The Canadian Arctic was a vast and treeless polar desert that is covered with snow for most of the year. Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meager pickings. Human first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But around a thousand years, one group that emerged well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today’s Inuit people. Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh. Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometers of rocks and ice, and a handful of islands around the north pole. It is currently home to 2,500 people, all but a handful of them indigenous Inuit. Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the territory’s 29 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and clothing. Provisions available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around 7,000 pounds a year to replace meat they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic opportunities are scare, and for many people state benefits are their only income. If you visit the Canadian Arctic, you immediately appreciate the problems faced by people for whom this is called home. Many of them have been obliged to give up their ___5____ lifestyle.