut away from the meat to dry separately. Beaver and land otters were speared and caught in creeks and streams in November, often using logs to block the flow of water. Rabbits were also hunted or snared, and their meat was usually eaten fresh.

Hunting in the interior for game such as deer and elk is a traditional lifeway that has persisted even as other subsistence pursuits such as fishing and marine mammal hunting have fluctuated over the past century under shifting federal regulations and reconciliation with treaty rights, as well as from highly visible environmental changes to habitats and prey populations. Still, terrestrial mammals are dependent on habitat stability, and climate change that alters vegetation communities and hydrography has the potential to affect the productivity and accessibility of certain taxa. Changes in forest- and brush-fire regimes, for example, can cause prairie habitats and their ecotonal margins near woodlands to expand or contract, which may attract browsing ungulates such as deer and elk if prairies expand, or make them less aggregated and harder to hunt when forests encroach upon prairies.

The difference between catching a 5-pound salmon in a net and harpooning a 20-ton whale seems clear enough, but what do we do when we find the same coast Salish "sea-food producer" (a native category) harpooning at one time a 200-pound seal and at another a I,ooo-pound sturgeon ? The difference, as it was with roots and shellfish, is simply a matter of food value, and not a very great one at that. The coast Salish also harpooned salmon and netted seals, ducks, and deer. If we base our taxonomy on implements and activities, we have to ignore the taxonomy of biology, and vice versa. If we set up a category of activity based on either type of implement (as "net") or biological taxon (as "fish"), we will still be ignoring two other variables, specialization and cooperat i on , which may be more pertinent to the questions we are asking than are types of implements or animals.

For example, some of my informants and the informants of others have believed that the gill net is not aboriginal in the Salish area. However, a comparison of native terms for the gill net and the record of an earlier observer suggest that it probably was, in fact, aboriginal.

How to slaughter a reindeer using traditional Sami knowledge

 by Issát Turi

Slaughtering a reindeer in the traditional way means doing it in such a way that you can make use of the whole animal: for food, clothing, medicinal purposes and the many other things you can derive from the animal. When thinking traditionally, multiple decisions need to be made when choosing a reindeer to slaughter. You need to look at the animals’ gender, age and even fur color. These varied and complex decisions are underpinned by the need to maintain a diverse and strong herd, in case of harsh winter conditions. A diverse herd will be more resilient and give us herders more flexibility when dealing with unexpected climate events. Preserving meat The traditional way of slaughtering is also a matter of food safety. When you slaughter out in the tundra then you need to know what steps will best take care of your meat and avoid the growth of unwanted bacteria. Traditionally we have started with what we call giehtadit, which is to kill the animal with a knife right into the heart. This way, the reindeer will bleed out from inside the chest cavity after which we let the reindeer baggat, which means we let it rest and ‘inflate’ itself. The amount of time you let the reindeer baggat depends on the season, the weather and the temperature before you start to skin it. The Sámi concept of baggan is both about food safety and flavor enhancement. The baggan process makes the meat tender and juicy. This also has the effect of loosening the skin so you are not touching the meat so much during the slaughter. This is ‘on the land’ food safety where the traditional way of slaughtering may be the best way. Only after you have let the reindeer baggat, do you start to skin the reindeer. The traditional way of skinning a reindeer is doing it in such a way that you can make use of the whole hide. This way you can also use the legs and skin of the head for clothing. However, there are important seasonal differences. You slaughter calves in late July or early August for beaskanáhkki and then you use the whole skin to sew the traditional winter garment, which is called beaska. When you need a warmer beaska - such as when you need to watch over your herd during winter nights - then you slaughter later in the autumn, when the hair of the reindeer has grown longer. After you have skinned the reindeer you take out the intestines with which you make your blood sausages and then you open the chest cavity where the blood has already coagulated and has already separated. This way you will get the best blood for márffit (blood sausages) or guhpárat (meat balls made with blood). After that, you cut the meat up in a way that is not only the best way of preserving the meat but also a way in which you get the most out of the reindeer, in terms of food.

Sámi cuisine does not take shape in the ‘kitchen’, but really starts at the moment when and where the reindeer is slaughtered, the condition of the reindeer in the days and weeks before it was slaughtered and finally how it was killed. Mális is another important part of Sámi food culture and mális means to cook the meat with just water and salt. Then the quality of the meat is very important, as the reindeer must be fat. Because reindeer meat is not marbled, this means that the more fat it has on the outside, the higher the quality of the meat is. Meat quality is also determined by how you kill the animal.

