From Reindeer to Pork – Arctic Meat Change in Indigenous Communities

Indigenous knowledge is central to making the global food system sustainable. Climate talks at the COP26 conference included attention on Indigenous groups. “Indigenous peoples are at the center because they are the ones that are walking the walk,” said Yon Fernández de Larrinoa, head of the Indigenous Peoples’ unit at the UN. In the second half of the 20th century, changes in the meat consumption habits of the Indigenous populations were at first fairly subtle and not particularly culturally invasive or dramatic. In many countries, they were perhaps associated with a general growth in affluence, a change to the better, a change to a new day and age in which penny-pinching and hard times were exchanged with more material comfort. This was not a novelty in itself; in most countries, meat consumption has been a sign of social status, and a high level of meat consumption has generally signaled the social distinction of the meat eater.

In the Arctic, Indigenous reindeer herding peoples rely on a pastoralist food and knowledge system that supplies them with protein, vitamins, and minerals. Reindeer pastoralism is a product of the interaction between animals’ physical needs, their behaviour, and the skills of the herders. The food systems of Saami reindeer pastoralists depend on Indigenous knowledge about mountain slaughtering. About 3000 Saami Indigenous peoples lives in the Saami village of Kautokeino in Norway, where about 50% have are nomadic reindeer herders based on about 80 000 private own reindeer. An early finding was that the reindeer meat market appeared to be organized around a remarkable two-tier price system. Most herders were selling their animals to so called ‘listed slaughterhouses’, ensuring their own eligibility for subsidies in return for a price of about 42 kroner per kilo on the hoof. Other herders, on the other hand, were able to operate outside the subsidy system and sell on the open market, obtaining a price of more than 60 kroner per kilo for their own slaughtered meat — 50 percent more than herders operating within the subsidy system. In 2000, the first-hand market value of reindeer meat produced in Norway was about 70 million Norwegian kroner.

In the case of meat and meat products, the cooperative that managed and coordinated the production system was the Norwegian Office for Meat and Lard (Norges Kjøtt- og Fleskesentral) – established in 1931 — which subsequently became Norsk Kjøtt in 1990 and Nortura in 2006, which is also are the main provider of pork meat in Norway.

Has the consumption and type of meat changed in the Indigenous Saami community of Kautokeino in Norway from 1955 until 2021? What are the main reasons for these changes if they occurred? Our hypothesis is that reindeer meat consumption in Kautokeino has decreased in favour of pork meat.

The research team will collect meat data from AS Nielsen related to food shops selling of food in the Saami Village of Kautokeino 1955-2021, which will be digitalized and analyzed and compared with data from Norwegian Enological Investigation from Kautokeino. Furthermore, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with Saami reindeer herders and Saami settler from Kautokeino who lived and experienced the meat marked changes from 1950-2021.

Norway

Objectives

A. Describe

Axes

2. Social transitions and trends in the distribution of wealth
3. Towards a more equitable distribution

Work Packages

2.4. Transitions linked to climate change
3.1. Institutional changes