A Conversation on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (Part 2)

Source: Kitatipithitamak Mithwayawin and guests

Year: 2020

“This discussion includes the importance of dismantling structural racism in the food system, how Covid-19 speaks to the inequities of our broken food system, and how intertwined the social and environmental implications of food are for Indigenous peoples.”

 

Indigenous Food Sovereignty

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Source: Food Secure Canada

Year: 2011

"We are a group of community-based activists, scholars and storytellers who work on issues of food sovereignty. We come from diverse regions of Turtle Island and share fundamental beliefs towards the land and all she stands for. We represent fishing, hunting, and gathering peoples and bring an understanding of the impact of colonialism on our regions. Indigenous food systems include all of the land, soil, water, and air, as well as culturally important plant, fungi, and animal species that have sustained Indigenous peoples over thousands of years of participating in the natural world. "

 

Traditional Foods & Recipes on the Wild Side

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Source: Native Women’s Association of Canada

Year: 2012

“This booklet is intended to provide some cultural context, as well as information about traditional foods. You’ll also find a few recipes on the wild side!”

 

Gifts from Our Relations: Indigenous Original Foods Guide

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Source: National Indigenous Diabetes Association

Year: 2020

“The National Indigenous Diabetes Association (NIDA) presents this resource booklet entitled “Gifts from our Relations”, which consists of commonly consumed traditional foods (plants/animals) that are Indigenous to our lands. Colonization, the reserve system, and residential schools have had significant negative impacts on Indigenous Peoples’ land bases, territories, and connections to the land. Regular harvesting and consumption of original foods has been largely replaced with a commercial supply of western, processed, non-nutritive foods. As noted by the Canada Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “...original foods were viewed by missionaries, educators and doctors as being diseased and inferior; in residential schools, teachers taught children to dislike their own foods and inculcated them with the poor eating habits of a non-Indigenous institution.”"

 

Pathways to the revitalization of Indigenous food systems: Decolonizing diets through Indigenous-focused food guides

Taylor & Shukla (2020) Decolonizing Diets through Indigenous Focused Food Guides.png

Source: Taylor Wilson, Shailesh Shukla

Year: 2020

“The 2019 Canadian Food Guide (CFG) was launched in January 2019 with a promise to be inclusive of multicultural diets and diverse perspectives on food, including the food systems of Indigenous communities. Some scholars argue that federally designed standard food guides often fail to address the myriad and complex issues of food security, well-being, and nutritional needs of Canadian Indigenous communities while imposing a dominant and westernized worldview of food and nutrition. In a parallel development, Indigenous food systems and associated knowledges and perspectives are being rediscovered as a hope and ways to improve current and future food security. Based on a review of relevant literature and our long-term collaborative learning and community based research engagements with Indigenous communities from Manitoba, we propose that Indigenous communities should develop their food guides considering their contexts, needs, and preferences.”

 

Reconciling Ways of Knowing Webinar Series

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Source: Reconciling Ways of Knowing

Year: 2020

“In our first dialogue in this series, Why Do We Need to Reconcile Ways of Knowing? leaders working at the confluence of Indigenous and scientific knowledge and decision making discussed the events, issues and relationships that made it clear that a national-scale dialogue to facilitate just reconciliation between the ways of knowing and ways of being of Indigenous Peoples and Canadians, and their respective governments, is needed.”

 

Cooking Wild Game for an Event? Resource folder

Source: Understanding Our Food Systems Project (Thunder Bay District Health Unit and the Indigenous Food Circle)

Year: 2020

The Understanding Our Food Systems Project from the Thunder Bay District Health Unit and the Indigenous Food Circle share a series of resources, including info sheets, guidelines, application forms, and other materials for serving wild game at events.

 

Community Champions for Safe, Sustainable, Traditional Food Systems

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Source: Kathleen Yung, Casey Neathway

Year: 2019

“This study will describe how the First Nations Health Authority supported increasing access to the processing and sharing of safely preserved traditional foods through the facilitation of a Community Champion model and the development of accompanying resource materials. Engaging Community Champions recognized the positive social impacts of sharing foods and traditional food systems, including access to nutrient-rich harvested foods, while the curriculum development and engagement of environmental health professionals ensured advice given would lead to decreased risks of foodborne illness.”

 

Assembly of First Nations Report: Traditional Foods: Are they Safe for First Nations Consumption?

Source: Assembly of First Nations

Year: 2007

“This paper focuses on the critical issue of First Nations exposure to environmental contaminants through the consumption of traditional foods. It discusses the potential health risks and benefits to First Nation communities, as well as, other issues of concern with respect to the economic and socio-cultural aspects of traditional food systems. The Environmental Stewardship Unit (ESU) of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) has reviewed relevant research on this subject and will provide an overview of the current situation in this paper.”

 

Increasing Indigenous Children’s Access to Traditional Foods in Early Childhood Programs

BC Provincial Health Services Authority (2016) Increasing Indigenous children's access to traditional foods.png

Source: Provincial Health Services Authority, British Columbia

Year: 2016

"Traditional Indigenous foods are part of a healthy diet. Moreover, traditional foods also have cultural and spiritual value and can contribute to the health of young First Nations and Métis children, many of whom experience food insecurity. Early childhood programs are ideal settings to introduce, explore and share traditional foods. However, in licensed childcare settings, the current food regulatory system effectively excludes the type, frequency and/or where traditional foods can be served."

We are not being heard: Aboriginal Perspectives on Traditional Food Access and Food Security

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Source: Bethany Elliott, Deepthi Jayatilaka, Contessa Brown, Leslie Varley, and Kitty K. Corbett

Year: 2012

“Aboriginal peoples are among the most food insecure groups in Canada, yet their perspectives and knowledge are often sidelined in mainstream food security debates. In order to create food security for all, Aboriginal perspectives must be included in food security research and discourse. This project demonstrates a process in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal partners engaged in a culturally appropriate and respectful collaboration, assessing the challenges and barriers to traditional foods access in the urban environment of Vancouver, BC, Canada.”

