Indigenous Food Security – Indigenous Food Sovereignty (Reading + Optional Resource)
Reading: “We desperately need to be talking about food sovereignty” (National Observer)
Anticipated time commitment: 5 minutes
We desperately need to be talking about food sovereignty discusses Indigenous food sovereignty and concepts related to colonization, poverty, and food insecurity and the many ways in which Indigenous Peoples are recovering food systems such as regenerative food systems, and dismantling structural racism, in spite of the challenges they face. These concepts have been offered as plausible alternatives to food production and food security which addresses conciliatory Indigenous human rights issues while taking the environment into consideration. Reading this article will provide an understanding of food security and food sovereignty concepts as you consider food security in Canada.
Dawn Morrison is an Indigenous leader in Indigenous Food Security and Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Founder/Curator of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. Dawn is of Secwepemc ancestry and is the Founder/Curator of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. Since 1983 Dawn has worked and studied horticulture, ethnobotany, adult education, and restoration of natural systems in formal institutions, as well as through her own personal and community healing and learning journey. Dawn has consistently organized and held the space over the last 15 years for mobilizing knowledge and networks towards a just transition from the basis of decolonizing food systems in the community, regional and international networks where she has become internationally recognized as a published author. Dawn’s work on the Decolonizing Research and Relationships is focused on creating a critical pathway of consciousness, that shines a light on the cross-cultural interface where Indigenous Food Sovereignty meets, social justice, climate change, and regenerative food systems research, action, and policy, planning, and governance. Some of the projects Dawn is leading include Wild Salmon Caravan, Indigenous Food, and Freedom School and, Dismantling Structural Racism in the Food System, and Tsilhqot’in National Government Food Security/Sovereignty Project. Dawn is one of my Indigenous mentors and food sovereignty mentors. She lives in the traditional territory of the Secwepemc Peoples near Kamloops, BC.
Digging Deeper Optional Resource: An Interview with Dawn Morrison
If you want to learn more about this important topic, I recommend that you watch this Facebook Live interview with Dawn Morrison, Founder/Curator of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. The interview sheds light on some of the current sociopolitical challenges Indigenous Peoples are facing with food insecurity in the Province of BC.
Dawn Morrison states: “
- A just transition must be a transition out of a mechanistic production paradigm that has mechanized the spirit, morals, and reverence out of our relationship to the land and food. Food sovereignty is the most intimate way in which we interact with the land, Indigenous peoples still observe the cultural and spiritual protocols that connect us to the innate capacity of nature that enables our bodies and nature to heal and regenerate. As LeRoy LittleBear states “we live within very narrow gaps of conditions that make it possible for us to exist in a regenerative life-giving whole. Western science and its linear productionist mathematical models will not save humanity, it will only be the morals and reverence for life that will save us and move us to make a deep and lasting change”.