Amazon in the Arctic: E-Commerce, Infrastructure, and Alimentary Assemblages in Nunavut, Canada

Abstract

Since establishing a delivery hub in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2020, Amazon.com, Inc. has become an essential resource for many Nunavut residents, providing affordable access to goods otherwise constrained by high costs and limited availability in the Arctic. This article explores the significant yet underexamined role of the Amazon corporation in Nunavut, Canada, as a response to the territory’s infrastructural and economic challenges. By combining an alimentary understanding of infrastructure with the theoretical concept of assemblage theory, I analyze Amazon’s operations as part of a complex system shaped by global logistics and local agency. My research based on ethnographic fieldwork highlights how Inuit residents adapt Amazon’s services to navigate gaps left by government programs. This nuanced perspective challenges assumptions about e-commerce as a purely homogenizing force, illustrating how residents adapt global platforms to meet local needs, and underscoring the interplay between global corporations, local infrastructure, and Indigenous agency in shaping Arctic livelihoods.

Introduction

“Do you mind if we swing by the hub on our way home?” We drive along the paved road through the industrial area of town, toward Iqaluit International Airport, then turn right, away from the passenger parking lot and toward a warehouse with yellow pillars out front. A large sign reads, “Canadian North, seriously northern,” yet this sign is misleading—a mark of bygone times. The building we are now parked in front of used to be the cargo warehouse for one of formerly two commercial airlines operating in Nunavut: Canadian North. In December 2019, the airline merged with its competitor and relocated its cargo storage to a larger facility. Today, the warehouse is occupied by Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”) and functions as a hub for all orders via the online shipping service addressed to customers in Iqaluit.

In many a mind’s eye, the Arctic conjures images of pristine snowy landscapes with the northern lights dancing overhead, polar bears on sea ice, or seal pups basking under the midnight sun. Disrupting these images, it may come as a surprise to learn that the trillion-dollar corporation Amazon is considered essential to daily life by many Nunavut residents, Inuit and Qallunaat (non-Inuit) alike.

This is an ethnography of how transport and logistics infrastructure shape digital commerce in Canada’s North-East. The infrastructural entanglements of Amazon’s successful presence in Nunavut speak to the power of their functioning logistics, a power this corporation holds over much of today’s world (Amazon.com, Inc. 2024a; Moody 2020). Yet I argue that their influence on Nunavut is specific, and this is partly due to the territory’s varying infrastructure availability, which guides and constricts delivery logistics.

In the Eastern Canadian Arctic, transport infrastructure remains sparse with few or no options to fall back on should one form of transportation fail (Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated 2020). There are no roads connecting Nunavut to the rest of Canada, nor are there any roads connecting the communities within Nunavut. All twenty-five communities are reached by airplane and in the ice-free months by annual sealift resupply via cargo ships. As a result, the logistics of transporting food and goods to and from the territory is a challenge directly tied to infrastructure development and maintenance. The Government of Nunavut and the Canadian federal government have prioritized improving Nunavut’s aviation and marine infrastructure, yet high price tags, inclusive planning, and construction logistics slow or limit development in the territory (Infrastructure Canada 2024). Furthermore, infrastructure differs greatly between communities, which influences each community’s connections around and beyond the territory.

Iqaluit, the territorial capital and transportation center of Nunavut with around seven thousand and 500 residents (Statistics Canada 2022c), enjoys access to a wider variety of products and services than any other Nunavut community not only due to its size, but because of the infrastructure put in place by the United States military during World War II and later taken over by the Canadian government (Farish and Lackenbauer 2009). This infrastructure was built off of Koojesse Inlet at the end of Frobisher Bay, prior to any permanent settlement, either of Inuit or Qallunaat origin (Clark 2022). The site of Iqaluit, then known as Frobisher Bay, was chosen as an airfield base with plans for use on the Crimson Staging Route due to its geographic and topological aptitude (Eno 2003). While the airfield was never used for its original purpose, the runway built in 1942 formed the foundation of what was to become the biggest settlement in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Later, the importance of Frobisher Bay was further solidified by the construction of Distance Early Warning-Line sites throughout the territory. Today, Iqaluit’s airport is a gateway to and from “the South” (anywhere outside of the territories), and an administrative capital has formed around the runway. Iqaluit now hosts a deep-sea port, the territorial legislative assembly, jail, and court, as well as multiple hotels and restaurants, arts festivals, the main Nunavut Arctic College campus, largest grocery stores, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (the territorial legal representation for Inuit), and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (the regional Inuit organization), among other things.

