Clifford Gladue brings traditionally prepared food to students in Alberta.
Photo Courtesy of Clifford Gladue
Among colonialism’s cruelest impacts was severing the vital connection with food systems. With access to traditional foods threatened by forced displacements, industrial development, and climate change, many Indigenous peoples have become reliant on processed colonizer foods, resulting in endemic health issues. Food insecurity in remote communities is exacerbated by higher grocery bills and a scarcity of fresh, nutritious options.
A 2018 national survey found over half of Indigenous households experience food insecurity, compared to one in eight across Canada. While federal initiatives like this year’s funding for the Matawa First Nations Harvesters Support Program attempt to address this systemic inequality, several projects throughout the country are successfully reclaiming Indigenous food sovereignty.
Many First Nations are expanding land-based education programs to transfer traditional hunting and trapping knowledge to younger generations — also an important form of cultural resilience and healing. A unique initiative from the Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council Education Authority in northern Alberta is bringing locally hunted, traditionally prepared food to schools while students learn about food traditions like smoking and drying meat and gathering medicines. “All I had in school was processed foods,” recalls Clifford Gladue, the group’s food services manager. “I want my kids to know where they come from and how my grandparents lived off the land.”
With declining wildlife populations impacting access to culturally significant species, a 2022 agreement enabled Innu hunters to harvest caribou on Cree traditional territory. Innu Chief Mike McKenzie says, “This community hunt will not only meet a need for our elders’ food security, but also perpetuate a sharing relationship that dates back to time immemorial.”
Jessie Newman, a dietitian on Vancouver Island who is Haida, Heiltsuk, and Kwakwaka’wakw, believes traditional foods nurture connections with ancestors and an empowering sense of identity. “It gives me the sense of ‘this is who I am and this is what I’m meant to be eating,’” she says. “Our foods are so powerful.”
Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives tend to be holistic, such as the Cree8 Worker Cooperative in Flying Dust, Saskatchewan, a garden and market project that provides fresh food for northern communities while building local knowledge of growing techniques and management skills.
Communities are increasingly using hydroponics like Growcer modular farms, an enterprise inspired by experience in Nunavut to create electronically operated, soil-free systems that provide fresh produce in any climate. For the Squamish Nation community of _Xwemelch’stn in North Vancouver, launching this type of food distribution has come with breaking down stigmas associated with receiving charity. “Traditionally, we would hunt and gather on the lands and waters and people would only take what they need, and the rest of it would be shared,” explains Kelley McReynolds, director of Squamish Nation’s Ayás Méńmen Child and Family Services. “We do a lot of training with our youth and our families to help them understand the plants, gardening, and harvesting.”
The Northern Farm Training Institute in Hay River, Northwest Territories, has argued that these systems, which produce mostly low-calorie vegetables, are expensive and energy inefficient. Asserting that Canada’s Far North has incredible food production potential, they focus instead on animal-based foods and root crops that are easier to grow locally.
As land-based initiatives deliver nutritious local alternatives, Indigenous chefs are satisfying a growing appetite for traditional foods. Mi’kmaq chef Norma Condo opened Montreal’s first Indigenous-owned restaurant in 2019, offering dishes like Algonquin three sisters (corn, bean, and squash) casserole and salmon cakes garnished with seaweed relish harvested in her home community of Gesgapegiag.
Condo’s preference for ingredients found across Canada helped her father overcome dietary restrictions caused by diabetes. As she appears at prestigious culinary events and on celebrity chef television shows, word of mouth has rapidly expanded her clientele. “My grandmother inspired me,” Condo says. “I used to help her out, and now my kids are helping me out. I’m showing them the traditional cultural way of cooking. People should know what our ancestors left behind for us.”