SUOVASTUHTTIT: USING FIRE AND SMOKE TO PRESERVE REINDEER MEAT by Rávdná Biret Márjá Eira Sara, Inger Marie Gaup Eira, Kia Krarup Hansen, Inger Anita Smuk, Issát Turi, and Astrid Riddervold

Sámi reindeer herder’s traditional knowledge about meat security and meat conservation is rich and deep. These are technologies developed over millennia, which secure the sustainable and safe use of animals for food production. The renowned Norwegian philologist Konrad Nielsen who compiled the exhaustive Sámi language dictionaries in the late 1920s and 30s refers to suovas as the smoke fire - the fire that gives smoke for smoking, explaining the characteristics of the fire. Suovasbiergu means «smoked meat», while suovastuhttit is the Sámi term for the technique or practice of smoking meat and fish. Suovastuhttit is little documented, but is in daily use in reindeer herding communities across Sápmi. Reindeer herder’s knowledge of smoking meat integrates the understanding of selecting the right type of animals for slaughtering, at the right season of the year and using specific parts of the reindeer. Further knowledge includes; the correct use of salt and moisture generated from selecting the specific plants and firewood. This produces a specific and dense white smoke, which penetrates the meat tissue without the use of too high temperatures. The type of plants used and how long the smoking takes place (could be 3-6 hours), determines the degree of conservation and taste. A lack of traditional knowledge about the process of suovastuhttit might affect human health and wellbeing. The combined antibacterial effects of the components of salt and smoke protect the meat from degradation. Even today with modern deep freeze technologies, suovastuhttit is still practiced and the characteristic flavour of suovasbiergu is preferred in the Sámi household.

HOW TO MAKE A FAMILY MEAL – SÁMI FOOD KNOWLEDGE AND TRADITIONS by Máret Rávdná Buljo

The Sámi ‘family meal’ is not only the center of a family coming and sharing food together. In fact, as described here, it’s not a ‘meal’ as might be understood by many, where people sit down at a certain time each day and have dinner. Life with reindeer means movement, especially in Spring and Autumn. Someone is always with the reindeer. Sometimes the whole family can be with the reindeer. Living with reindeer means your life is lived according to the rhythm of the animals. So, to describe a ‘family meal’, is really a description of the collective journey of reindeer, people and food. The family meal starts with choosing a reindeer to slaughter, how it is slaughtered, how it is processed and deciding who gets to eat which specific part of the animal. The family meal, is also a means by which important knowledge is transferred across generations about animals, health and food safety, based on the raw materials available. Creating the family meal requires a considerable amount of knowledge and time and involves many members of the family. Making it takes time. The meal might not be ready at a certain time, but there is so much to be done and often many people to do it. During this time of preparation, stories are told, knowledge is shared and children learn the useful life skill of work and self-sufficiency. During preparation time guests may appear unannounced. They are to be made welcome, and they too shall find food and warmth. A ‘family meal’ is really about the coming and going of family life, and this is not possible to create or recreate in a modern industrial slaughterhouse. I grew up in Guovdageaidnu in a reindeer herding family in a village where most people are Sámi, speak Sámi and have some direct or indirect connection to reindeer husbandry. I now live on the coast of Norway and herding and the preparation and eating of reindeer products remains at the heart of our daily life. When we make a ‘family meal’, although we never called it that, there are many steps and observances along the way to making it, codes of etiquette that need to be observed. I learned them from my immediate and extended family and now teach them to my own children. The preparations and observances start with the slaughter of the reindeer. After slaughtering a reindeer, the spine is the first part that is used to make a family meal, and for reindeer herders it is the best meat. It is regarded as almost holy. The spine is taken immediately after slaughtering and is usually cut up in joints and put into a pot for boiling. The large dorsal sinew (sávvosuotna) is removed when the carcass is still whole. This sinew is very good for sewing a coat made of reindeer fur or making nice handicrafts with small and neat stiches. Our family tradition is that certain parts of the spine are designated for the different family members. The tail (bieža) is for the butcher, the sacrum (gánis) is for the person who took care of the intestines (usually mother or a female person). The vertebrae (ruossadávttit) are for father and the other adults, and the vertebrae in the middle (gaskačielgedávttit) are for the youth. The vertebrae on the spine shoulder (sehpodatdávttit) are for smaller children because it is easy for a child to hold the bone. Kidneys (moninčalmmit), spleen (dávdi), blood sausages (márffit) and small intestines (sáhppasat) are boiled together with the spine. The broth acquires the varying taste of these different parts. Importantly, these parts replace vegetables with regards to vitamins. We drink the broth and dip the meat in it. The fat layer on the top of the broth is skimmed off, to be used as a separate dip. Spine and broth are a natural medicine for treating a wide variety of different sicknesses and spine broth is seen as the most valuable broth from a reindeer. Fresh reindeer meat does not need to be boiled for more than 20 minutes for it to become tender. If boiled for longer, the meat becomes hard, and then you have to boil the meat for at least another hour until it becomes tender again. The spleen is very good food for young babies, being good ‘food training’ and being easy for a baby to suck.

