Colleen Mackay’s favourite meal requires just four items — a slab of frozen narwhal, a sheet of cardboard to eat it on, an ulu or knife to slice and score it, and some soy sauce to dip it in. Recently, she has added another key ingredient: the camera on her phone.
Mackay, a mother in her late-30s from Ikpiarjuk, Nunavut, is pursuing a master’s degree in sociology at Carleton University. She has also become an online star thanks to self-shot videos of her eating traditional Inuit foods, called Inuksiut in Inuktitut.
Having amassed over 114,000 followers on the video-sharing platform TikTok, Mackay says her content is about more than just tasty food: it’s about promoting Inuit culture. “What really caught peoples’ attention was our traditional food and how we eat it,” says Mackay. “To me, it’s normal. But, to everyone else, it’s so foreign.”
Using the handle @iniqunaq, Mackay started using TikTok in September 2020 after a friend convinced her it would be a good way to connect with other Indigenous people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mackay posted videos of her daily activities, but the clips of her eating frozen caribou, narwhal, walrus, seal, beluga, muskox, polar bear, and arctic char made her famous online.
Mackay has posted more than 240 videos on the platform; the most popular has more than 5 million views. It shows her and her partner — artist and entrepreneur Ruben Komangapik — opening a box of frozen narwhal meat in their kitchen. The meal they’re about to eat is called maktaaq, which means whale skin.
Mackay slides a large knife through two compactly packaged slabs, frozen together to decrease shipping costs. The narwhal pieces fall away from each other as the blade hits the cardboard barrier protecting their table and soaking up fishy-smelling juices. They rock back and forth slightly as they land, still frozen and rigid.
After trimming some of the fat, Mackay and Komangapik score, slice, and eat the dark-grey-coloured narwhal skin and the thin, bright pink layer of blubber attached to it while it’s still frost-covered and raw, providing commentary as they go.
“A lot of the time, people are shocked or horrified, but usually, they’re just curious,” Mackay says. “Even in Canada, not a lot of people know about Inuit in the Arctic. When they see me and Ruben eating frozen raw meat, they have a lot of questions.”
Many of those questions have to do with eating on cardboard, which Mackay says isn’t all that different from a pizza-delivery box. Others ask about the taste of the different foods, why they’re eaten frozen and raw, and what Mackay means when she jokingly refers to the seafood delicacies as “vegetables.”
“The joke came from the fact that we obtain vitamins C and D through our traditional foods like whale blubber and skin,” she says. “In the harsh Arctic climate, everything is frozen: you need high fat and good nutrients to stay warm and energized. That's exactly what we get from our food.
Mackay said she does receive “hate” on TikTok, “mostly from animal-rights activists and vegans.” Her position is simple: “Inuit have been sustainably hunting in the Arctic for thousands of years. We have quotas and organizations that protect the animals. Our traditional food is part of our culture — access to it helps food security, and we have the right to eat it.”
Grace Egeland, the principal investigator of the International Polar Year Inuit Health Survey, which looks at the health and wellness of Inuit adults, children, and communities in the North, says that Inuit food is nutrient-dense.
“Our survey found that, when traditional food was eaten, the diet was higher in vitamins and minerals than on days when traditional food was not eaten,” she tells TVO.org via email. “Even a small amount of traditional food can contribute to a healthier diet.”
Egeland explains that traditional Inuit food can also provide “a vitamin for the soul: a type of psychosocial boost, you could say, given that traditional food associates with rich memories of Elders, community gatherings, and a true sense of belonging to the community.”
Mackay’s diet doesn’t consist entirely of frozen raw meat. Other videos show her preparing dishes like salads and nachos — which she refers to as “Western food.” Mackay says that she’s able to source the ingredients for those dishes from her local grocery store in suburban Ottawa, which has one of largest Inuit populations outside Nunavut.
However, she gets what she calls “real food” or “country food” from friends and family across northeastern Canada (particularly Iqaluit), or Komangapik will hunt it for them. He often travels to northern Quebec, the Magdalen Islands, and other locations to get caribou, seal, and other delicacies.
Last year, Komangapik started Reconseal Inuksiuti, a non-profit that aims to fight food insecurity and promote reconciliation by celebrating seal hunting. It has donated more than 700 pounds of harvested seal meat to Tungasuvvingat Inuit — a community centre for Inuit living in Ottawa. Some of the meat was served at a ceremony last November, during which an Ottawa park was renamed in honour of Inuk artist Annie Pootoogook. The skins were donated to the Isaruit Inuit Arts, a centre in Ottawa that promotes Inuit arts and culture.
“As Inuit in the Arctic, coming from small, extended family groups, we've always been a culture of sharing, and that's still the case today,” said Mackay. “Everything we get, we share with others.”
Thanks to TikTok, Mackay now also shares her food with thousands online. What started as a simple way to capture the joy of eating and connecting with others has become a way to teach the world about Inuit food and acknowledge food-related difficulties that Inuit face.
The International Polar Year Inuit Health Survey found that 68.8 per cent of Inuit households are food insecure in Nunavut — six times higher than the national average. According to the Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, the national representation organization of Inuit women, “Inuit face numerous challenges with the food system related to the interplay of availability, quality, and accessibility of both market and country foods.”
In videos from a recent trip to Iqaluit, Mackay takes her audience through the Northmart grocery store. She explains that, while some items — like fruits, vegetables, milk and eggs — are subsidized by the Canadian government, others, such as a $27.25 box of Harvest Crunch cereal, are not. While the prices may seem shocking, she adds, “they are not too bad compared to other, more remote places in Nunavut.”
Through her videos, she’s hoping “to explain food insecurity in the North, why it exists, and the importance of having access to our traditional food, she says, adding, “I think people have a better chance of understanding it when they can see it first-hand.”
Mackay also wants to give every Inuk who views her videos the opportunity to learn about and ultimately eat their traditional food. While she hopes to have a TikTok gathering at some point soon, she provides information to her followers about resources, like the Tungasuvvingat Inuit community centre, that provide Inuit in urban areas with access to Inuksiut.
“Urban Inuit and those who grew up in foster care or were adopted by non-Inuit families may not know about these things,” Mackay says. “Many of them have been appreciative of my content and ask me about country food. It’s important to have representation, so that’s why I continue to post.”
Beyond that, she insists she’ll never stop eating her traditional food — it’s just too good.
“It’s so important for our health and well-being,” said Mackay. “If you’re in a bad mood, once you have Inuksiut, you’re going to be very happy. It’s healing for us, and we have the right to eat it.”