How do you feel about Eskimos? (Vegan/Vegetarians)?!

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Yupik and Inuit are two main groups that are referred to as Eskimo so nothing offensive to address them as Eskimo.

Consuming a diet of foods that are fished, hunted and birds including their eggs are still their primary source of diet but collecting and preserving grasses, tubers, roots, stems, berries, fire weed and seaweed are also part of their diet.

I guess they didn't kill or eat the animals out of fun, greed, desire or cravings so no reasons in being defensive against them when they just need to survive, keep their body warm and live healthily.
I believe its not impossible if they really want to be vegetarian but unless they can still be healthy and live good in that harsh environment.

Given their circumstances, it's probably either impossible, really hard, or just not healthy for them to switch to a plant-based diet. If they really wanted to, they'd have to get a lot of stuff imported and that could rack up carbon emissions, not a great thing if they're doing it for environmental reasons. But where you are shouldn't affect how you feel about animal rights.

BTW, they prefer to be called Inuit, not Eskimos.

As a chef here in Canada, I worked for 4 month at a hotel on Baffin Island in Iqaluit Nunavut, they have maybe 1-2 month were there is no snow in some regions, and the animal and fish diet is imperative for there survival, in larger centres like where I was they do import food from the south, but 6 apples are $6, a package of chips is $4, a small turkey can be $30, soap is $2 a bar.

It is hard and unforgiving life, they are not able to purchase much as there income is from the sale of fur, fish, meat and some arts and craft work, plus they only hunt for themselves, sharing larger catches and hunt, when I was there about 15-20 men had shot and cleaned 14 narwhal whales, they are shared in the community, we had some give to us for use at the hotel.

actually, many of the youth don't follow the traditional diet that strictly anymore.http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-30/world…

they've been eating more and more junk food which leads me to believe that they have access or at least potential access to wider variety of foods than they did in the past. that being said, they can eat whatever they want.

I understand their diet and their need to hunt. An eskimo going out and hunting a seal because he has no other food source is a hell of a lot different than people buying meat from factory farms, where animals are mass confined and pumped with hormones and antibiotics, then cruelly slaughtered.

I don't care. People in America kill animals for pleasure when they don't need to but Eskimos kill animals for survival witch Is completly different.

Vegetsrian

I feel compassion towards them because they live life very difficult

The inuit diet, although high in raw meat, wasn't primarily just meat. Grasses, tubers, roots, stems, berries, fireweed and seaweed (kuanniq or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location. You can read more about plant foods eaten by indigenous canadians here: http://books.google.com/books?id=fPDErXq…

Additionally, thanks to the rise modern technology in the last few centuries, many inuits (and people of northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, etc) are able to travel and purchase goods rather than depend solely on hunting for survival as they did in the past.

"At the end of the twentieth century, a number of issues face the Inuit: the use of technology, urban flight by the young, and thus, the viability of their traditional culture. Caught between two worlds, the Inuit now use snowmobiles and the Internet in place of the umiak and the sled. "

Read more: Inuit - History, Modern era, Acculturation and assimilation, Traditions, customs, and beliefs, Cuisine, Traditional clothing http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/…


Anyway, regardless of all of this, who am I to tell people what to eat to survive? I don't have any more obligation to the life of a seal that I do to the life of an Inuit. I think you're approaching the "hardcore vegetarians" from the wrong angle. They arent upset that people hunt to survive, they are upset at the atrocious conditions of slaughterhouses and factory farms in the first world...the systematic killing of billions of animals a year, not a seal-hunting party of Inuits doing what it takes to survive.