While the Government of Nunavut officially attempts to disperse their departments throughout the territory, the vast majority remain in Iqaluit. This leaves smaller communities, such as Grise Fiord or Kimmirut, with basic transportation infrastructure (gravel runways that service Twin Otters, and no boat harbor), and few community services beyond fuel and water trucks, the hamlet offices, Hunters’ and Trappers’ Organizations, a conservation office, a small Nunavut Arctic College satellite building, the housing association, and a school. However, size alone is not a determinant of available infrastructure: Although Resolute Bay is nearly as small as Grise Fiord in terms of population—both have fewer than 200 residents (Statistics Canada 2022b, 2023)—the military’s interest in establishing a permanent community on Cornwallis Island enabled Resolute its long runway with jet-landing capacity, as well as the presence of the Polar Continental Shelf Program which is used for military and research purposes, the utilidor system, and ATCO hotels. Even larger communities, such as Pond Inlet, depend greatly on the services and infrastructure stemming from Iqaluit. Pond Inlet is home to around one thousand five hundred people (Statistics Canada 2022a) and is a burgeoning hub for Arctic tourism as well as the seat of the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Economic Development and Transportation. Pond Inlet is serviced by ATR aircraft and is equipped with a small craft harbor. Amidst this variety of infrastructural expression, each community has access to Amazon, and makes use of it.

While there is some social science research on Amazon, most publications focus a critical gaze on the corporation’s inner workings (Alimahomed-Wilson and Reese 2020), labor shortcomings (Starn 2023), racialized inequalities (Ciccantell et al. 2025), or digital and technological power (Delfanti 2021). Huberman (2021) postulates Amazon’s formative role in the creation of an “ideology of convenience” which effectively alters consumers’ behavior and continuously urges users to make purchases. Social scientists have also noted Nunavummiut (residents of Nunavut) consumer habits and their transformations over time (Honigmann and Honigmann 1965; Lackenbauer 2012; Yatsushiro 1963), listing goods and products that Inuit bought or traded for, and even voicing concern about potentially culturally corruptive effects thereof (see Honigmann and Honigmann 1965). Yet as Stern (2010) writes, purchasing imported consumer goods is just one more sphere of contemporary Inuit economic life (37–38). This article examines how residents engage with Amazon in the northern territory as a source for products that are otherwise difficult to procure and in doing so reshape their economic activities in the territory to meet local needs independently from government programs and services.

I begin with a brief overview of my theoretical approach, centered on the main concept of alimentary versus Wiindigo infrastructure (LaDuke and Cowen 2020). I position Nunavut’s infrastructure within an assemblage to deepen my analysis of its interplay with Amazon’s delivery logistics (Deleuze and Guattari 1988). Paying closer attention to how Amazon’s delivered products are used once they arrive, I draw on Appadurai’s (1986a) concept regarding the social life of things. Moving to methods, I concentrate on how an ethnographic approach for data collection supported this particular analysis. In the empirical sections, I examine how the territory of Nunavut has come to host an Amazon delivery hub, focusing on Amazon’s reliance on pre-existing infrastructures in the territory, and how Nunavummiut benefit from being able to access Amazon delivery services. In conclusion, I argue that although Amazon is a Wiindigo infrastructure, residents of Nunavut have found ways to use Amazon in alimentary-fulfilling manners to circumnavigate gaps in governmental infrastructure services.

Theoretical Approach: Carving the Alimentary from the Assemblage

Delivery services such as Amazon are dependent on the transport infrastructure available along their logistics lines. Taking the sparse transportation options between southern hubs and northern communities into account, it is especially interesting to follow Amazon’s role in Nunavut, where the same infrastructural opportunities used by this corporation are often considered to be limitations to service delivery by territorial organizations (Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated 2020). While such perceptions of opportunities and constraints as dependent on infrastructure availability and the possibility of economic growth are prominent in Nunavut, I draw on LaDuke and Cowen (2020) to expand our understanding of infrastructural services.

LaDuke and Cowen (2020) write of two types of infrastructure: “Wiindigo infrastructure,” primarily intended to benefit a settler colonial society, and “alimentary infrastructure,” directed at supporting and maintaining lifeforces “in its design, finance, and effects” (245). Wiindigo infrastructure references the Anishinaabe and Ojibwe cannibalistic monster, “Wiindigo” or “wendigo,” which lives off of inequality and greed (Simpson 2011). LaDuke and Cowen (2020) theorize the monster as akin to the contemporary economy, which she refers to as the “Wiindigo economy”; an economy that preys on the marginalized and thrives on ever greater economic disparity (244). This cannibalistic form of economy is reliant on Wiindigo infrastructures as they are “the material systems that engineer and sustain that violence” (LaDuke and Cowen 2020, 253). In contrast, alimentary infrastructure refers not specifically to infrastructure relating to food systems, but to any infrastructure that is reviving and life-supporting in its intent: for example, by making the shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, or by redesigning infrastructures to purposefully address current environmental injustices (LaDuke and Cowen 2020). Applying this understanding of infrastructure to an analysis of Amazon’s role in Nunavut is fitting because the aviation infrastructure used by Amazon was initially built with military, settler colonial, intention and is now an integral part of life in Canada’s North, often referred to as “a lifeline.”

