An Arctic-wide boycott of all North West Co. owned grocery stores is planned for Saturday. North West Co. is the Canadian corporation that owns 33 Alaska Commercial Co. stores in rural Alaska, including stores in Kotzebue, Barrow, Nome and Bethel. North West Co. also owns 122 "Northern" stores in Canada, which is the only grocery store option available for many Inuit families.
Saturday's boycott is being held to raise awareness about the unnecessarily high prices of food sold at North West-owned AC and Northern stores in Alaska and Canada. Not shopping at AC stores on that day will send the message that AC and Northern store food prices are unacceptably high, and that these prices prevent many families from putting food on the table. By choosing not to shop at AC on that day, you will show your solidarity with families who may struggle to afford food there or at Northern stores across the border. The goal is to see reduced food prices in these stores.
The idea of holding an Arctic-wide boycott of North West-owned stores was initiated by Inuk activist Leesie Papatsie from Iqaluit, Nunavut. Leesie started a Facebook group called Feeding My Family that has served to educate thousands of Canadians about staggering food costs in the Arctic, and how these costs are due in part to the monopoly power of North West in many communities.
The practice of price gouging at North West stores has contributed to too many families not having enough food to eat.
In the majority Inuit territory of Nunavut, for example, 70 percent of preschool-age Inuit children live in homes where there isn't enough food. Led by Papatsie, Inuit gathered outside of Northern stores across Nunavut in 2012 to protest high food prices.
Recently, the Huffington Post ran a story about a family of nine in Nunavut sharing a two-bedroom apartment with not enough food to eat. This is a familiar situation in rural Alaska as well, with the major difference being that we lack the research and accompanying media attention about this problem.
Pictures of Northern food prices on the Feeding My Family Facebook page will look familiar to anyone who has ever shopped at AC. At the AC store in Kotzebue you will find $11 gallons of milk, $12 cartons of orange juice, $7 loaves of bread, eggs for $6.50 a dozen, 5-pound bags of carrots going for $12, small containers of blueberries for $9, and $3.60 cans of fruit.
In Canada, the federal government has tried to help people who are also in this situation by giving Northern and other stores in the Arctic money to reduce these prices. Such a subsidy does not exist for rural Alaska, where we are at the mercy of stores that attribute their high prices to fuel and transportation costs.
Lacking close oversight, the Canadian subsidy mentioned above has gone into the pockets of North West and other retailers instead of being passed on to customers in the form of reduced food prices, despite the fact that many families continue to suffer from hunger.
The greed and callousness of North West can be seen in Kotzebue. The North Star Market that opened in Kotzebue last month charges less for the same food items sold at the local AC store: $3 to $4 less for butter, milk, eggs, and other basic food items, despite having to pay the same fuel and transportation costs. This is in part because the manager of that store recognizes that price gouging in order to profit on the backs of hard-working people is greedy, unethical, and immoral.
Please choose not to shop at North West-owned AC stores on Saturday in solidarity with families across the Arctic who cannot afford to.
Tim Aqukkasuk Argetsinger lives in Kotzebue.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.