Indigenous Food Security – What is Indigenous Food Insecurity? (Mini-lecture)
Throughout its history, Canada has implemented policies that limited Indigenous People’s ability to engage in hunting, fishing, and gathering activities, thereby eroding the food security, food sovereignty, independence, and cultures of many communities. Indeed, food has often been used as a tool of oppression and marginalization: Bison were hunted to near-extinction to force First Nations onto reservations while starvation, poor diets, and malnutrition were common in residential schools. While food has been used as an instrument of colonization, it also has the potential to be a tool for healing and for asserting Indigenous sovereignty.
- concepts like right relations, reciprocity with nature, and fostering a holistic connection with the land as a living community,
- ways to increase community participation in land care and management and how this work strengthens regional food systems and food sovereignty,
- strengthening and recovering traditional food systems, localizing food production, restoring local control, and challenging corporation dominance, and
- treating food as a sacred gift of life to be shared fairly,
- ways that Indigenous food systems and sovereignty can contribute to transforming food systems, both in Canada and globally.
Please keep the above preamble in mind while I discuss some of the alarming statistics that apply to Indigenous food insecurity.
Video Transcript: FWSMod1-1.5 – What is Indigenous Food Insecurity_transcript_v2