Building on this expanded sense of infrastructure, I combine LaDuke and Cowen (2020) with the theory of assemblage as articulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1988), and later DeLanda (2019), to more closely examine how Wiindigo infrastructure, of which Amazon is a part, articulates itself in Nunavut. Assemblage theory addresses distinctly local expressions of agency and material reality that together create and maintain the assemblage within which Amazon must function.

In order not to lose sight of daily practices and everyday formations of meaning within the territory, I draw on Appadurai (1986a) in his recommendation to take note of the social lives of things, illuminating the social contexts of transactions and exchanges among residents of the territory. Paying attention to the social context of value in infrastructure allows us to identify and understand the perhaps less obvious alimentary values attributed to “things” and the infrastructures they depend on. In conclusion, I argue that the reliance on Amazon.com, Inc. by residents of Nunavut not only underscores the importance of infrastructure networks to service delivery in the North, and the entanglement of Wiindigo infrastructure with everyday life, but also reveals how individuals creatively reimagine and repurpose these systems to create alimentary value, asserting agency through personal choice and individuality within a system shaped by settler colonial and economic inequalities.

Methods

I first visited Iqaluit and Pond Inlet, Nunavut, during May and June of 2022 to conduct preliminary fieldwork and discuss the direction of my research with local stakeholders. As a team member of ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth, I was required to concentrate my research on the general topic of Arctic transport infrastructures, yet the particular focus therein was open to discussion. I spoke with employees and representatives from the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Nunavut Research Institute, hamlet, Hunters and Trappers Organizations/Associations, and Qajuqturvik Community Food Centre, among others. We agreed on a focus at the nexus of transport infrastructure and territorial food sovereignty. I made five trips to Nunavut with various lengths of stay, which total around one and half years between May 2022 and December 2023, followed by a final return in March and April 2025 to present and discuss my research findings with participants and the general public. Throughout my research, the majority of my time was spent in the territorial capital, but my research area soon expanded to include the following communities, all within the Qikiqtani region: Kimmirut, Pond Inlet, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, which range in population size from around seven thousand five hundred (Iqaluit) to one hundred forty (Grise Fiord; Statistics Canada 2022c, 2023).

This research concentrates on infrastructures in use, from which Amazon emerged ethnographically through my examination of various local infrastructures, all explicitly or implicitly servicing the corporation’s needs. On a walk along the rotting ice trail from Iqaluit to Apex, I encountered my first Amazon Prime cardboard packaging caught in a snowdrift behind a rock. Intrigued, I later asked acquaintances about Amazon, whether they used it, how long it had been available, and what they ordered. Although Amazon is not a focus of my research, the corporation’s importance to daily life and food security in the territory became obvious. In a region where flight schedules and annual sea lifts determine grocery bills and timelines of repair, and grocery stores have limited stock on the shelves, Amazon’s capacity to deliver has not gone unnoticed. Conversations about Amazon orders came up in every community, especially when I asked about food, hunting, or crafts. Thus, while my research had a slightly different lens, my ethnographic observations and experiences inadvertently highlighted the particular role Amazon plays for many residents of Nunavut.

Research participants were all located in the Qikiqtani region. I laid a focus on permanent residents who had lived in Nunavut for over five years, which directed my interactions toward Inuit, who made up the majority of research participants; however, many Qallunaat also took part in this study. I spoke with men and women ranging in age from early 20s to late 70s. Some interlocutors were employed with government or Inuit administration, others as hunters, research assistants, or conservation officers. Still others were students, unemployed, young mothers, or food center employees. The data for this article were collected first unintentionally through participant observation and informal conversations, but later led to a concentrated inquiry into interlocutors’ uses of Amazon. Participants engaged in this topic during semi-structured and open interviews (Bernard 2006; Spradley [1979] 2016), as well as informal conversations throughout the day, and requests for input I shared via the social media channels Instagram and Facebook. Conversations began during joint activities, such as seal hunting, beading, hanging out watching YouTube videos during quiet moments at the office, over cups of tea, a shared meal, or a walk. I conducted interviews at the Nunavut Research Institute, at participants’ offices and meeting rooms, in cars, cafes, cabins, living rooms, and Nunavut Arctic College learning spaces. Upon my return to Vienna, I analyzed my data with a thematic content analysis to recognize patterns and main themes within interview transcripts and ethnographic fieldnotes (Braun and Clarke 2006).

My interest in understanding the nature and variations of transportation infrastructure, and particularly aviation in the territory, combined with the highly connected social networks between communities, led me to divide my fieldwork across the five communities who voiced an interest in engaging in this research. My experiences in these communities were influenced by my position as a non-Indigenous woman of European descent without any previous connection to the Arctic, who was funded by a European institution. Having been in Nunavut for every month of a year, I saw changes in store shelves’ stock and prices, the lines at the post office and Amazon hub, and began to wonder how these changes aligned both with the particularities of Nunavut’s logistics infrastructure, and the needs of residents.