 

Towards Improving Traditional Food Access for Urban Indigenous People

Ermine, Engler-Stringer, Farneses & Abbott (2020) Towards improving traditional food access for urban Indigenous people.png

Source: Robyn Ermine, Rachel Engler-Stringer, Patricia Farnese, Glenda Abbott

Year: 2020

“Our purpose in carrying out this project has been to support the development of actions that can remove barriers to traditional foods in urban environments for Indigenous people. Traditional foods are hunted, trapped, fished, gathered and cultivated to various extents depending on the community and their respective traditional territories. Communities and organizations across the country are finding innovative ways to bring traditional foods to urban residing Indigenous people, but they are often navigating the relevant policies and regulations on their own. This situation places the burden of navigating current policies and regulations on Indigenous communities.”

 

Climate change and COVID-19: reinforcing Indigenous food systems

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Source: Carol Zavaleta-Cortijo, James D Ford, Ingrid Arotoma-Rojas, Shuaib Lwasa, Guillermo Lancha-Rucoba, Patricia J García

Year: 2020

“Indigenous populations are at especially high risk from COVID-19 because of factors such discrimination, social exclusion, land dispossession, and a high prevalence of forms of malnutrition. Climate change is compounding many of these causes of health inequities, undermining coping mechanisms that are traditionally used to manage extreme events such as pandemics, and disrupting food systems and local diets. Addressing underlying structural inequities and strengthening Indigenous knowledge systems offer opportunities for building resilience to compound socioecological shocks, including climate effects and pandemics.”

 

Indigenous Food Sovereignty and COVID-19

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Source: Angela D’Elia Decembrini

Year: 2020

“For many Indigenous Peoples, the importance of food goes beyond its nutritional value. Maintaining access to traditional food sources is inextricably linked to Indigenous Peoples’ relationships with the land and environment, the exercise of their Aboriginal title, rights and Treaty rights and the continuity of their cultures and traditions. In recent months, concerns regarding food security have been heightened as COVID-19 related restrictions have placed increased pressure on food supply chains. For Indigenous communities across Canada, however, the pandemic has only exacerbated concerns about their already fragile food systems.”

 

What we heard: Indigenous Peoples and COVID-19: Public Health Agency of Canada’s companion report

Chief Public Health Officer of Canada (2021) What we heard - Indigenous Peoples and COVID-19.png

Source: Public Health Agency of Canada

Year: 2021

“This report is to complement the CPHO’s Annual Report on the State of Public Health in Canada 2020, “From Risk to Resilience: An equity approach to COVID-19”. During late February 2020, COVID-19 became a growing concern in Canada with reported cases in multiple regions. COVID-19 has changed the way we live, work, and socialize. Dr. Mashford-Pringle and the research team were asked to author a companion report as a reflection of what was heard during the August and September engagement sessions.”

 

Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples

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Source: Harriet Kuhnlein and Nancy Turner

Year: 1991

“The primary purpose of this book is to describe and to reference the published literature on the nutritional properties, the botanical characteristics and the ethnic uses of traditional food plants of Canadian Indigenous Peoples. Since it is recognized that Canadian political boundaries are not honored by plants in their biological habitats, the nutritional and botanical information presented here is often relevant to other regions with northern latitudes where the same species are found, such as northern regions of the United States, Europe and Asia. However, the ethnographic information reviewed and presented in this book is only from Canadian Indigenous Peoples and their immediate neighbors in Alaska and other states bordering Canada.”

 

Food Security & Three Sisters Sustainability - Conversations in Cultural Fluency

Source: Six Nations Polytechnic

Year: 2016

As part of the Conversations in Cultural Fluency webinar series, Six Nations Polytechnic explores Hodinoshon:hi worldviews. This one focuses on agriculture, food security, and Three Sisters sustainability.

 

Native Foodways with the Cultural Conservancy

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Source: KCET

Year: 2020

“The commodification of food has led to a bottom-line approach that has disconnected people from their food sources entirely. The Cultural Conservancy, an inter-tribal organization headquartered on Ohlone land in modern-day San Francisco, is revitalizing Indigenous knowledge by inviting us to re-engage with the land, honor heirloom seeds, grow clean food and medicines, and decolonize our foodways.”

Chuck and The First Peoples’ Kitchen

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Source: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network

Year: n.d.

“Members of Indigenous communities across Canada dish out their knowledge with professional chef Chuck Hughes. Sharing integral parts of their Indigenous culture and culinary heritage through the sharing of family and ancestral recipes. From lobster fishing in Chaleur Bay, moose hunting in Newfoundland, to ptarmigan hunting in Nunavut, the 25-year veteran chef travels through forests, rivers and snow-covered landscapes as he prepares world class meals using the resources the land provides. Guided by his mentors, Chuck becomes a privileged witness of the respect Indigenous Peoples have towards nature.”

 

Moosemeat & Marmalade

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Source: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network

Year: n.d.

“Moosemeat & Marmalade brings together Bush Cook, Art Napoleon, and classically trained British Chef, Dan Hayes to explore and compare Indigenous and European culture and cuisine. Through his Cree heritage, and rough around the edges persona, Art is a man among men when it comes to hunting and surviving in the Northern wilds. From across the pond, Dan draws on years of history and tradition to create modern food that looks as good as it tastes. Every week one of these chefs choose an ingredient and lead the journey. They couldn’t be more different or more set in their ways but these two chefs come together to create and explore culture, culinary traditions, worldviews and, of course, really good food.”