Blood sausages and small intestines are also a part of the family meal. These should be shared so that every family member gets a piece of the different tasting blood sausages. Also small intestines should be shared. This has been done from ancient times and was a way to ensure that everyone got all the vitamins and minerals from the food eaten by the reindeer. The names of the blood sausages are: Čeaksa (omasum), doggi (abomasum), maŋŋebuoidi (rectum), gahpárus (duodenum), guopmolággá (appendix), čalmmás (reticulum), seakkaguopmolággá (the thinner/smaller part of appendix) and čalmmásnjálbmi (opening of the reticulum). Also according to our practice, the upper marrowbones (čuožžemas) of the back legs were for father, the lower marrowbones of the back legs (njiehcehas) were for mother, the lower marrowbones of the front legs (vuorgu) were for the smallest children and the upper marrowbones of the front legs (dábbá) were for the older children in the family. According to this way, every member of the family got the pieces of the animal that gave them the most necessary nutrients. Not all families are alike of course and traditions and customs vary from region to region, from siida to siida. In some families I have heard that blood sausages made from the omasum are for males only. These stories, traditions and etiquette have much to teach us about a healthy relationship between people, animals and food.

For milennia Sámi food consisted of meat (in winter) and fish (in summer). In the past, when hunting played a more significant role, wild reindeer meat was also consumed. Reindeer husbandry became the main source of meat food for the Kola Sámi by the end of the 1800s, as hunting had already reduced game stocks. Reindeer meat was boiled, sun-dried, frozen and less often – salted. Among the Kola Sámi, there is almost no evidence of raw meat eating. As early as the 16thC it was recorded that Sámi had acquired the habit of boiling food and that even by that time they already slightly preferred fried meat to raw. By the late 19th and early 20thC, reindeer meat was usually served as a soup seasoned with rye flour, salt and ground berries (crowberries and cloudberries). People ate the meat first and then drank the remaining broth. However, for centuries Kola Sámi have consumed raw frozen meat, slicing it finely for eating. This is called stroganina, and is a wellknown dish among many northern reindeer herding peoples. While Sámi in what we today call the Nordic countries widely used reindeer milk to make cheese, Kola Sámi do not appear to have milked their reindeer to any large extent. In addition to reindeer meat and fish, in winter Kola Sámi ate poultry, mainly grouse, which they usually boiled in soup and sometimes fried. All parts of reindeer were consumed, except the lungs, which were given to the dogs. Kidneys, slightly seasoned with salt, were put on a stone in front of the fireplace and thus cooked. Liver was used for frying. Brains, heart, tongue, stomach and brisket were considered special delicacies. Sámi also liked fresh reindeer blood, which they drank for its medicinal purposes. To prepare kholodets with reindeer tongues, we need reindeer hooves and tongues. Clean the reindeer hooves thoroughly, and place in cold water. Change the water after 6 hours. Place the soaked hooves in a casserole and cover with water, add meat and bring to the boil. Then decrease the temperature and cook on a low heat for 8 hours. For preparation of dishes with reindeer tongue, it is important to soak it in cold water for several hours. Then the broth will be light and clean. 1.5 hours prior to the end of cooking, add a reindeer tongue, then (over the last 20 minutes) add peppercorns and a bay leaf, and/or some vegetables and season with salt according to your taste. Take everything out of the casserole, detach meat from bones and if applicable cool the tongue and peel the skin. Serve in bowls, adding garlic and cover with meat broth. Let the dish jellify and serve. Nowadays, kholodets is cooked with a wide range of ingredients. For the meat part of kholodets people use beef, veal, pork, poultry. Any variety of vegetables (carrots, onions, garlic, celery), herbs and spices are used. However, the most important part of meat kholodets remain the trotters or hooves, pork or beef ears and heads. These special ingredients allow the cooking of kholodets without adding gelatin. Kholodets prepared with gelatin becomes «zalivnoye», which is a completely different dish.

For example, North Sámi like to dry reindeer meat, whereas southern Sámi tend to smoke it and then dry it. There are many practical explanations for different regional practices that include access to firewood, the presence of permafrost, and the need for Vitamin C (where reindeer blood is a significant source of vitamins and minerals).