Carving Amazon into the Arctic

At its earliest beginnings, Amazon.com, Inc. sold books online; today the corporation is among the most powerful in the world, with such influence on the economy that some scholars now refer to “Amazon capitalism” when examining the giant’s activities (Alimahomed-Wilson et al. 2020). Yet Nunavut’s Amazon is not the same as Amazon in Ottawa, New York, or Vienna. This major corporation must comply with the rules and restrictions typical of Arctic infrastructure: transportation services at the mercy of extreme weather with no alternative routing available in vast regions with proportionally low population densities. While Amazon has shaped global flows of transformation taking place in Nunavut, so too has Nunavut’s fragile infrastructure molded the corporation to serve its population specifically. In Nunavut, Amazon relies entirely on public infrastructure that was already built, from the air transportation to the warehouse or Canada Post networks and offices, without directly contributing to maintenance, repair, or new developments. Within the territory, infrastructure continues to influence access to daily goods, and this extends to residents’ capacity to order from Amazon. Amazon orders are delivered with CargoJet Inc., run through the Canadian North airline and charged by the pound (Nunavut News 2020). Upon arrival, Canadian North provides the ground handling before packages are organized onto shelves and in piles in the Amazon Pick-up point warehouse—known locally as “the hub” in Iqaluit—or passed on to Canada Post for further transport via Canadian North to other communities. Precisely due to their range of infrastructure and, in turn, access to Amazon and other services, I chose to focus this analysis not only on the capital and infrastructure hub Iqaluit, but to include all five communities in this discussion.

Amazon is far from the first force delivering Southern goods to northern residents. Historically, Inuit created everything they needed using materials they found in their vicinity (Stern 2010, 37). Yet through contact with whalers, fur traders, and other colonialists, Inuit were introduced to different materials and goods, such as guns, canned foods, and non-fur clothing. Writing in the 1960s, Honigmann and Honigmann (1965) illustrate Inuit use of “commercial air facilities to receive express shipments” in Frobisher Bay (52). Yatsushiro (1963) remarks on the popularity of Simpson’s and Eaton’s mail order catalogs in Inuit households during the late 1950s (18). Today, residents place orders through online retailers such as Mountain Equipment Company for outdoor clothing, Beadazzle for glass beads, Northern Shopper for food orders, and of course, Amazon. All manner of goods are sent up using the online shopping service: pet food and supplies, home décor, bulk items like toilet paper, cleaning products, instant noodle multipacks, items with a long shelf-life, pots and pans, or toiletries—the list goes on.

Just as in other towns and cities, Amazon is not the only place to shop for Nunavut residents. Each community has at least one of two grocery store chains, Arctic Co-op and Northern Stores, to shop at locally. However, as one interlocutor explained to me, “Any vehicle parts or tools that I can get through the hub, I’ll get because those are ridiculously expensive locally. A lot of the time, parts that are available on other websites are available on Amazon just the same: same parts, same quality, same brand. So, go through the hub if the shipping is three to five days.”

Some people I spoke to were critical of Amazon, yet continued to shop there. They voiced a desire to support the local businesses and reduce carbon emissions by purchasing directly from Co-op or Northern but explained that the prices are much higher in comparison to online shopping, and often the quality and variety of goods are poorer in the territory (Lambden et al. 2006; Nunavut Bureau of Statistics 2018). Such high prices and limited choice are especially apparent when it comes to imported foods, which, in a territory without agriculture, makes up nearly 100 percent of foods consumed daily, not including country foods. While there are government subsidies through the Nutrition North Canada program for basic nutritional foods such as milk, northern residents have no say over which products receive the subsidy, and the extent to which the subsidy reaches consumers varies (Galloway and Li 2023; St-Germain et al. 2019). This dictation of food priorities and lack of transparency directly affects consumers’ decision-making. As research participants in Iqaluit told me, “I literally order just about everything I can [via Amazon], if it can be shipped up here, if it’s cheaper than what I can find here, which is 99% of the time,” or, “Pretty much the only thing I buy in store is fresh vegetables.” One young mother in Grise Fiord explained to me that she places a bulk Amazon order every few months to stock up on toiletries, granola bars for children’s snacks, and household materials, which usually arrive two to three weeks later. Convenience, variety of choice, price and delivery time are four crucial factors consumers consider when making their orders, and all of them rely on the functionality of Nunavut’s logistics systems.

In summer, Nunavut is serviced by two sealift companies, Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping (partially owned by the Northwest Company) and Desgagnés/Nunavut Sealift and Supply Inc. (partially owned by Co-op). These companies transport goods from southern ports on cargo ships to northern destinations for communities’ annual resupply. Sealift orders allow residents to make bulk food orders or deliver large items such as snowmobiles, trucks, or furniture. However, sealift requires customers to wait many months for their delivery and to pay by credit card, something many Nunavummiut do not possess. A resident of Pond Inlet told me, “In the past two years we haven’t ordered one [sealift] because since there’s Amazon and the sealift shipment [fee] is getting higher; I think it’s cheaper to order from Amazon instead. When you order from Amazon you can get them in weeks instead of once per year. And the expiry dates are also a factor when you want a good item or product.”

