Handpicked: Stories from the Field
Education
Hosted by: Dr. Marylynn Steckley
Produced in collaboration with: Dr. Sonia Wesche, Victoria Marchand & Dr. Josh Steckley
In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, we present an episode of the Indigenous Health and Food Systems Podcast called, “What are Indigenous Foods?” This podcast is hosted by Dr. Marylynn Steckley from Carleton University and is produced in collaboration with Dr. Sonia Wesche and Victoria Marchand from the University of Ottawa and Dr. Josh Steckley from the University of Toronto, Scarborough. The Indigenous Health and Food Systems Podcast aims to elevate Indigenous scholars' voices in Indigenous health, food sovereignty, and the social determinants of health. This particular episode focuses on what Indigenous foods are, and how there are many complex answers to that question because of the impacts of colonization.
Contributors
Co-Producers & Hosts: Laine Young & Amanda Di Battista
Producer: Charlie Spring
Sound Design & Editing: Laine Young & Narayan Subramoniam
Guests
Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller
Dr. Hannah Tait Neufeld
Ida Harkness
Emily Charman
Chanel Best
Brette Thomson
Havailah Arnold
Support & Funding
Funding for the Indigenous Health & Food Systems Podcast episode was provided to M. Steckley and S. Wesche by a Shared Online Projects Initiative grant through a partnership between the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
Dr. Josh Steckley was supported by the Sustainable Food and Farming Futures Cluster at the University of Toronto, Scarborough
Wilfrid Laurier University
The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems
Balsillie School for International Affairs
CIGI
Music Credits
Keenan Reimer-Watts
Keith Whiteduck
Resources
Moving Beyond Acknowledgments- LSPIRG Whose Land Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems Indigenous Food Systems and Food Sovereignty Podcast
Telling Our Twisted Stories Podcast- BANNOCK
ltamirano-Jiménez, I., and N. Kermoal. (2016). Introduction: Indigenous Women and Knowledge. In Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understandings of Place, Kermoal & Altamirano-Jiménez (eds.) p. 3-18. AU Press: Edmonton, Alberta.
Unreserved with Falen Johnson (2020). How Indigenous Leaders Are Changing the Future of Food
Tennant, Zoe Heaps (2020). Does Bannock Have a Place in Indigenous Cuisine?
CBC News (2015) Feast Cafe Bistro takes eating local to the next level.
Connect with Us:
Email: Handpickedpodcast@WLU.ca
Twitter/X: @Handpickedpodc
Facebook: Handpicked Podcast
Glossary of Terms
Bannock “Bannock has meant many things to many Indigenous people throughout history, from pre-contact to the fur trade to present times. Before contact, Indigenous people made their own types of bannock and breads using camas bulbs, lichen, moss, cattails, roasted acorns and other plants and roots that were Indigenous to their traditional territories. After contact, Indigenous people began to use wheat and oat flour brought over by the Scottish during the fur trade. Flour was a non-Indigenous food but soon became the staple ingredient in bannock, and in the lives of Indigenous people.”
https://martlet.ca/bannock-consuming-colonialism/
Colonialism “Colonialism has been defined as systems and practices that ‘seek to impose the will of one people on another and to use the resources of the imposed people for the benefit of the imposer’ (Assante, 2006). Colonialism can operate within political, sociological, cultural values and systems of a place even after occupation by colonizers has ended. Colonization is defined as the act of political, physical and intellectual occupation of space by the (often forceful) displacement of Indigenous populations, and gives rise to settler-colonialism, colonial and neo-colonial relations, and coloniality.”
https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/systems-of-oppression/coloniality-and-settler-colonialism/
Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt
A symbol and reminder of covenants between the 5 Nations of the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch Government that guided later treaty-building and envisaged a relationship of reciprocity and sharing (that all people sharing a territory should leave enough for others), a promise that many Indigenous people feel was broken many times.
https://futurecitiescanada.ca/portal/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/fcc-civic-indigenous-tool3-teaching-twodishonespoon.pdf
Foodways
A term to describe peoples’ cultural, social and economic food practices, habits and desires (Alkon et al.)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718513000936
Kanyen'kehà:ka
Mohawk language.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mohawk
Sky Woman
The story of how Sky Woman fell from Skyworld to start life on Turtle Island, passed down and told by different Iroquoian-speaking people to describe the creation of human life on earth but also telling aspects of the Original Instructions guiding relations between humans and the natural world (Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass).
https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/
Discussion Questions
1. In what ways might Indigenous people have a complicated relationship with bannock? Is ‘authenticity’ a useful term for thinking about food heritage and tradition?
2. What does Kahente Horn-Miller mean by “food is relational”?
3. What visuals or emotions come up for you when hearing the story of ‘Sky Woman’? How does this story compare to other human origin stories- what are the implications for the way we think about food and food systems?
4. How do we make sense of, respect, and value traditional Indigenous diets and contemporary foodways today? How do we bring together understanding, and respect, and desire to keep alive traditions and ancestral foods in the contemporary post-colonial world?
5. How does the term ‘foodways’ differ from ‘food systems’ in communicating peoples’ relationship with food?
Season 4, Episode 6 - Handpicked Presents: Voicing Change - Team Reflections on Podcasting for Social Change
Season 4, Episode 5 – Handpicked Presents: Voicing Change – “Agroecology in Kenya”
Season 4, Episode 4 - Handpicked Presents: The Voicing Change Podcast - "Agroecology in Canada and Brazil "
Season 4, Episode 3 - Handpicked Presents: The Voicing Change Podcast - "Forests, Food & People - Part 2"
Season 4, Episode 2 - Handpicked Presents: The Voicing Change Podcast - "Forests, Food, & People- Part 1"
Season 4, Episode 1 - Handpicked Presents: The Voicing Change Podcast - "Introducing Voicing Change"
Season 3 Episode 6 - “Will the Pursuit of Limitless Growth Make Us Better Off?: Redefining Progress in the Canadian Food System Policy
Season 3, Episode 5 - “Resilient Communities for the Future”: A GIAHS Designation for Agroforestry in Brazil"
Season 3, Episode 4 - “Farmer-led Research Helps us Realize That We're Really Innovators”: Improving Ecological Farming Practices and Farm-to-farm Knowledge Sharing with the Ecological Farmers Ass
Season 3, Episode 3 - Handpicked Presents: The Indigenous Health and Food Systems Podcast – “Environmental Dispossession:”
Season 3, Episode 1: “There’s Beauty in Diversity”: Connecting Food, Biodiversity, and Sustainability
Season 2 Episode 4: "We can’t simply redistribute food waste to hungry people”: Food Waste, the Right to Food, and Municipal Solutions in Vancouver
Season 2, Episode 3: “We walk in the footsteps of our ancestors”: Traditional knowledge, youth engagement, and resilience in Délįnę
Season 2, Episode 2: “Disadvantaged by Digitization”: Technology, Big data, and Food Systems
Season 2 Episode 1: “I Can Seed Something Here, I Have Land”: Intersectionality, Urban Agriculture, and Community Benefit in Quito, Ecuador
Season 1, Episode 6 "We are all shepherds of the data": Food, tech and data sovereignty
Episode 5: "Change worth striving for": International agreements as levers for food system change
Episode 4: ”We know how to survive on the land”: Climate change adaptation, food systems and life in Kakisa, Northwest Territories
Episode 3: "Take care of the land and the land will take care of you": Discussing climate change with members of the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation in Kakisa, Northwest Territories
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
Teaching Learning Leading K-12
Regenerative Skills
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast