An Indigenous Right to Food (Pamphlet)

This pamphlet (or booklet) is intended as an accessible resource for Indigenous Peoples and settlers to provide the basic legal and policy framework affecting an Indigenous right to food in Canada. In light of the federal government’s recent commitment to establishing the first-ever national food policy in collaboration with Indigenous communities across Canada, it is important to understand the benefits and limits of traditional legal and policy approaches in order to guide a better future for food policy in Canada. Grounded in concepts of ‘a right to food’ and ‘food sovereignty,' this pamphlet recognizes the importance of Indigenous connection to traditional food lands (i.e., the lands, waters and natural resources from which food is derived) that reach beyond just ‘food security’, in which the goal is consistent access to healthy, culturally appropriate food, but does not touch on issues of controlling one’s own food system. These concepts are more aligned with self-governance, where the right to food is tied to the traditions, spirituality, and sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples. The hope is that this basic overview will help co-collaborators avoid some of the follies of previous laws and policies that implicate Indigenous food rights.

I chose a pamphlet template thinking that it could be passed out to Indigenous and non- Indigenous co-collaborators at meetings for the new food policy. Food rights and food sovereignty movements are often bottom-up. The pamphlet style is more aligned with information dissemination methods of community organizers who lead these movements. A pamphlet also recognizes the limits of technological access that many remote Indigenous communities face. To be more accessible, the pamphlet would need to be translated to Indigenous languages for communities that are not fluent in reading English, which can easily be done with the template and adjusted to the given community. Hand drawn images pay homage to the do-it-yourself nature of these movements.

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