Furthermore, ordering in bulk requires the capacity to store these items. While most housing has a designated storage space, these rooms or nooks are often converted into bedrooms due to the severe housing crisis in the territory (Schmid and Adams 2025). Placing smaller bulk orders multiple times throughout the year from Amazon as opposed to one large bulk sealift order comes with distinct advantages compared to the standard alternatives available across Nunavut. Severely limited housing creates an infrastructural condition, which makes ordering from Amazon the most convenient and viable option for many Nunavummiut today.

Residents of Nunavut have long ordered from Amazon, but since the company opened their Iqaluit hub in late 2020, delivery is not only sped up, it is also free for Amazon Prime members with delivery addresses in the capital (Murray 2020). This decision has created a further imbalance in communities’ access to southern goods, because only orders to Iqaluit qualify for prime delivery and free shipping. Payment for Amazon orders, with or without Prime, is generally by credit card, but Northern stores offer a prepaid Visa credit card, “WeCard,” to which customers can upload credit in the Northern store, or have their payroll/government payments directly deposited, and then use it online like a regular credit card. However, such restrictive payment methods have further accentuated socio-economic inequality across and within communities, where buying from Amazon is connected to status. A long-term Qallunaat resident of Pond Inlet explained to me, “More people seem to be able to access goods from Amazon now, but it’s still the case that those [people] in the most need aren’t able to buy. (. . .) In Pond Inlet, so many people order on Amazon that the postal service doesn’t have enough room to store the packages and instead started piling them up in the Northern store. You can walk around and read the names on the boxes, and you tend to see the same few names.” While these economic disparities exist, customers have found ways to involve their networks in their orders by placing bundled orders for family members who do not have direct access to Amazon, as one Inuk hunter from Grise Fiord explained to me. These examples articulate how the infrastructure behind credit cards and bank accounts determine residents’ access to products beyond the shelves of local stores.

The hub makes ordering online even easier for Iqaluit’s residents with financial means, but this option is not available to Nunavut’s twenty-four other communities. For residents anywhere except the capital, Amazon orders are shipped using the standard postal system, racking up the cost of delivery. This policy makes a marked difference in cost between Iqaluit and other communities, such as in the example of Pampers diapers for newborns, priced at $24.99 for a box of ninety-six and shipped to Iqaluit for free versus to Grise Fiord for $79.99 on May 21, 2024 on the Amazon.ca shopping site.

Why is there such a price range? Because Amazon determines that Nunavut’s communities are “remote locations,” meaning they are not transport hubs themselves, nor are they close to one (Amazon.com, Inc. 2024c). Here, the role of infrastructure in determining accessibility to products is glaringly clear: It is about runway capacities, aircraft, and local cargo facilities (Schmid 2025). Iqaluit is home to Nunavut’s largest airport with capacity to land large cargo and passenger jets on a paved, insulated runway and has direct, three-hour flights from Ottawa twice daily. Grise Fiord is Canada’s northernmost community and relies on the carrying capacity of a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter with flights from Resolute Bay twice a week, landing on a short gravel runway, weather permitting. The length and material of the runway determine the cost of products, and postal and bank infrastructure limit who has access to which products, as well as the timing of their deliveries.

In Nunavut, once foods sent up by sealift are sold, costs increase dramatically as stores adapt to air cargo pricing until the following sealift season. However, residents’ salaries do not increase during this period. In a region where the logistics of transportation is a challenge and food insecurity is at 70 percent, many people seek alternative solutions to keep their grocery bills down (Qikiqtani Inuit Association 2019); the prospect of free shipping is especially enticing. Until early 2024, residents of smaller communities were able to circumnavigate Amazon’s restrictive Prime delivery conditions by entering a false postal code, allowing their orders to register as eligible for Prime. However, Canada Post recently discovered this “loophole” and changed their regulations, resulting in a loss of access for all Nunavut residents outside of the capital (Murray 2024). Soon after Canada Post changed its policies, residents of Nunavut began a petition to extend Prime services to all Nunavut communities. Having access to cheaper non-perishables and staple products can make a big difference when it comes to regularly accessing food.

During an interview in June 2023, a hunter and businessman from Iqaluit remarked, “If our government is going to be honoring the claim, which is to make life better—the logical step . . . is that you better demand a cap on products, instead of the companies being given free will how to use and apply that subsidy; that’s not making life better. That’s not being accountable as elected officials across Canada. We did not sign with Northern stores. We did not sign with early Co-ops. We did not sign with Canadian North. We signed with federal government, territorial government, to make life better in the North.”

There is an expectation from many Nunavummiut that the federal and territorial governments should have greater responsibility and engagement in creating equity between the North and the South. While residents did not “sign with” Amazon either, when government subsidies, local stores, and postal codes are not able to meet residents’ needs, Nunavummiut have creatively used Amazon services to access their daily necessities and personal preferences, in effect forming the Wiindigo ecommerce into an alimentary service to improve livability (LaDuke and Cowen 2020). Nunavut’s local conditions form the infrastructural foundation upon which Amazon must function. This infrastructure directs the flow of logistics as well as what is ordered by whom, and when, linking local realities with global flows and thereby effectively producing the Arctic Amazon assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1988).

