Abstract
Indigenous food systems have been sites of deliberate and sustained disruption in the service of the settler colonial project on Turtle Island. The revitalization of traditional foodways is a powerful and popular means through which Indigenous Peoples are practicing cultural and political resurgence. We are at a crucial moment of societal reckoning reinforced by recent anti-racist uprisings and Indigenous Land Back actions. In this context, food movements have an important role to play in addressing ongoing colonial impacts on Indigenous food systems by supporting Indigenous Food Sovereignty as a way to advance reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous Peoples. Since its founding in 2005, Food Secure Canada (FSC) has become a national leader in food movements in Canada and its biennial Assembly is arguably the largest food movement event in the country. Despite its sustained engagement with Indigenous Peoples and significant efforts toward inclusion, its 2018 Assembly saw Indigenous people, Black people, and other people of color expressing important concerns, culminating in a walk-out on the last day. To understand how these events might guide transformative reconciliation in and through food movements, we analyzed 124 post-Assembly qualitative questionnaires, held 10 interviews, and analyzed organizational archives, in addition to conducting participant observation throughout the following year. This research portrays the actions taken at the Assembly to be a refusal of settler structures and processes, and the creation of a caucus space for Indigenous people, Black people, and other people of color as an act of resurgence. Engagement with FSC by a number of those involved with the protests throughout the year that followed, and the resultant commitment to center decolonization in FSC’s work, reveal the intimate connection between resurgence and reconciliation. These acts of generative refusal and resurgence are an essential part of efforts toward reconciliation without assimilation, aligned in a shared struggle toward the decolonized futures at the heart of food sovereignty for all.
Highlights
Food systems are networks of relationships, connecting different peoples to each other and to the land (Whyte, 2017)
At a 2016 strategic retreat of the circle, some of the circle’s leadership made moves to “constitute itself as an independent body, the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Learning Circle, with the aim of moving beyond an advisory role in FSC to an autonomous equal relationship” (Food Secure Canada, n.d.), we were told by one participant that this was not a decision agreed upon by all present
As Indigenous Peoples continue to invest in the restoration of their nationhood and relationships to their homelands through the revitalization of their foodways, settlers have the responsibility of reconciling their food systems and movements to the reality of Indigenous sovereignty and selfdetermination
Summary
Food systems are networks of relationships, connecting different peoples to each other and to the land (Whyte, 2017). His work on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) movements shows that food systems engage Indigenous peoples and settlers in relationships of interdependence with each other and with the Earth. Food movements bring together a diverse collection of actors, practices, and discourses which food systems scholar, Gail Feenstra (2002), describes as “a collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies—one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption [are] integrated to enhance the economic, environmental, and local health of a particular place” Food movements’ paired goals of working for sustainability on the land and justice between peoples parallels what political scientist James Tully (2018) calls the two interrelated projects of reconciliation: reconciling Indigenous Peoples and settlers to each other and reconciling all peoples to the land
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