Innovation Brief: Food Prescriptions

Food insecurity has a direct impact on health outcomes, affecting both physical and mental health. While it is a complex issue, health care can take leadership by working with communities to increase access to healthy, culturally appropriate foods.

Innovation Brief: Planetary Health Menus and Procurement

Food is the single strongest lever for planetary health, and health care can take leadership by integrating it as an organizational mandate, resdesigning menus with low-carbon options, and prioritizing values-based procurement.

Read more in our brief about Planetary Health Menus & Procurement.

Innovation Brief: Traditional Food as Medicine

Health care can take leadership on reconciliation by designing food menus with Indigenous communities, developing legislation and policies to navigate barriers to wild game, and encourage staff to get training on Indigenous foodways.

Read more in our brief, "Traditional Food as Medicine."

Saskatchewan Health Authority Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation

Source: Saskatchewan Health Authority

Year: 2019

"The Saskatchewan Health Authority acknowledges Saskatchewan as the traditional territory of First Nations and Métis people, which includes Treaties 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10.

We commit to fostering and maintaining respectful relations with all First Nations and Métis people. The Saskatchewan Health Authority acknowledges the pain, loss, and dislocation caused by the residential school system on individuals, families, communities and nations."

Indigenous Food Sovereignty in Canada: Policy Paper 2019

Source: Stephen Penner, Kathleen Kevany, Sheri Longboat

Year: 2019

“Indigenous Nations in Canada have and continue to deal with a colonial food system that leaves many of these nations located in, what can be best described, as food wastelands, and at worst, imposes a lifetime sentence to a food prison (Finley, 2014). As we walk toward a path of reconciliation, it would be wise to acknowledge that Indigenous people had a well-developed, complex and thriving social-economic systems prior to colonial contact. Recognizing the depth of their intra-generational knowledge and deep understanding of the land can facilitate the development of a meaningful national and Indigenous food policy. One that recognizes mino-pimatwisin (Anishinaabe for good life) and maligit (balance) in Quajimajatuqangit (Inuktitut for Inuit Traditional Knowledge) nidiawemaginidog (Anishinaabe for “all my relatives”). Resulting in a robust and meaningful Indigenous food production system.”

Growing Resilience and Equity

Source: Food Secure Canada

Year: 2020

“Food Secure Canada (FSC) published a policy action plan for renewing the country’s food system in response to Covid-19. The pandemic is magnifying the structural inequalities in our food systems, the insufficiencies of our social protection programs, and the challenges with the dominant food supply chains.

This moment clearly calls for visionary and bold structural change rather than piecemeal approaches based on the status quo. Food Secure Canada’s Growing Resilience And Equity: A Food Policy Action Plan in the Context of Covid-19 charts a way forward, grounded in proposals developed through a process of information gathering, listening, consultation and convening with individuals and organizations involved in ‘food movements’ (social movements advancing food-system transformation).”

Indigenous Food Responses to COVID-19 in Health Care

Source: Nourish

Year: 2020

In June 2020, Nourish hosted two conversations about food responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in health care by/for Indigenous communities. The purpose of the calls was to share learning focused on health care led interventions and document ongoing activities across the country responding to the particular needs in Indigenous communities. The hope is to identify strategies working well and document gaps that exist.

Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance

Author: Kyle Whyte
Year: 2017

Indigenous peoples often claim that colonial powers, such as settler states, violate Indigenous peoples' collective self-determination over their food systems, or food sovereignty. Violations of food sovereignty are often food injustices. Yet Indigenous peoples claim that one of the solutions to protecting food sovereignty involves the conservation of particular foods, from salmon to wild rice. This essay advances an argument that claims of this kind set forth particular theories of food sovereignty and food injustice that are not actually grounded in a static conception of Indigenous culture; instead, such claims offer important contributions to how settler colonial domination is understood as a form of injustice affecting key relationships that support Indigenous collective self-determination through food sovereignty. The essay describes some of the significant qualities of reciprocal relationships that support food sovereignty, referring widely to the work of Indigenous leaders and scholars and Tribal staff on salmon conservation in North America.

Video: Nourish the Future of Food in Healthcare

"So often we talk about food as a cost. We want to reframe that conversation, we want to talk about the opportunity to create value through food: better value for the patient, positive impact on the culture of the organization, and a positive impact on community well-being."

Building healthier Northern and Indigenous communities through Nourish

In the face of the pandemic and a growing awareness of systemic anti-Indigenous racism in the health care system, Nourish worked with leaders from several communities to strengthen food security, celebrate Indigenous ways of knowing, and increase understanding of Indigenous realities. The following is an excerpt from our final report to the Frontline Fund, whose support made this work possible.

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With the onset of the pandemic, food insecurity was exacerbated and Indigenous communities, especially those that are rural and remote, experienced increased pressure on their food systems as a result of disruptions in food supply chains, reduced ability to travel and harvest, and fewer occasions to celebrate and share food together.

