Beyond Subsistence: Understanding Local Food Procurement Efforts in the Wapekeka First Nation in Northern Ontario

• Main Author: Thompson, Heather
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa 2018
• Subjects: Food security; Canada; First Nations; Food sovereignty; Hoop house; Gardening; Ontario; Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-22273; http://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/38018

Abstract: Northern rural Indigenous communities in Canada are facing many challenges getting regular access to nutritious foods, primarily due to the high cost of market food, restricted availability of nutritious foods, and lack of government support for nutritious food programs. The consequences of food insecurity in this context are expressed in high rates of diabetes, heart disease, and childhood obesity. Many Indigenous communities are responding to issues around healthy food access by attempting to rebuild local food capacity in their specific regions. Important first steps have been taken in developing local food initiatives, yet it remains to be seen what impact these initiatives are having on improving northern food security. This paper explores this question by working with a remote fly in community in the sub-arctic region Ontario to construct a hoop house and develop a school based community gardening program. By using a community-based participatory approach, it was determined that hoop house and gardening initiatives in rural, northern settings have the potential to build up local food production; can develop the skills and knowledge of community members; can engage and involve youth in growing local food; and do align with land-based food teachings. We show that despite widespread and multidimensional community hardships, there was considerable community buy-in and support to the project, giving hope for future development, and providing important insight for those seeking to initiate similar gardening, hoop house, or greenhouse initiatives in northern Indigenous communities. Abstract 2: Indigenous peoples of what is now known as Canada have experienced rapid lifestyle changes as a result of European contact. Indigenous food systems were systematically eroded by the Canadian government, leading to extremely high rates of food insecurity, and diet related disease. The complicated dynamics and interventions contributing to the erosion of local knowledges have forced a dependence on a market-based food system in remote and northern Indigenous communities in Canada. Communities are experiencing a double burden of the unaffordability or inaccessibility of traditional foods from the land, and the exorbitantly high cost and reduced availability of quality market foods largely due to the cost of shipping to these regions. The entanglement of local practices and global food systems is multifaceted and complex, thus the solution to food insecurity challenges are met with the burden of navigating both the local and the global. The purpose of this article is to analyze local meanings around food in a remote sub-Arctic First Nation in Ontario within the context of “coloniality” and global food systems. Drawing from the work of Walter Mignolo, and his concept of “border thinking”, this article explains the complex subsistence practices in the Canadian north and how they are located within a larger global framework. We show that by pinpointing potential “cracks” in the dominant Western epistemic as border thinking, a more useful understanding of food procurement strategies can come to light and offer new direction for culturally appropriate and sustainable food initiatives in the North.