Healing over hunger: how the indigenous food sovereignty movement is reclaiming colonized food systems to improve overall health and well-being

AUSTRALIA- As automated sliding doors glide across glossy tile floors, shoppers hastily make their way back home with brimming tote bags pulling at their shoulders. A mundane cacophony of clanging shopping carts, beeping barcode scanning machines, and ruffling produce bags fills the air while customers absentmindedly scratch off items on their grocery lists.

Meandering through a seemingly endless supply of food may be another pesky errand to run for some, but the fundamental human right to assess nutritional and culturally relevant food is a constant uphill battle for many indigenous communities across the globe.

Though food insecurity continues to ravage First Nation populations disproportionately, the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Movement is aiding indigenous communities in reclaiming colonized food systems to improve overall health and well-being.

At the first global forum on food sovereignty in 2007, food sovereignty was defined as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their rights to define their own food systems,” according to the Declaration of Nyéléni.

Before contact with colonizers, food governed many aspects of indigenous life beyond consumption. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders of what is now known as Australia, the process of collecting food allowed Elders to pass down valuable traditional knowledge to youths.

On the other side of the globe, in what is now known as Northern Ontario, the Anishinaabe First Nation used a governance system called the thirteen moons that centered around food. Jessica McLaughlin is a member of Long Lake 58 First Nation and a partner of a granting organization called the Collective Future Funding Consulting.

She provides indigenous groups with multi-year funding for self-determined projects that reconnect people with these systems that effectively served her people for thousands of years.

“Each moon directed the way we harvested and fed ourselves and kept our communities going,” said McLaughlin. “Colonization has made us think we need to shop at the Northern Store, but we really don’t. It’s all right back there.”

McLaughlin collaborates with over 100 First Nations in Northern Ontario to develop Food Sovereignty Visions, where First Nations self-determine a plan to achieve food security. Collaborative funding models have supported communities like the Chapleau Cree First Nation, who transformed grants into a moose population management program.

“We really want to make systems change through this,” said McLaughlin. “You give communities the autonomy to make their own decisions, and they will make beautiful choices that will be followed through for many generations.”

Though many communities are galvanizing around the emerging opportunities for establishing equitable food systems, some indigenous communities harbor a reasonable resistance to jumping into the Food Sovereignty Movement.

For some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, food is still tainted with the generational trauma instigated by colonizers. Settlers weaponized food against indigenous peoples by using hunger as a tool to seize power and establish social hierarchies. They created a food rationing system that ensured the disruption of indigenous connection to the land and introduced harmful substances into traditional diets, such as sugar and flour.

The impact of massacres, traditional land clearings, forced removals, food rationing, along with a slew of other grotesque atrocities committed by colonizers, continues to influence the way the food sovereignty movement is taking shape today.

Flinders University’s Senior Indigenous Health Research Fellow, Dr. Annabelle Wilson, has witnessed this firsthand in her dietary research collaborating with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

“Colonisation removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their families from traditional lands, which interfered with traditional food practices, including the passing down of knowledge,” stated Dr. Wilson via email. “The impact of colonization on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ nutrition is ongoing and cannot be underestimated.”

Today, the consequences of colonialism permeate through urban and rural indigenous groups alike through disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases exacerbated by insufficient access to nutritional food sources. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are expected to live 10 to 11 years less than non-indigenous Australians, according to a recent study.

With outlandishly high food prices — up to 68% more expensive in some regions — paired with notoriously low wages, 36% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults living in remote areas are likely to run out of food. Yet, many proposed solutions uphold the same settler values that initially provoked the dietary crisis.

“If nutrition information is delivered to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a way that is ‘top down’ rather than collaboratively, that can reinforce power and control from colonization,” stated Dr. Wilson in an email. “Collaboration allows Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives to be brought into the conversation. It is vital to recognize the deep knowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have around food and recognize these practices.”

Centering the indigenous worldview and including indigenous groups in policy-making decisions that dictate food systems is essential to the food sovereignty movement. Citizen Potawatomi Nation member and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry graduate student Kaya DeerInwater recognizes how indigenous worldviews are integrated into nearly every aspect of life in his community in what is now known as Oklahoma.

“You can’t separate food from spirituality, from culture, from life,” DeerInwater said. “We view the plants as our relatives and as our elders and our teachers. In our creation story, they were here first. It is our responsibility to support them and maintain the relationship that we are looking after them just as they always look after us.”

Each indigenous community holds different relationships to colonial systems they are placed under; however, the profound connection to land seems to echo throughout the food sovereignty movement across the world.

As climate change heightens the strain on western food systems due to extreme drought and flooding, more individuals from Westernized societies are beginning to shift their mindsets regarding food toward an indigenous worldview.

“People are actually interested in cooking and eating indigenous food,” said DeerInWater. “People weren’t comfortable doing that as short as 20 years ago. I am hopeful these are the growing pains. I think that things are looking up.”