In response, Nourish took a multi-phase approach by supporting community initiatives, facilitating knowledge exchanges, addressing systemic anti-Indigenous racism in health care, launching a national learning series, and creating opportunities for health care and community leaders to learn on the land from local Indigenous leaders.

PHASE 1 - Food Rx grants & knowledge exchanges

Nourish awarded five $50k Food Rx grants to mobilize community-led, innovative, capacity-building projects that supported both food security and Indigenous foodways. Food Rx initiatives built and promoted Indigenous leadership and centered Indigenous foodways and values, supporting the transformation of health services to better reflect Indigenous understandings of food sovereignty and wellbeing.

Nourish hosted two virtual Food Rx grantee knowledge exchanges to facilitate networking, sharing, and peer learning between grantees, the Nourish team, and the Indigenous and Allies Advisory. Participants appreciated this space to share their insights, innovations, successes, challenges and questions.

PHASE 2 - Short film

Nourish produced a short film exploring food security, experiences of anti-Indigenous systemic racism in health care, and the power of traditional Indigenous foodways. Called "Why does hospital food matter for reconciliation?" it resonated with many across the country, and has been viewed 3347 times in English (as of June 17, 2021), with a version available with French subtitles as well.

PHASE 3 - National Action Learning series

In April 2021, Nourish launched a national education Action Learning series called Food is Our Medicine (FIOM). The Action Learning series highlights and amplifies Indigenous voices and perspectives to contextualize Indigenous foodways work through multimedia resources, and contributions of Indigenous leaders in medicine and systems change.

Additionally, FIOM features the work of several Indigenous artists in its visual identity and beadwork (the first 200 learners to complete the learning journey will be gifted a handcrafted beaded pin). FIOM provides health care leaders with knowledge and tools to decolonize food in health care and use it as an organizational pathway to deepen conversations about systemic racism and reconciliation.

Land-based learning grants

With the end of the pandemic in view, seven teams in the Nourish Anchor Cohort will have access to grants up to $7k to participate and host on-the-land learning and relationship-building with Indigenous partners and knowledge keepers in their area. This program will start off in a good way with a Cultural Mindfulness session on June 28, hosted by George Couchie from Nipissing First Nation, with the goal of sowing the seeds or building upon existing relationships between health care, community organizations, and Indigenous communities.

Along with supporting Nourish programming, the Food Rx grants are addressing the unique challenges found at the complex intersection of three factors within health care: the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic anti-Indigenous racism, and food (in)security.

The entire process of this work was guided by the Nourish Indigenous and Allies Advisory, with participation from a wider circle of Indigenous leaders.

Getting Back To Normal? Not If “Normal” Means Indigenous Food And Health Insecurity

With the summer solstice behind us and the prospect of a post-COVID “two dose” summer ahead, many are anticipating a return to normal. But the COVID era has revealed health inequities and structural realities that make return to “normal” untenable.

Incidents in the last twenty months, including the death of Joyce Echequan in a Quebec hospital, a higher death toll from overdoses than from COVID in Indigenous communities, and the continued-unearthing of mass graves of children at Indian Residential Schools, highlight that systemic racism has flourished in our collective silence and inaction. 

This is not a baseline to which we can return.

As we reopen, we must all confront a question that stands between a return to normal and advancing toward a future that affirms the self determination of Indigenous peoples.

Read more in the policy brief from Elisa Levi and Hayley Lapalme.

Revitalizing Native Foodways

Source: Kaylena Bray, Melissa K Nelson

Year: 2015

“At a time when food has become better known as a commodity rather than a life source, it is more pressing than ever to remember that food, in its deepest, truest essence, is a gift. It’s a gift that connects us to the land, plants, animals, and waters, that nourishes us, feeds our minds and our bodies, and guides us in our original roles as human members of our sacred ecosystems. As Indigenous peoples, we have a sacred responsibility to take care of our foods and of all the elements of life – soil, water, air, seeds, fire, prayers – that create it.”

Indigenous Food Systems Network Website

Source: Indigenous Food Systems Network

Year: n.d.

“The Indigenous Food Systems Network Website was developed by the WGIFS and is designed to allow individuals and groups involved with Indigenous food related action, research, and policy reform to network and share relevant resources and information.”

Valerie Segrest at TEDxRainier

Source: Valerie Segrest at TEDxRainier

Year: 2014

“The Indian tribes around the Puget Sound have practiced sustainable balance with its foods for thousands of years, but now the prairie lands and mountain berry meadows are disappearing and salmons runs are dwindling. Valerie Segrest, a member of Muckleshoot tribe and native foods educator tells us to listen to the salmon and cedar tree, who teach us a life of love, generosity and abundance, and to remember when we take better care of our land, we are taking better care of ourselves.”