While many of the  (CFS) Hub projects within the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE) project have sought to address structural impacts of patriarchy, capitalism, and racialization within the food system, the collective research generated from our project partners has highlighted the need to better understand settler colonialism in Canada. This is particularly important because colonialism in Canada is often ignored, normalized and left undiscussed by non-Indigenous peoples. However, the more we learn, the more we understand Canada as a colonial power that was created by taking Indigenous land, never returning it, and denying Indigenous peoples sovereignty and self-determination. Settler Colonialism in Canada continues to be reproduced through policies that work to further separate Indigenous peoples from their land, validating settler claims to property, and assimilating Indigenous culture, history, and foodways. Erica Violet Lee further (2016) explains that:

“It is not a coincidence that areas with high Indigenous populations are the areas deprived of access to food and health care. At its core, this is an issue of maintaining the dispossession of Indigenous people and the legitimacy of Canadian control; an attempt to destroy the nations and legal orders that we hold in our blood, our muscles, our stomaches, our minds, our mouths.”

Within this context, our core team at the CFS Hub has been trying to better understand how we can decolonize our practices as non-Indigenous/settler peoples involved in community-campus collaborations. We start with the understanding that decolonization works to realize Indigenous sovereignty, repatriate Indigenous lands, and re-imagine relationships to land and beings. This understanding leads us to a series of questions about how we can best change our work: How can community-based research challenge institutional structures and policies that promote extractive research and delegitimize Indigenous knowledge? How can community-campus relationships support Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination? How can research promote settler education around colonialism, decolonization, and Indigenous resurgence? How do our research practices work to support Indigenous struggles for land through food? How does community-based research provide encouragement and support relating to the unsettling and discomfort necessary for dealing with settler complicity?  What are our intentions in doing this type of work?

In thinking through some of these questions we look to community partners who are doing this work, such as the British Columbia Food Systems Network (BCFSN) and community organizers such as Dawn Morrision and Abra Brynne. For example, Dawn explains Indigenous food sovereignty as a “framework for exploring and appreciating the optimum conditions and possibilities that exist for reclaiming the social, political and personal health we once experienced prior to colonization” (2011, p. 106). From a settler viewpoint, Abra talks about the need for discomfort as a starting point for figuring out “what it means to be in a relationship of justice and integrity with the people of the land I now squat upon” (2015). Within this process of learning and (re)learning Abra highlights the need to listen, to engage in conversations with Indigenous peoples, and to be humble. With these learnings in mind, we are particularly excited to support some of this work through our CFS Hub partnership with the BCFSN as they explore what it means to decolonize day-to-day activities within their organization.

References

Brynne, Abra. 2015. Decolonizing food systems: A journey into an uncomfortable, but necessary place. Rabble. Online:

Lee, Erica Violet. 2016. Feeding the heart of the city: A love letter at the closing of our grocery store. Moontime Warrior. Online.

Morrison, Dawn. 2011. Chapter 6: Indigenous Food Sovereignty: A Model for Social Learning. In Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems. Eds Hannah Wittman, Annette AurĂŠlie Desmarais and Nettie Wiebe. 97

For more information on the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, please visit .

“I used to think that I could easily write an essay about sustainable food systems policy reform in British Columbia. I have spent the better part of the past 25 years working to foster such food systems and to ameliorate the regulatory and policy realms that impact them. But earlier this year I heard James Daschuk describe the policies of Prime Minister John A MacDonald and others. I cried as I listened to the impact of programs that sought to eliminate, through starvation and other more direct forms of violence, the Indigenous inhabitants from this place the settlers call Canada so that the newly “cleared” land would be available for use by immigrants.”

Photo Credit USDA & Lattin Farms

When the ‘Community First’ project launched four years ago at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University with a debate on ‘Food in the North,’ the idea of creating a national food policy in Canada was a murmur, a distant vision. What started as a SSHRC-funded partnership project blossomed into a national debate on “country food” and food sovereignty, led by such proponents as the national Inuit organization .

With elections around the corner, diverse NGOs and collaborative networks, including: , in Nova Scotia, and have added themselves to the chorus of voices calling for a ‘national food policy.’ We can now be confident that the need for a better food policy is real, and the silence has been broken on food and hunger issues in Canada.

Canadians are not alone in their desire to build enhanced food production systems and the rural economy. Many G8/G20 countries have well-established national policies on community food security. In the UK, for example, it is through dedication on the part of farm organizations and collective action that the country has witnessed growth in organic farm sales by 72 percent since 2008, with 50 percent of organic food items bought within 100 miles of the farms where they were produced. The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also recently announced a £138 million fund to support local communities grow the rural farm economy. Such funding is the envy of Canadian rural residents, for domestically-oriented regional food initiatives could go a long way toward supporting new farmers and food sovereignty at the same time.

On the issue of healthy school food, there are lessons to be learned from our neighbour directly to the south. The National School Lunch Program in the United States is a federally assisted meal program operating in public, nonprofit and private schools. This program includes a strong component of “farm to school” projects worth $15.1 million dollars. In the absence of such initiatives, educators face serious challenges addressing both child hunger in the classroom and providing healthy and sufficient school food.

The CFICE project has helped on both of these fronts: supporting ‘new farmers’ and healthy school food. Although it is only one initiative when it comes to public engagement around food issues, it has been part of a pan-Canadian conversation and growing movement focusing on community engagement in food security and sovereignty. A major subcomponent of the project has been to establish a Community Food Security Hub, which has provided a point of contact for organizations working to improve food policy. The project also built the capacity of young researchers at various levels (undergraduate, Masters and PhD) to take up the reigns and work towards improved food security on campus. At ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University specifically, this has meant a partnership with and the Campus Food Systems Project working with to develop better local and organic food sourcing. A tangible outcome of this partnership is the Thanksgiving lunch prepared for residence students, made with local organic cranberries, among other ingredients on the Dining Services “” menu. Such small practical changes, as well as a host of policy changes, would not have been possible without the efforts of many students and faculty working together.

Just as every year at this time we invite visitors into our homes to share in a celebration that is called Thanksgiving or “Jour de l’action de grâce” according to the francophone title, it is through “actions of grace” that Canadians have an opportunity to share food with their neighbours every day. A national food policy is within the reach of all Canadians. I hope that all conscious consumers will join the debate on creating a better national food policy.

To this end, Food Secure Canada and its partners have initiated food events across the country to engage citizens and electoral candidates to make national food policy a reality in Canada. They are calling for the creation of a national food policy where no one goes hungry and all Canadians have access to healthy, just, and sustainable food by telling politicians that Canada requires a national food policy which delivers: ; ; ; and, .