PLACE
Reindeer herding in Canada celebrates 80 years and looks to the future
EARLY LAST SPRING, about 500 people stood at the side of the ice road that runs over the Mackenzie River between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik, and watched a quirk of history stream past. For 30 minutes, 3,000 reindeer — an animal more commonly associated with Scandinavia than the Northwest Territories — trotted by those gathered to mark the 80th anniversary of the creature’s arrival in Canada’s Arctic. Despite the celebration, the country’s sole reindeer herd has brought with it eight decades of mostly headache and disappointment to those looking for a reliable alternative to the fluctuating caribou population. Jiri Raska, however, believes that the time of relying on the caribou as sustenance is disappearing. “I think very soon we will rely on the reindeer,” says Raska, an economic development director for the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. “It’s time to take this industry by the antlers and finally realize its potential.” People have been saying that for almost 90 years. In the 1920s, caribou in the delta began disappearing. Whether it was due to overhunting or a change in migration routes or both, there weren’t enough caribou to sustain the Inuvialuit, so in 1929 the Canadian government imported 3,000 Alaskan reindeer, descendants of animals that had been imported from Siberia and Lapland in the 1890s. When the reindeer arrived in March 1935, Norwegian Sami reindeer herders were hired to teach the Inuvialuit. Yet only a handful of locals had any interest in the lonely, nomadic and low-paying herding work. Those who did struggled with the demands of the job and with switching from hunting to a herding culture. By 1974, the federal government had sold the herd to Canadian Reindeer Limited, which in 2001 transferred the herd to Otto Binder, an Inuit, and his wife Ellen, a descendant of the first Sami herders to come to the North. Their son, Lloyd Binder, now manages it. From May through November, the herd grazes on Richards Island, where it’s effectively penned in by the Mackenzie River. Once the river freezes, the Inuvialuit use snowmobiles to herd the animals to their winter range north of Inuvik. One or two herders stay with the reindeer all winter, checking them daily. Like Raska, Binder believes the long struggle to establish reindeer is finally about to pay off. He says that beyond the six Inuvialuit towns — Aklavik, Inuvik, Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Tuktoyaktuk and Ulukhaktok — communities across the North are interested in reindeer meat and even starting their own herds. “There’s more acceptance of reindeer herding being consistent with our culture,” he says, “and a viable option for feeding our people.”