Abstract
The growing recognition of food justice as an element of food studies inquiry has opened a productive vein that allows for analyzing the effects of oppression on traditional foods of Indigenous peoples. We provide a preliminary classification of food oppression by presenting several different types of foods from a number of cultures: (1) replaced and repressed foods; (2) disempowered and misrepresented foods; and (3) foods of oppression of the dispossessed. Our main argument is that these food types represent different faces of oppression and state power that, regardless of the inherent differences, have permeated diets and imaginaries in various spatial scales and, in doing so, have caused deprivation in local communities, despite being accepted in many cases as traditional food items in oppressed cultures. We conducted a systematic literature review in Scopus focusing on the traditional foods of Indigenous people and elements of oppression and revitalization. The results of our review are discussed in light of what we identify as aspects of culinary oppression. We conclude our paper by sketching the plausible first steps for redemptory solutions based on Indigenous food work aimed at reclaiming basic revalorization and revitalization.
Highlights
Burnett and Figley propose the concept of historical oppression that includes the “cumulative, massive, and chronic trauma imposed on a group across generations and within the life course” (Burnette and Figley, 2017:38)
These results show that no common front has yet to emerge on foods of oppression for Indigenous peoples
The number of papers analyzing the convergence of gastronomic and political imaginaries remains relatively low for many topics, including those that are the main focus of our paper and in which oppression, Indigenous peoples, foods, and traditional knowledge intermingle
Summary
Burnett and Figley propose the concept of historical oppression that includes the “cumulative, massive, and chronic trauma imposed on a group across generations and within the life course” (Burnette and Figley, 2017:38). Indigenous peoples have often lost vital and rich food territories, been physically relocated to marginal lands, and had their food ways unacknowledged or denigrated (Schoney, 2007; Turner and Turner, 2008) This loss affects multiple aspects of cultural heritage that interface the territorial. UNESCO (2003) identifies intangible cultural heritage as including the passing of knowledge from generation to generation, social practices, rituals, and festive events as well as knowledge and practices concerning both nature and the universe and knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts All of these elements are aspects of cultural food ways and central to a people’s overall culture. Select foods currently consumed are historically in intimate alignment to oppression, exploitation, and disenfranchisement of Indigenous and traditional peoples These foods are often married to hardship but become significantly incorporated into the core diet and viewed as culturally “traditional foods” (Mihesuah, 2016). Articles that included aspects of both revitalization and revalorization were included (search two)
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