Abstract
Foodscapes are commonly embedded in spiritual landscapes, making the spiritual dimension of local and indigenous food systems an important element of food sovereignty. However, this dimension is often overlooked in food systems research and policy making. Based on ethnobiological fieldwork conducted in the Kailash Sacred Landscape of far western Nepal, we show how religious festivals and rituals reenact the covenant between people and the land through the numinous intercession of Hindu gods and landscape deities. To demonstrate this, we present the local calendar of the agricultural and ritual year based on data collected through household surveys and participation in festivals and agricultural activities. The complex fabric of the local agri-food system is revealed as articulated in the warp and weft of interwoven agricultural and spiritual cycles. These cycles contribute to respectful and sustainable landscape management practices by shaping the relationship people have with the land. In the annual women's festival of Gaura, the fertility and well-being of people and land is affirmed through the offering of locally produced pulses and grains. Furthermore, local gastronomic identity is enriched by the incentive to cultivate heirloom varieties of crops that are prescribed in rituals performed during Gaura and other major festivals. We conclude that spiritual practices should be considered key elements of biocultural diversity, and recommend that they receive more attention in the implementation of sustainable development that aims to embody the principles of food sovereignty.
Highlights
Local and indigenous food systems in rural areas have long been contested spaces where interests are negotiated by different actors with often conflicting agendas
With freed up time and resources, the team decided to focus on collecting data about the local agri-food system and its embeddedness in the spiritual landscape which is evoked in the sacred oral literature
Culturally important foods are preserved, and local gastronomic identity is enriched, by the incentive to cultivate heirloom crops that are prescribed for use in rituals, such as the kalaun grown for Gaura and the barley grown for Harishayani and Dashain
Summary
Local and indigenous food systems in rural areas have long been contested spaces where interests are negotiated by different actors with often conflicting agendas. A general disconnect between top-down development and management, and local and indigenous relations to their lands, tends to “persist in ways that erode even the best attempts at collaborative management and plans for long-term sustainability in our contemporary plural societies,” Felice Wyndham has observed (Wyndham, 2009). Co-management has often had the effect of, at best involuntarily, forcing rural and indigenous communities into tacitly accepting assumptions about the nature of the land and the species to be managed, with state institutions failing to understand local values and worldviews (Nadasdy, 2005), and imposing the institution-held scientific assumptions rather than engaging in cross-cultural co-construction of knowledge (Apgar et al, 2016) Just as gold mining degrades a large area of land for the extraction of what is perceived as valuable “ore” and leaves a wasteland in its place, extraction of valuable data from traditional knowledge without consideration of its cultural context can be damaging.” A general disconnect between top-down development and management, and local and indigenous relations to their lands, tends to “persist in ways that erode even the best attempts at collaborative management and plans for long-term sustainability in our contemporary plural societies,” Felice Wyndham has observed (Wyndham, 2009). Li (2007) has exposed how organizations’ “claim to expertise in optimizing the lives of others is a claim to power.” Co-management has often had the effect of, at best involuntarily, forcing rural and indigenous communities into tacitly accepting assumptions about the nature of the land and the species to be managed, with state institutions failing to understand local values and worldviews (Nadasdy, 2005), and imposing the institution-held scientific assumptions rather than engaging in cross-cultural co-construction of knowledge (Apgar et al, 2016)
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