Food Sovereignty

Resource: The film “Gather” by First Nations Development Institute https://www.nativefoodsystems.org/

Having grown plants from seeds and harvested seeds for the first time last year (and for the first time this year really knowing what I’m doing), I have become enamored by growing my own food and by seeds in general. Collecting and planting seeds and taking care of the plants that lie within them has strengthened my relationship with the Earth, and it is something that I am cherishing, as I had never really done it in my adult life. I never really grew anything from a seed growing up (well I think there were a few things that failed), and experiencing that as an adult is more magical than it ever was as a kid. I’ve realized how intertwined the lives of humans and plants are, and how a seed represents thousands of years of human stewardship of plants. This is incredibly humbling, and a type of stewardship that I want to practice throughout my life. I have been learning more about seed saving, and have joined a few seed saving groups on Facebook. In one of them, someone posted a temporary preview of the film “Gather,” which “tells the story about Indian resilience and the renaissance of Native food systems” by following the journeys of 4 Indigenous people reclaiming their relationship to their traditional foods. I’m not sure now how you can watch the full film, but you can check out the preview here. It was a phenomenal film, very beautifully made, made me cry and feel hopeful, and I would highly recommend it. Although I knew broadly what food sovereignty was, this film definitely exposed me to many parts of food sovereignty, especially in Indigenous food systems, that I never knew, and that impacted me in a significant way.

I had a vague, broad understanding of food sovereignty before watching this film, but after I had a much better grasp of it. According to La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is defined as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” Food sovereignty means being free to be self-reliant, choosing the foods you want to eat, and the ability to be self-sustaining. Although anywhere from 60-80% of food we eat today was cultivated by Indigenous peoples (the number varies on the source, but it is still significant), many indigenous nations and tribes do not have food sovereignty and are reliant on colonial systems that remove their food relationship from the land and that are much worse health-wise than traditional foods.

As someone said on the documentary, “you want to attack a people and whip them out, wipe out their food,” which is exactly what happened in North America. The film followed 4 people from different tribes in various areas of the country, including a Elsie DuBray, a high schooler from the Great Plains. In this segment, her dad, Fred DuBray, brought up that over 60 million American buffalo were slaughtered by settler-colonists to starve the Plains Indians, whose whole culture/economy revolved around buffalo, into submission. I was always under the impression that the buffalo was close to extinction due to unsustainable harvest, something definitely bad, but more based on ignorance than malice. The idea that they were killed to force the Plains Indians to give up their way of life and assimilate or just die themselves makes me sick to my stomach and somehow for me made me realize really how harmful colonization is (or let me see it at a deeper level). Fred and Elsie both describe how interconnected their people are to buffalo, and the theme of culture being connected to food from the land came across for many people and many tribes (this film in particular highlighting the Yurok Nation in N. California as the Salmon People).

Another major theme shown through all of the stories in this film was overcoming colonialism and its effects through food sovereignty. Physical manifestations of colonialism include high rates of alcoholism, diabetes, and suicide among Native Nations, and the people featured in this film talk about how recovery involves changing behaviors, something that they were all doing by reclaiming their traditional relationships to food. They talked about how their ancestors built complex food system (way before organic food movement) and that foraging for/hunting for/growing food promotes holistic health. As Fred DuBray put it, the tribe and buffalo need to grow back together - saving the culture means saving the buffalo. Many of them described the transformative nature of reclaiming food sovereignty

Watching this film inspired me and really pumped me up about food sovereignty, although I’m not exactly sure where to go next from here. I want to be able to be part of this movement without co-opting it from Native folks, and I’m not sure what exactly that means for me as a white woman. While Indigenous people have culture that has been passed down to them, tied to the foods that they are reclaiming, I do not have such a clear tie to wanting food sovereignty, other that as a human, somewhere down the line in my ancestry, my ancestors valued food and the land in the way that Indigenous tribes in North America do. I think as a human, I feel a desire to be connected to the land and my food, one that I haven’t really felt before or been aware of, and I think there are ways to lead food sovereignty movements in my community without appropriating those of Indigenous cultures (although how to do that is not super clear to me right now). I am thinking about my role as a white woman, and my responsibility to follow and listen before charging right into the movement. My initial thought was about bringing the idea of food sovereignty to my hometown. Although it is not necessarily a place that needs it (it’s not a food desert) I think there is a lot of value in growing food in community in a sustainable way (saving seeds and passing them on to future generations, learning where food comes from, and using organic techniques). I need to do more research, but in general, in my own life I want to be more self-sustaining in the food that I grow myself, and I would love to get my community involved as well. Growing food is never something I thought about until recently, and I want to be able to expose more people to it. I have trouble picking a lane and staying in it (because there are so many exciting things I could do with my life!), but I think this may be one that I stay in.