By this time I was heartily tired, and found the refreshment of some cow’s milk, and meat, with a chair to sit upon, very acceptable. I could not but wonder to see my two Laplanders, who had accompanied me during the whole of this day’s tedious walk, one of them fifty years of age, the other upwards of seventy, running and frisking about in sport, though each of them had carried a burthen all the way; not indeed a very heavy one, but, considering the distance, by no means trifling. This set me seriously to consider the question put by Dr. Rosen, “why are the Laplanders so swift-footed?” To which I answer, that it arises not from any one cause, but from the cooperation of many.

Animal food. 

It is observable that such of the creation as feed on vegetables, are of a more rigid, though strong, fibre; witness the Stag, the Bull, &c.; while, on the contrary, carnivorous animals, as the Dog, Cat, Wolf, Lion ,&c., are all more flexible. The fact and its cause are both evident. The Laplanders are altogether carnivorous. They have no vegetable food brought to their tables. They now and then indeed eat a raw stalk of Angelica, as we would eat an apple, and occasionally a few leaves of Sorrel; but this, compared with the bulk of their food, is scarcely more than as one to a million. In spring they eat fish, in winter nothing but meat, in summer milk and its various preparations. It may further be remarked, that salted food, which these people do not use, renders the body heavy.

The Laplander is satisfied with a small quantity of food at once. He does not eat his fill at one meal, but takes food from time to time, as he feels inclined.

On the contrary, the peasants of Finland cram themselves with as many turnips, and those of Scania with as much flummery, as their stomachs can possibly receive. The inhabitants of Dalecarlia eat till the body is as tight as a drum. Such people are much better qualified to labour in the cultivation of the ground, than to run over the alps. The Laplanders are always of a thin slender make. I never saw one of them with a large belly. Milk diet also contributes to render them active.

Carl Linnaeus, Lachesis lapponica, or, A tour in Lapland, Vol I., pg. 325-332 (1811, written in 1732)

I never met with any people who lead[Pg 27] such easy happy lives as the Laplanders. In summer they make two meals of milk in the course of the day, and when they have gone through their allotted task of milking their reindeer, or making cheese, they resign themselves to indolent tranquillity, not knowing what to do next. In winter their food is cheese, taken once or twice a day, but in the evening they eat meat. A single reindeer supplies four persons with food for a week.

Carl Linnaeus, Lachesis lapponica, or, A tour in Lapland, Vol II., pg. 26-27 (1811, written in 1732)

They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting

The Classic Thule tradition relied heavily on the bowhead whale for survival because bowhead whales swim slowly and sleep near the water's surface. Bowhead whales served many purposes for the Thule people. The people could get a lot of meat for food, blubber for oil that could be used for fires for light and cooking purposes, and the bones could be used for building structures and making tools. The Thule people survived predominantly on fish, large sea mammals and caribou outside of the whaling communities. Because they had advanced transportation technology, they had access to a wider range of food sources. There is superb faunal preservation in Thule sites due to a late prehistoric date as well as an arctic environment. Most of the bowhead artifacts were harvested from live bowhead whales.[11] The Thule developed an expertise in hunting and utilizing as many parts of an animal as possible. This knowledge combined with their growing wealth of tools and modes of transportation allowed the Thule people to thrive. They whaled together where one person would shoot the whale with the harpoon and the others would throw the floats on it and they all transferred the whale to land to butcher it together to share with the entire community. Their unity played a significant role in the length of time they thrived in the Arctic.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1o1nfjg9Wk/ A Tlingit man says his father lived to 108 and his grandfather lived to be 122. He’s eating fatty seal meat. How is such old age possible eating meat? Tlingit people eat halibut, shellfish, seal, sea otter, salmon, herring, eulachon, deer, bear and other small mammals. They seasonally eat some plant foods like seaweed and wild berries like salmon berry, soap berry, and currants.

Isotopes show 9200 B.C Carnivore.

Archaeological Context. Shuká Káa.

The skeletal remains of Shuká Káa are dated to ∼9,200 ± 5014C y B.P. (12, 31) and were unearthed from On Your Knees Cave (Site 49-PET-408) located on northern Prince of Wales Island, AK. The spatial distribution of the remains within the cave suggests that the individual was not intentionally buried but instead, was deposited or redeposited in the cave, possibly as a result of accidental death and postdepositional taphonomic agents (3). The paleontological record of the southeast Alaskan coast suggests that large areas were refugia during the last glacial maximum, with continual use starting at about 17,200 y B.P. (32). Humans may have made use of the cave as early as 12,000 y B.P.

