Indigenous

As the cost of living continues to rise in Canada, so too does food insecurity, with Indigenous Peoples and those living off-reserve among the highest at risk. An Indigenous-led, community-based research initiative driven by Western researchers and the London, Ont. branch of the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre (SOAHAC) aims to close that gap by moving from short-term food security solutions to a more sustainable model promoting food sovereignty. The project, spearheaded by geography and environment professor Chantelle Richmond, supports and extends SOAHAC’s traditional Indigenous food bag program, by incorporating local land-based activities that restore cultural knowledge and practices. Entitled Planting Seeds for Urban Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Growing SOAHAC’s Traditional Food Bag Program, the initiative recently attracted a $1.9 million project grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The project builds on Richmond’s foundational work as the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health and the Environment, and her past collaborations with Jocelyn Zurbrigg, a certified diabetes educator and registered dietitian at SOAHAC. Drawing on the expertise of local knowledge keepers, Richmond and her team will work with Zurbrigg to co-create and operate a program with a holistic approach to food security, providing SOAHAC clients with traditional Indigenous foods and the cultural knowledge and skills to grow, hunt, cook and store them. “This project’s not just about feeding people, but also reconnecting them with their ancestral knowledge and practices,” Richmond said. “We’ll be looking to the knowledge keepers and traditional food experts who live and work in London and surrounding communities to direct us in creating our programs to make sure we are doing what is culturally relevant and right.”

“It’s about nourishing bodies, but it’s also about nourishing minds, nourishing spirits and nourishing community.” – Professor Chantelle Richmond, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Health and the Environment

The project will be governed by a local advisory council comprised of SOAHAC leaders and knowledge keepers from London, Ont. and surrounding Indigenous communities. With a program coordinator at Western and another at SOAHAC, the initiative will operate out of the health centre’s new home, east of the downtown core on Dundas Street. “I’m so excited to get going on this project and to optimize SOAHAC’s beautiful kitchen as a learning space,” Zurbrigg said, noting the five-year project will be rolled out in four phases. “The first year will emphasize learning to cook with traditional foods through hands-on cooking demonstrations that will be recorded, and we plan to create a community cookbook as well.” Subsequent years will focus on land-based activities such as gardening, growing and storing food. The final phase will incorporate hunting and gathering practices that tie to the natural cycles of the land. “It’s a beautiful progression, connecting urban Indigenous people with the land and their cultural knowledge and practices,” Zurbrigg said.  

A local approach to a national challenge

The project is unique to Ontario and one of the few in Canada focusing on urban Indigenous Peoples. Richmond and her research team will evaluate the cultural impact of the London program through a range of Indigenous methods, including land-based learning, storytelling and map-making. They hope to share the outcomes and impact broadly, with an aim to develop a model that can be adapted to meet the specific needs of Indigenous communities across the country. “Indigenous food sovereignty is a very localized concept that embraces local knowledge, experience and ways of doing and being, on and with this land,” Richmond said. “Yet a lot of London’s urban Indigenous people are largely dispossessed from this place and the medicines and traditional foods that grow here. “We’re asking, how do we restore ways of knowing and practices that are central to identities and the practices of belonging for native people? That’s what Indigenous food sovereignty is all about, living sustainably in a place and knowing how to ‘be,’ and doing things that make you well.”

Understanding food security in an Indigenous context

Indigenous Peoples make up one per cent of the London, Ont. population, yet they’re 10 times more likely to suffer food insecurity. “We know if people don’t have money, they can’t buy food,” Richmond said. “But food insecurity for native people is not only about poverty, it’s related to the experience of colonization and disconnection from the land and the social relationships, and the knowledge associated with traditional foods.” Zurbrigg has seen the impact of poverty and the shift away from Indigenous food systems first-hand through SOAHAC’s high patient incidence of chronic health conditions. “Food insecurity and rising food costs affect our clients living on a fixed income, making it harder to afford nutritious, traditional foods and more difficult to manage conditions like type 2 diabetes,” Zurbrigg said. With that challenge in mind, Zurbrigg successfully secured non-renewable funds through a London Community Foundation community vitality grant in 2022, creating a pilot traditional food bag program to provide clients fresh, Indigenous foods as part of the SOAHAC’s broader Indigenous Food Bank offering. The foods, sourced from Indigenous farmers and hunters and gatherers, included wild rice, dried berries, white corn and fish. The bags were distributed to 3,600 households, where the highly nutritious foods delivered notable results. “Wild meats and fish offer quality protein and are low in saturated fats, which is better for overall heart health,” Zurbrigg said. “The glycemic index of wild rice is much superior to white or instant rice. Overall, I saw better control in people’s type 2 diabetes.” She also saw the social and cultural significance these foods held for her clients. “I remember mentioning we had pickerel from Kettle and Stony Point (First Nation), and one of our clients cried and told me they ‘hadn’t had that in years,’” she said. Richmond and master’s student Clara Lewis heard similar moving stories as they documented and recorded the cultural impacts of the program on the health and well-being of Indigenous women. Richmond, inspired, saw the opportunity to move the program forward. She assembled a community-based team, which, through her successful CIHR application, has begun ‘planting the seeds’ to grow Indigenous food sovereignty in the local community. “Ideally, local urban Indigenous people will learn how to fish, how to grow their own traditional foods or as part of a gardening collective. It’s all part of living safely on the land in London, knowing and feeling they belong here,” Richmond said. She’s also excited about the learning and research opportunities for her students, young Indigenous scholars majoring in environmental, food and Indigenous studies. “Collectively, our team draws from a breadth of interdisciplinary thinking, theory and methods about the place-based nature, practices, knowledge, meanings and experiences of food security, traditional foods and Indigenous food sovereignty,” Richmond said. “We are committed to supporting this research project as a rich and collaborative space of learning and mentorship for Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students at Western.” With files from Diana Corredor, digital engagement communication specialist, Faculty of Social Science