Eating in Place: Mapping Alternative Food Procurement in Canadian Indigenous Communities

Abstract

This paper reports on alternative food procure­ment initiatives in Canadian Indigenous commu­nities. Like many communities around the world, they have experienced the ‘nutrition transition’ toward nutritionally compromised industrial food, with debilitating results. Much of this change in nutritional status has been created by a lethal com­bination of self-serving government policy and predatory corporate practice that ghettoizes Indige­nous communities within a for-profit pseudo-food system. To find solutions to the colonially struc­tured food deserts imposed on them, many Indige­nous communities have turned to the social econ­omy, initiating projects such as community gar­dens, greenhouses, and co-operatives. While largely unrecognized in the wider world, these initiatives are created and managed by communities, for the benefit of communities, giving us a deeper under­standing of what place-based food systems can accomplish. Note: This paper is also part of the proceedings of the Place-Based Food Systems Conference, published as JAFSCD volume 9, supplement 1.

Keywords

• Colonially Structured Food Deserts
• Food Procurement
• Indigenous Communities
• Nutrition Transition
• Place-Based Food Systems
• Social Economy