Isotope analysis of the bone collagen revealed a long-term diet of marine foods, with little sustenance derived from land sources (3). The stone tools occurring in the same stratigraphic level as the human remains but not directly associated with the individual were manufactured with materials originating from nearby islands and at least one mainland source. This evidence suggests that the population associated with Shuká Káa comprised maritime-adapted coastal navigators who participated in established trade networks between adjacent islands and the mainland (3).

A marine economy is indicated for most sites by faunal remains, ecological settings and isotope analysis of human remains from Prince of Wales Island (Dixon et al., 1997)

PET-408 is located on the northern end of Prince of Wales Island, southeast Alaska. Human skeletal remains from this site have been 14C dated to ca. 9800 BP. (Dixon et al., 1997). Isotopic values for the human bone indicate a diet based primarily on marine resources and d13C values for the human bone are similar to those obtained for ringed seal, sea otter, and marine "sh. These data indicate a diet based primarily on sea foods and that the marine carbon reservoir has a!ected the accuracy of the 286 E.J. Dixon / Quaternary Science Reviews 20 (2001) 277}299 14C determinations. In the Queen Charlotte Islands to the south, a ca. 600 year 14C di!erence in the regional marine and atmospheric carbon cycles has been documented by comparison of 14C determinations on wood and shell (Fedje, McSporran and Mason, 1996, p. 118). This suggests that the dates on the human remains from PET-408 should be corrected by subtracting ca. 600 14C years. Presuming this correction factor can be applied to Prince of Wales Island, the corrected age for the human is ca. 9200 BP

Salmon, whale, seal, clams, deer, elk, eggs and duck provided a diet rich in protein and fat.

"It looks like they lived mostly on meat and milk products," says Professor Kristiansen.

According to Haak et al. (2015), "Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers" (EHG) who inhabited today's Russia were a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high genetic affinity to a c. 24,000-year-old Siberian from Mal'ta–Buret' culture, which in turn resembles other remains of Siberia,[24] such as the Afontova Gora.[7][4] Remains of the "Eastern European hunter-gatherers" have been found in Mesolithic or early Neolithic sites in Karelia and Samara Oblast, Russia, and put under analysis. Three such hunter-gathering individuals of the male sex have had their DNA results published. Each was found to belong to a different Y-DNA haplogroup: R1a, R1b, and J.[8]

Authentic Yukagir recipes:

YUKOLA – TEL’IEDAL’5A

For Yukola you need a large fish (broad whitefish). Yukola is a dried fish dish that is used for nourishment during long migrations and in winter. For long-term storage, people prepare a «fish flour» from yukola by powdering the dried fillet and storing it in canvas bags. Drop this «flour» in a bowl with boiling water, and you are rewarded with an instant fish broth. Cooking method: Gut and scale the fish without washing. De-bone the fillet, cut out the backbone down to the tail, so that two fillet parts remain connected by the tail. Make herringbone cuts on the fillet without cutting the skin. Then dry the fish on special wood stands – hangers – in the sun until it dries up, but do not let it get too firm. Smoke the fish over the fireplace in the chum.

CHUMUODODJE – SMOKED REINDEER MEAT

People preserved Chumuododje (smoked meat), as it could be used while traveling, its long digestion time provided an enduring sensation of satiety. It can also be used for meat soup, its broth being light, easy to digest and with a specific taste. Cut the meat along the broad backbone sinews in lateral parts, and separate the meat carefully. Cut the meat in flat pieces and dry it in the sun until it has completely hardened. Then keep it over the fire and smoke in the chum. After a time, the meat is ready. Cut the smoked meat in pieces and serve with fat.

Bethel (Mamterilleq) is regional hub of Yup'ik homeland.

The homeland of Yup'ik Eskimos is the Dfc climate type subarctic tundra ecosystem. The land is generally flat tundra and wetlands. The area that covers about 100,000 square miles which is roughly about 1/3 of Alaska.[41] Their lands are located in different five of 32 ecoregions of Alaska:

Before European contact, the Yup'ik, like other Eskimo groups, were semi-nomadic hunter-fisher-gatherers who moved seasonally throughout the year within a reasonably well-defined territory to harvest sea and land mammal, fish, bird, berry and other renewable resources. The economy of Yup'ik Eskimos is a mixed cash-subsistence system, like other modern foraging economies in Alaska. The primary use of wild resources is domestic. Commercial fishing in Alaska and trapping patterns are controlled primarily by external factors.

On the coast, in the past as in the present, to discuss hunting was to begin to define man. In Yup'ik, the word anqun (man) comes from the root angu- (to catch after chasing; to catch something for food) and means, literally, a device for chasing.[16]

Northwest Alaska is one of the richest Pacific salmon areas in the world, with the world's largest commercial Alaska salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.