The Social Life of Amazon’s Things

At the end of November 2023, I interviewed Paul Crenson, Manager of Airport Operations for the Government of Nunavut, in Iqaluit. He explained, “One thing we need is a new cargo facility because there’s a fight for the perishables and an increase of regular other goods that are coming through the airport. And the provider can’t manage it all without damages being incurred. [. . .] But I think it’s also because of the sensitivity up here; the infrastructure down South isn’t necessarily designed for that rapid movement to get stuff up here. If the supply chain was better modified for that direction, there could be some improvements in the quality of food when it ends up with the consumer here.” While the Arctic’s “sensitivities” to supply chain inefficiencies and infrastructural failures do not have a quick-fix, supporting businesses that ship to remote locations makes a difference in individuals’ capacity to pursue their interests and engage in cooking, hunting, beading, sewing, or photography.

Amazon’s presence in the Arctic is connected to their ability as a corporate giant to make use of the limited territorial services and high local costs without any of their own major losses. In effect, Amazon can afford to lose money on Nunavut, if it means gaining the longer-term loyalty of both the permanent and transient populations. The corporation is not invested in supplying or supporting Nunavummiut from an alimentary perspective; it is instead a parasitic user of the territory’s infrastructure. After backlash (Wilson 2020, 148–49), Amazon did begin investing in select regions, or as they call it, “Giving back around the world” (Amazon.com, Inc. n.d.). For Nunavut, this meant “$25,000 in electronic gift cards” in 2020, yet no mention of Nunavut is made in Amazon’s 2024 report on how the corporation is investing in Canada, beyond mention of Iqaluit’s hub (Amazon.com, Inc. 2024b). This limited, extractive, reciprocity is indicative of Amazon’s Wiindigo role.

However, in the context of Nunavummi daily life, online shopping has improved the territory’s livability by attuning to the power of personal choice and the capacity to buy the things needed for personal styles, hobbies, or jobs. Even in Iqaluit, buying clothing or sports goods of high quality is a challenge. A young Inuk woman in Resolute Bay told me, “I order a lot of clothes from Nike. A lot of [stores] like adidas, Puma, Amazon, they all ship up here. ‘Well.ca’—it’s where you buy, like body wash. [Me: It’s cheaper than getting stuff here?] Yeah. And more options. Have you been to the store and seen the soap options? It’s very limited. And the clothing—it’s mainly just socks!”

Up until this point, my examination of Amazon’s role in the daily life of Nunavummiut has largely centered on economic factors, especially connected to infrastructure and food accessibility. It is undeniable that Nunavut’s contemporary transportation infrastructure, and Amazon with it, has enabled the material force of the colonial to enter the Arctic at higher intensity than ever before and, as such, it would be simple to write Amazon off as a cannibalistic corporation, a doom-bringer to northern society. Similar concerns have been voiced before in connection with the introduction of ever more Southern goods, which were said to make Inuit “shed a measure of their former autonomy” (Honigmann and Honigmann 1965, 54), or “result in expediting the change occurring in the material culture of the people” (Yatsushiro 1963, 18). Building on Appadurai’s (1986b) concept introduced above, “value is embodied in commodities that are exchanged,” and these values are not simply economic, but also social, political and cultural (3). Value, then, is attributed to things based not only on their economic price, but on their significance for the end consumer. These significances are created through many influences such as knowledge, experience, or social networks. Purchasing items based not only on necessity, but on personal value attribution is an exercise of personal choice that imbues residents with the potential to transcend local infrastructural constraints.

During my second visit to Pond Inlet I walked around the flea market in the community hall (“C-hall”) one Saturday in March 2023. The large hall echoed with the mixed murmurs of visitors and the scampering of children across the wooden floor. Two tables caught my eye, as they were especially popular: one selling creamy cakes and plastic cups full of colorful Jell-O, and one table covered in all manner of beauty products from fake eyelashes to fake nails, both of which sold out within minutes. I later learned from the woman selling the beauty products that she had ordered these online and was now reselling them at a slightly higher price. While these products were ordered from Shein, a fast-fashion ecommerce platform from China, their introduction to the Pond Inlet flea market is one example of the social lives of ecommerce’s things that also pertains to Amazon’s products. Residents use Shein or Amazon products to create their own income, which you can see by checking out any community Facebook page or flea market. Buldak noodles, for example, are very popular; a resident purchases a multipack and then sells the individual packs for ten to fifteen Canadian dollars per pack on “Sell/Swap” pages.

These examples illustrate residents’ manipulation of the infrastructural assemblage into opportunities for a secondary economy, profiting off of ecommerce’s frequent deliveries and consumers’ variable access to products.

