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).”

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.

Community Champions for Safe, Sustainable, Traditional Food Systems

Source: Kathleen Yung, Casey Neathway

Year: 2019

“This study will describe how the First Nations Health Authority supported increasing access to the processing and sharing of safely preserved traditional foods through the facilitation of a Community Champion model and the development of accompanying resource materials. Engaging Community Champions recognized the positive social impacts of sharing foods and traditional food systems, including access to nutrient-rich harvested foods, while the curriculum development and engagement of environmental health professionals ensured advice given would lead to decreased risks of foodborne illness.”

We are not being heard: Aboriginal Perspectives on Traditional Food Access and Food Security

Source: Bethany Elliott, Deepthi Jayatilaka, Contessa Brown, Leslie Varley, and Kitty K. Corbett

Year: 2012

“Aboriginal peoples are among the most food insecure groups in Canada, yet their perspectives and knowledge are often sidelined in mainstream food security debates. In order to create food security for all, Aboriginal perspectives must be included in food security research and discourse. This project demonstrates a process in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal partners engaged in a culturally appropriate and respectful collaboration, assessing the challenges and barriers to traditional foods access in the urban environment of Vancouver, BC, Canada.”

Planning for Food Security: A Toolkit for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Source: First Nations Health Authority

Year: 2020

"Since time immemorial, First Nations people in BC have had intimate and long-standing relationships with the land, forests, oceans and waters, creating vibrant and sustainable food systems. All aspects of life supported a sustainable and safe food system that relied upon hunting, fishing, gathering, preserving, storing, distributing, trading and more. Stories shared and Indigenous methods of research show that individuals, families and communities did not worry about long-term food security and were prepared in the event of short-term food shortages. Colonialism, the Indian Act, reserve systems and ongoing colonial policies have had devastating impacts on Indigenous food systems in BC and across Canada. Other pressures such as industrialization, population levels and environmental impacts mean that today’s food system is very different than it was for our ancestors."

Nourish conversation summary: Health care food responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

Source: Nourish

Year: 2020

Nourish hosted two informal exchanges (on June 11 and June 25, 2020) about health care food responses by/for Indigenous communities during COVID-19. The need for this conversation emerged from discussions within the Nourish Indigenous & Allies Advisory and from checking in with others leading efforts in this vein in the grassroots and in philanthropy.

COVID-19 Did Not Cause Food Insecurity In Indigenous Communities But It Will Make It Worse

Source: Yellowhead Institute

Year: 2020

“It has been just over one month since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, calling for urgent and aggressive action to combat the disease and the virus that causes it. Public health responses have focused on flattening the curve to reduce the burden on healthcare systems and reducing transmission rates. Calls for people to self-isolate and practice social/physical distancing have operated alongside demands that we as a society work collectively to protect those who are most vulnerable. These are critically important actions to take.”

How Families Eat In The Arctic

Source: National Public Radio (NPR)

Year: 2019

“In the most northerly Canadian territory of Nunavut, grocery shopping is expensive. Like, really expensive. So much so that residents regularly post in a Facebook group called Feeding My Family to share photos of high prices at their local stores. A package of vanilla creme cookies: $18.29. A bunch of grapes: $28.58. A container of baby formula: $26.99. Leesee Papatsie, founder of the Facebook group, says she spends at least $500 a week on food for her family of five — and that's just for basics in the capital of Iqaluit, a city of some 7,000 residents. Because it costs a lot to fly goods into communities in remote regions of the Arctic Archipelago, there's not much that can be done to drastically reduce prices, she explains. But that's why — in a territory where about 84% of the population identifies as Inuit — "country food" is still the preferred source of sustenance.”

Health and Food Ethics

Source: AMA Journal of Ethics
Date: October 2018

Gut microbes matter clinically, so diets based on food availability in different markets matter ethically. But that's just one reason to care about food in health care ethics. Providing safe, nutritious, and environmentally sustainable food to all is a great challenge. Physicians in some US cities have been writing prescriptions for patients to obtain fresh produce through healthy food outreach programs. Clinical encounters, however, cannot fully reverse negative health effects of low-quality diets. If the global community cannot find solutions to address food quality and access, costs will be high. This issue investigates some of the compelling ethical issues at stake with food and health.