Is there room in Nunavut's sharing economy to sell traditional food? This Iqaluit chef thinks so

What would it look like if you could buy maktaaq, muskox and seal meat at the grocery store?

Sheila Flaherty already knows — she saw it for herself in Nuuk, Greenland, back in 2019.

The Iqaluit chef and former city councillor recalls browsing traditional Inuit foods at the hunters' market in Nuuk, where the catch of the day would be laid out on stainless steel tables. It's available at the grocery stores and is served in restaurants.

It's a memory that's stuck with her over the years, and something she'd love to see become a permanent reality in her community.

"The restaurants here in Iqaluit, at least, there might be char, there might be caribou. But certainly in Nuuk, what I found is a better embrace of the whole spectrum of Inuit foods," she said.

The response, when she posted the idea to Facebook, was mixed — traditionally, many Indigenous hunters share their harvest instead of selling it. Flaherty — who owns sijjakkut, a business that specializes in Inuit dishes, with her husband — does that too, giving away fish heads when she has too many to use in her cooking.

"With the cost of hunting and harvesting, to purchase directly from a harvester, it might help the hunter and harvester with bullets, with gas ... or buying grocery food to help feed his or her family," she said.

"Why can't we have both, and celebrate both, and really create a new type of economy based on traditional Inuit cultural practices?"

In Greenland, the wide availability of traditional foods for sale has helped in a way to decolonize cuisine, says Minik Stenskov, a waiter at the Sarfalik restaurant in Nuuk.

Stenskov, who is from Narsaq in Greenland, said serving country food requires chefs to have a deep knowledge about the animals and plants of Greenland and how they change with the seasons.

The menu at Sarfalik changes every three or four months, he explained, depending on the time of year.

"For example, right now the muskox is coming into season, along with the lumpfish roes. So those right now will be coming shortly, and we'll have those more in our menu," he said.

Once the snow starts to melt, herbs and berries will come into season as well and the menu will change to reflect that.

"It's very fun, and it makes us proud that we can serve our own food to foreign people and be able to show what we eat," he said.