Christina David - the Inuk woman who gained media attention after a blurry video emerged of her plucking a dead bird in the Montreal metro - is embracing her sudden and unexpected notoriety as a chance to teach others about her Inuit culture.
"I cant believe this how much its making me happy," she wrote on her Facebook page Monday. "It will be my honour to show the world about my little incident. I'm just lucky to be the one to show the world who we are! Being a Inuk Rocks!!"
She said that she was thrilled with receiving a ptarmigan, a special meal which she had not eaten yet this year.
"It's kind of like a goose," she said in an interview. "It's the same size as a pigeon, we have it up north. It's my country food, it's not like we get to eat our country food every day."
David said that the bird can't be bought, only hunted. "We give it for free to our people in the villages," she said in an interview with Chris Wilding and Davison of the BQWSC audio podcast.
She also dismisses reports that the blurry video shows her munching on the raw bird.
"I never ate it, I was taking off the feathers in the plastic bag. I was so excited to have some of my country food," said David, who moved to Montreal from Nunavik in 2010.
"People were trying to make a fool of me or something but I don't care," she said. "I put it on a pan with onions and mushrooms and I made rice. It was delicious."
The ptarmigan, according to Wikipedia, is the official bird of Nunavut and the official game bird for Newfoundland and Labrador. It is known as a snow chicken in the United States.
