Eating in place: Mapping alternative food procurement in Canadian Indigenous communities

Abstract

This paper reports on alternative food procurement initiatives in Canadian Indigenous commu-nities. Like many communities around the world, they have experienced the ‘nutrition transition’ toward nutritionally compromised industrial food, with debilitating results. Much of this change in nutritional status has been created by a lethal com-bination of self-serving government policy and predatory corporate practice that ghettoizes Indigenous communities within a for-profit pseudo-food system. To find solutions to the colonially structured food deserts imposed on them, many Indigenous communities have turned to the social econ-omy, initiating projects such as community gar-dens, greenhouses, and co-operatives. While largely unrecognized in the wider world, these initiatives are created and managed by communities, for the benefit of communities, giving us a deeper understanding of what place-based food systems can accomplish.