First Nations communities in northern Ontario continue to grapple with food insecurity despite community leaders, social justice activists, reporters, and scholars drawing attention to this multi-faceted issue for decades. Improving food security has been approached by many different actors and directions, such as neo-liberal initiatives to make market food more financially accessible, alternative food procurement programs such as incorporating greenhouses and gardening, and food system resurgent efforts such as increasing funding and training for land-based harvesting practices. Compared to food security, which focuses on access to affordable and nutritious food, food sovereignty offers a more compelling framework to understand food shortages in the settler-colonial context of northern Ontario as it emphasizes the roots of that insecurity, specifically at the way that colonial impositions disrupted Indigenous food systems. Using a community-based participatory methodology within a decolonial feminist theoretical lens and a community of practice of political ecology, this thesis will explore the ways that First Nations communities in northern Ontario are working against and within colonial impositions to improve access to traditional foods in their communities. I will examine some of the tensions and opportunities community members experience and the various approaches they are using or imagining for the future. Lastly, I will explore the ways that the concept of food sovereignty risks becoming symbolic in northern Ontario unless it is accompanied by movements towards land restitution. At the same time, I will argue that food and land sovereignty are inextricably linked, and that practicing Indigenous food systems can lead to food sovereignty with or without government approved land restitution. Finally, I will suggest that sovereignty of and through food may be a more appropriate voicing or inversion of the term to more explicitly acknowledge that food sovereignty and land restitution are inherently and intimately tied.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/45174 |
| Date | 19 July 2023 |
| Creators | Loukes, Keira A. |
| Contributors | Robidoux, Michael A., Mason, Courtney W. |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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