Online stores have expanded Nunavut residents’ capacity to choose what products they want to order, and from which companies. While some hamlet stores order their assortment based on residents’ preferred consumption (e.g., of potato chips), there is generally little variation in supply between communities because restricted airplane and sealift cargo capacities force stores to concentrate on necessities or commonly popular products. Unless you make your own clothing (which many people do in Nunavut, especially when it comes to outdoor gear such as parkas, sweaters, wind pants, or boots), ordering online can be a way to purchase things that reflect one’s personality and interests beyond what is on offer at the hamlet store. In fact, in small communities such as Resolute Bay or Grise Fiord, key items like machine parts, or glass beads are not always available, which affects residents’ capacity to produce crafts or access the land.

Most communities do not have a mechanic or spare parts store. This leaves harvesters to either wait months for sealifts orders, make a costly trip to Iqaluit or down South, or wait mere weeks for the arrival of a package from an online store. If a broken part on a snowmobile cannot be replaced until the next sealift season, the hunter and those who depend on them lose access to self-harvested country food, directly affecting the community’s food security and individual’s capacity to practice Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ, Inuit traditional knowledge) through application of traditional skills. Historically, hunting materials could be made from local materials, traded for or bought in local stores, but the highly effective policies of relocating Inuit into permanent settlements, making attendance of Qallunaat-led schools compulsory, and the introduction of wage labor have placed enormous hurdles in hunters’ way. With shorter time allotments to go out hunting, greater variety in machines, and fewer hunters per community, those who can go out on the land are depended on by community members to have functioning machines and enough gear to go on longer trips. A young, successful, hunter and outfitter in Resolute Bay told me that he orders “tons” from online stores rather than the local Co-op, both because of the specificity of parts and the price tags.

Hunting and tourism with sled dogs are also not exempt from such uncertain situations: While sled dogs are typically fed hunted meat, time constraints and lack of resources mean not all hunters can harvest enough meat to sustain their team year-round. In such cases, dogs are fed with kibble sent up from southern Canada, with a hefty price tag attached. The time commitment and associated costs inhibit some with an interest in mushing from starting a team, or others from continuing theirs. I learned of a downside to this reliance on outside materials during a stay in Grise Fiord in April 2023, shortly after bad weather blocked air service to the community for multiple weeks. No kibble remained in the Co-op, and the hunter whose team relied on imported food ended up losing several of his dogs while he was unable to hunt for meat.

Inuit residents who are able to order via Amazon have found ways to order products they need to continue their hunting, tourism, and craft activities with as little financial loss and seasonal delay as possible. In this sense, having the opportunity to select products from the largest global online marketplace indirectly empowers many Nunavut Inuit to continue hunting, thereby supporting their community, and perhaps making an income by slightly modifying the typical pathways of product procurement while maintaining the IQ core in their activities. Given the limited availability of choice in communities, and economic constraints experienced by residents, their decision to spend money on goods from ecommerce platforms, which come with a waiting period, as opposed to making due with whatever is available in the local store, prioritizes residents’ valuation of personal choice and, depending on the products, expressions of individuality. In this sense, choosing to use ecommerce is a way of executing one’s agency as a consumer.

And yet, the giant’s documented Wiindigo-like ability to dry out smaller retailers could have detrimental effects on Nunavut’s economy (Huberman 2021). Arctic Co-op, for example, is co-owned by the residents of each community; they rely on local consumers. If all shopping moves online, these stores will likely have to fight to stay open.

Amazon can by no means be labeled as an alimentary infrastructure in the sense evoked by LaDuke and Cowen (2020). The corporation is not “life-giving in its design, finance, and effects” (LaDuke and Cowen 2020, 4), yet the value that residents have carved out of it complicates general assumptions of Amazon’s unidirectional global transformative influence by encouraging us to recognize individuals’ personal agency in choosing ecommerce when local options are limited. Paying attention to these details is especially important today as Nunavut is at a point of heavy infrastructure investment, expansion and renovation, processes largely directed by the Canadian federal government, which decides which infrastructures are of value to whom and where.

As Harvey (2016) writes, “ (. . .) the value of infrastructural initiatives lies in their generative capacity and their ability to connect across scales” (53). The ability of Nunavut’s infrastructure, and Canada’s, to connect across scales has not taken full effect in most northern communities, where residents instead recognize a gap in service and the resulting inequity. Larry Audlaluk, a resident of Grise Fiord, illustrated this sentiment in April 2023: “I go back to the cost of running the High Arctic. It is costly for us Inuit Canadians up here. But it’s no issue for the federal entities . . . They bring in a jet to Resolute, yet Resolute does not have jet service. It’s very clear and obvious. You can see it black and white. Why are they doing that to us? If they were helping us, if it helps Canadians, if it helps me from having to spend 9860 dollars and 37 cents for a skidoo to come up, great, but it’s not. And the snowmobile will only last for two good years.”

