Indigenous Food Systems: Indigenous Food Sovereignty

Shown through the Medicine Wheel, food and medicines of the Land bring physical and spiritual healing. This is through seasonal harvesting, traditional cooking practices, and the gathering and sharing of food. 

Indigenous Peoples must know the Land intimately when walking the land to gather foods. Part of the medicine is both in the exercise and the prayers done before gathering.

With that, often one plant has many different uses. For example, chokecherries can be eaten and made into jam, while the root can be used as medicine. Alongside knowing the Land intimately, Indigenous Peoples have intimate knowledge and wisdom of specific plants, considering the only difference between food, medicine, and poison can be dosage. 

Land and food practices are taught through stories passed down from generation to generation. This wisdom forms relationships that are reciprocal, mutually nourishing, and have place-specific plurality. 

• This short article talks about how Indigenous Peoples find cultural resilience in the medicines of the Land. 
• Here is a 5-minute talk about Indigenous Food as Medicine.
• This 1 hour and 30 minute webinar talks about Indigenous perspectives on the use of food as medicine.

(Click for image source) 

Seed rematriation is the process through which seeds are returned to their place of origin. This international Indigenous movement is led by Indigenous women, who traditionally act as the caretakers of seeds, ensuring they are healthy from one season to the next. Seeds are the root of food sovereignty so Indigenous Peoples can create solutions-oriented programs for adaptive, resilient seed systems. 

The loss of seeds also brought the loss of Indigenous food cultures. Seed rematriation describes an instance where seeds, and how they are tended to, are purposefully returned to their original environmental and social context. Therefore, the heart of seed rematriation is rekindling and reconnecting with seeds in communities where they were once lost. 

• For a video that demonstrates what seed rematriation is, watch Seed Mother: Coming Home. 
• This TedTalk of Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and author, talks of seed rematriation. 
• Here are three podcast episodes from Native Seed Pod. 

(Click for image source) 

Food justice in Indigenous communities is embracing food as holistic, as medicine – restorative and life-changing – and more than the physical experience of eating. Further, food justice means a holistic view of the food system that sees healthy food as a human right and addresses structural barriers to that right. 

There is much overlap between food justice and food sovereignty approaches. But, food justice focuses more on localizing production and improving access to foods, while food sovereignty is about changing structures that prevent food access. In short, food justice is about empowering Indigenous Peoples, while food sovereignty is about securing the entitlements Indigenous Peoples have over their own food systems. 

For example, food justice would be establishing food policies and a food regulatory office with the goal of strengthening the Indigenous local food economy, while food sovereignty focuses on having locally produced food for Indigenous Peoples by building their capacity to farm and lessening their dependence on outside food sources. 

Considering the living relationship with food that is a practiced awareness and a crucial cultural foundation of Indigeneity, the loss of Indigenous food sovereignty has been a disastrous legacy of colonialism. For Indigenous Peoples, food justice means centering self-determination, as food systems relate to Indigenous cultures, languages, social life, spirituality, and identity. 

• Here is a 23-minute talk discussing Inuit food security and self-determination. 
• Here are 14 different stories of food justice and resiliency in Indigenous communities.
• Learn about Chef Sean Sherman and his team’s work that is revitalizing Indigenous cuisine. 

(Click here for source) 

An aspect of cultural foodways are ceremonies that honor traditional foods, as they are considered sacred gifts from the Creator. These foods were then given to specific Indigenous Peoples to nourish them and, in return, are cared for by these communities. For example, salmon is revered as a gift through creation stories for many coastal tribes, and in return, the spring arrival of salmon is honored through ceremony, fishing, preparation, and bone burials that are specific to each tribe. 

In addition to ceremonies, there are also practices and prayers that coincide with different stages of gathering or preparing ancestral foods. An example of this is eating first foods in order of how they were received in creation stories, such as tribes in the Columbia River Basin serving water, then salmon, then deer, then cours (or roots), then huckleberry. 

• This article has several short 2-5 minute oral histories from Indigenous Peoples about foodways. 
• Here is a 30-minute talk about the wisdom of Indigenous foodways. 
• This resource shares information about Indigenous food systems. 

(Click for image source) 

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) “…refers to the evolving knowledge acquired by indigenous and local peoples over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the environment… [that is] specific to a location and includes the relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes and timing of events that are used for lifeways, including but not limited to hunting, fishing, trapping, agriculture, and forestry” (FWS, 2011). 

As knowledge systems evolve over generations through close observation and cooperation with the Land, TEK is an enactment of cultural and spiritual relations to the Land that holistically manage ecological processes and sustainably tend to reliable food sources. 

TEK is a branch of Indigenous Science (IS); a living knowledge that is a broad category from metaphysics to philosophy to various practical technologies practiced by Indigenous Peoples past and present, with models that are highly contextual to tribal experiences. This wisdom requires less dependence on knowledge transfer from books to ‘discover’ knowledge and requires knowledge gardening with living Knowledge Keepers.

With all this in mind, the sovereignty of Indigenous knowledge means these knowledge systems cannot be appropriated outside of Indigenous contexts. The colonization of Indigenous knowledge takes this wisdom without relationships, permission, or context from Indigenous Peoples and tribes. 

This also means that Indigenous Peoples should have sovereignty over research methods to ensure a reciprocal process where Indigenous knowledge is not extracted and Indigenous Peoples are in control of how data is used about their communities and Lands. 

• Learn about Indigenous Science research through the Indigenous Science Network. 
• Watch this talk from Dr. Gregory Cajete, a Tewa educator and scholar. 
• Check out the Guidelines for Considering Traditional Knowledges in Climate Change Initiatives. 
• Check out the Reciprocal Research: A Guidebook to Centering Community in Partnerships With Indigenous Nations
• Sign this letter in support of Indigenous Science.  
• This presentation, crafted by Taina Diaz-Reyes, discusses TEK and cosmological connectivity.

(Click for image source) 

• Native Seeds Search 
• Indigenous Seed Keepers Network 
• Nalwoodi Denzhone Community 
• Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNAFA)
• Native American Agriculture Fund
• Well for Culture 

For a more extensive list of resources and to learn more about how to serve and support Indigenous Peoples, communities, and organizations, go to the Solidarity & Resources and Ecosystem tabs.