With its far-reaching logistics network and solid foundation in warehousing, Amazon is viewed as the more reliable source of goods and foods, even outside of Iqaluit, where Amazon is delivered by standard Canada Post. As the above examples have illustrated, when the single pathway of logistics cannot be maintained, infrastructural failure can have detrimental effects. Simultaneously, air cargo, warehouses, postal depots and snowmobiles have become infrastructural necessities which enable the continuation of traditional practices. Amazon’s activities in Nunavut are unlikely to be officially determined as part of a critical infrastructure, yet the ways residents have taken to using the ecommerce’s services may be seen as akin to critical, alimentary services not yet dependably provided by others.

Discussion: A Global Assemblage with Local Alimentary Value

There is an irony in the fact that today’s largest and most powerful online shopping corporation is named after the Amazon River, a region not unlike the Arctic with regard to Indigenous lands, presence of extraction industries, or importance for a balanced global climate. Now, this corporation has a total net worth of $1.98 trillion as of October 29, 2024 (Stock Analysis 2024) and emitted “68.82 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023” (Twidale 2024).

The Amazon corporation stands for both a promise of the future and a destruction of future potential. The corporation promises the world at ones fingertips, a certification of modernity (Moody 2020, 23). But at the same time, Amazon is known for its poor and racialized labor conditions, especially in their warehouses, and as a corporate giant that can negatively impact local stores, projects, and initiatives (Alimahomed-Wilson et al. 2020; Moody 2020). Nunavut is still an emerging economy at a precarious stage in this last step in the territorial devolution process from the federal government (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Government of Canada 2024). While outside influences, such as Amazon, may benefit individuals, and the territorial hubs to a certain extent, prioritizing the access and expansion of such forces may negatively impact community economic initiatives and smaller scale territorial projects. As such, Amazon is in its essence a Wiindigo infrastructure which converts “ecologies of the many into systems of circulation and accumulation to serve the few” (LaDuke and Cowen 2020, 245).

Yet labeling Amazon as an uber-capitalist force to the detriment of humanity is a gross simplification and misrepresentation of many consumers’ lived realities. While e-commerce-enabling economies and socialities are colonial, the materials transported North have also enabled residents to continue feeding their children, go hunting, and produce carvings, sewing, or beading in altered, albeit traditional, ways.

Political decisions around infrastructure development, welfare allocation, capacity building, and tax systems have created an opportunity for Amazon to flourish in a territory that is otherwise often deemed too expensive for investment. Yet Amazon would not function if its logistics pathways were limited to their individual parts, nor would it function by simply using the infrastructure found in Nunavut today. The corporation’s operations work as part of a larger assemblage, which includes infrastructure in southern Canada and beyond. Although southern infrastructure is not coordinated to encourage exchange to Canada’s Arctic, it is the complementary capacity of these infrastructural systems within Nunavut and beyond that enables the material operation of global ecommerce platforms in the North.

The assemblage function of Amazon in Nunavut can be seen in the social life of products ordered to Nunavut. In tracing the trajectory of delivered items and products, the imagined homogenous population is broken down into groups of individuals with various socio-economic contexts who order vastly different items and use them in different ways. Amazon’s presence in the Canadian Arctic as part of an assemblage with alimentary value is not a static reality, it is more so an expansion of possibilities for residents in a constantly newly configured flow of transformative practices (Dewsbury 2011).

Conclusion

In this article, my examination of ecommerce’s infrastructural entanglements in daily lives of Nunavummiut attempts to discourage homogenizing policy or infrastructure designs by illuminating the diversity of desires among residents. Furthermore, Nunavut can learn from Amazon about the power of warehouses in keeping prices down. The on-the-ground presence of Amazon in Nunavut is strategic, and it follows the long prevailing economic reality of shipping the majority of Nunavut’s goods and foods from the South into the territory, rather than prioritizing strengthening local entrepreneurs, or encouraging warehousing and bulk orders. As it is, Amazon is benefiting from Nunavut’s sparse logistics landscape.

By attuning to residents’ everyday entanglements with aviation, cargo, credit cards, postal deliveries, warehouses, and sealift, this article illustrates the public infrastructures necessary for global ecommerce platforms to enter local livelihoods. Nunavut shows that global logistics systems are only as inclusive as the local infrastructural assemblages they rely on; where infrastructural inequalities persist, access to digital economies remains uneven. Simultaneously, the material groundedness of e-commerce provides an opportunity to reconfigure said infrastructures to address these inequalities.

Meanwhile, back at the Amazon hub in Iqaluit, the line moves quickly as employees rush to the storage area and return with parcels. People waiting greet each other, read the newest event posters, or play on their phone. At the counter, an employee scans our barcode before disappearing into the warehouse filled with shelves of parcels and returning moments later. We shuffle back to the car, our arms filled with cardboard boxes of various sizes, which we dump on the back seat. My friend sighs; it has become that “necessary evil,” Amazon in the Arctic.

Author Biography

Katrin Schmid is a doctoral student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Her dissertation examines the role of Nunavut’s transport infrastructure in territorial food sovereignty. Her research interests include perceptions of change and their influence on socio-economic sustainability, policy-making, and imagined futures of communities.