Though there is no accepted description, the food sovereignty concept can be regarded as the latest and most inventive method to achieve the overall objectives of long-term food availability. Indigenous food sovereignty is a policy strategy that addresses the fundamental challenges affecting Indigenous populations and their capacity to meet their demands for nutritious, culturally appropriate Indigenous foods. The indigenous food sovereignty concept is broad in essence, and it perceives food as integrating all aspects of existence – mental, spiritual, cultural, and intellectual. One of the key parts of indigenous food sovereignty is seed preservation, which includes corn, beans, and squash. In the case of contributing to this process, aspects such as traditional practices and rituals must be considered.
Generations of massacres and forced migration have impacted US history, including repeated scorched earth tactics directed specifically at Native food supplies. The government progressively destroyed Western plain populations and drastically reduced their land base by eradicating the bison population (Martens et al.,2016). Moreover, they drove people onto reservations without concern for diverse nutrition and eco-cultural connections (Ahern, 2020). Survivors were handicapped by their reliance on government supplies, mostly lacking nutritional quality and distributed unevenly to reservations.
Indigenous peoples across the United States were also dispossessed of their territories and food systems as a result of violated treaties and compulsory allocation laws, which worked to dismantle community land usage and promote the transfer of farmland to non-Native enterprises. Throughout the 20th century, coercive assimilation via the school system and urban relocation projects proceeded to displace Indigenous populations from their homes, territories, and food culture (Ahern, 2020). Thus, native people were deprived of their culture and traditions.
Traditional foods, including fish, poultry, game, and vegetables harvested from local Indigenous food systems, have been the major source of sustenance for First Nations, an Indigenous group acknowledged by the Canadian government centuries ago. Currently, processed foods have supplanted a significant element of people’s nutrition (Robin, 2019). This diet change was essentially a necessary precaution for Indigenous peoples in order to survive and was a response to a variety of causes (Coté). These causes include colonialism, dispossession of land, inaccessible fisheries, and environmental devastation, which hampered the food sovereignty of Indigenous people.
Therefore, food sovereignty is defined as individuals’ freedom to create food systems that are environmentally, ethically, and traditionally suitable. The structural oppression experienced by First Nations, as well as the harmful impacts on the availability and access to traditional food, resulted in a detachment from Indigenous cultural traditions, poor diet, and a disproportionately high level of food shortages, overweight, chronic dietary illnesses, and ill-being (Blanchet et al., 2021). The institutional racism and repressive colonial laws and practices that resulted in a decline in traditional food-related practices persist and continue to harm First Nations people, lands, and ecosystems (Settee & Shukla, 2020). As a result, Indigenous people lose knowledge of traditional food systems.
The practice of food sovereignty in consideration will be seed preservation. This process remains a traditional occurrence that extends back to the founding of agriculture. This practice is defined as the activity of conserving or keeping seeds with the intention of “replanting and reproducing” the seed for future planting seasons (Chabvuta, 2019). Seed preservation is beyond the process of conserving and replicating seeds. The process may be defined as a complicated collection of behaviors that includes seed sowing, cultivating, harvesting, preserving, consuming, and replanting, as well as the associated processes of distributing and awareness-building.
Seed keepers tend to repeat these agricultural techniques season after season. On the other hand, other seed savers are freelance gardeners and small-scale farmers who preserve and share long-standing seed varieties without the engagement of any formal organization (Chabvuta, 2019). On the other hand, other seed keepers are independent cultivators and local farmers who conserve and exchange long-standing seed types without the assistance of a formal team.
Three key areas were identified through interviewing participants of the Indigenous food security movement. The first key found was the fact of cultivating, gathering, prepping, and consuming cultural food being a part of a ritual (Deer, 2016). Moreover, indigenous people view cultural food as part of a connection to the land via exchange. The last factor of food security is the re-learning of indigenous food security methods in order to address food insecurity.
Interviewees highlighted the emotional link to traditional food. Many recalled their involvement in food production and consumption, but their recollections went further than a sentimental nostalgia to the ways of the past. People characterized the process of raising, gathering, or capturing food as having a spiritual component, which is important for mentoring culture and traditions, and ideology to children. Preparing and cultivating food is linked to a broader knowledge of the relationship between the earth, culture, and individuals.
Indigenous farming moves far beyond farming practices. These are the products of indigenous cultures with deep ties to particular locations. According to one indigenous farmer, indigenous people are connected to the land; it is a part of them (Pace, 2015). Indigenous people plant and cultivate crops, building relationships with the land and becoming close to the earth and the world (Reitsma et al., 2019). Dealing with dirt, and plants, and then cooking, people learn their heritage and culture.
This relationship between culture and land developed and proceeded to form native agriculture by developing food-producing techniques that are tailored to unique, regional settings and operate in tandem with, rather than against, environmental factors. Traditional Aboriginal agriculture practices exemplify this interdependence. The Three Sisters were grown by native peoples all over North America. The Three Sisters is a complex companion growing strategy that dates back thousands of years (Pace, 2015). This technique mixes beans, corn, and squash to form a culture that supplies, shields, and eliminates pests (Pace, 2015). In rainy regions, farmers planted the Three Sisters on hillsides to aid draining, and in the dry West, plants were grown in low, surrounding beds to catch the rain.
Native farmers throughout America join and keep integrating agriculture and agroforestry to achieve large plant growth and yield in confined areas. Farmers, for example, produce cafe tables in the region’s hilly areas (Pace, 2015). Multistory buildings are featuring towering fruit trees on top, coffee trees in the middle, and smaller vegetation, including chiles and chives on the ground. In addition to protecting the crops below from strong winds and subzero temperatures, the trees’ leaves act as natural compost, inhibiting parasite development, increasing fertility, and retaining moisture. Moreover, the burning of grass and wood contributed to the further development of healthy plants.
Native farmers on South America’s Pacific Coast employed a variety of complex pressure vessels to transform a regionally and climatically harsh territory into a fertile field. They created hundreds of acres of land in the highlands to decrease damage and underground beds on the flat plains to minimize drainage. Flood-prone plains developed hundreds of elevated platforms to enhance drainage and barriers to preserve crops and waterways from severe flooding (Pace, 2015). They developed open fields to absorb rainfall in the dry coastland areas.
In general, these methods were robust and lasted for countless generations before being disrupted by colonial invasions and colonization. While numerous Indigenous crops were adopted in colonies and across the world, native farmers’ production practices were mostly avoided by western and colonial communities for almost 500 years (Pace, 2015). Confronted with environmental problems produced by modern food systems, food farmers are increasingly adopting these site-specific approaches.
Indigenous communities are pioneering creative, protection-based work, whether via engagement with formalized civil rights and independence institutions or by establishing their own values and beliefs and conceptions of environmental and community responsibility. Indigenous wisdom and traditions are increasingly recognized as valuable tools for preventing climate-related food wastage and coerced worldwide migrations, and they have the potential to foster worldwide unity in the context of climate change (Ahern, 2020). As supporters and essential critics of civil liberties work, social workers are ideally qualified and ethically obligated to assist varied movements of Native food sovereignty and self-determination.
Hence, the food sovereignty movement, which was embedded in broader rights discourses, claims that everyone has the right to a nutritious, culturally acceptable diet, as well as the right to develop their food and agricultural systems. Seed preservation is one of the oldest ways included in food sovereignty and includes rituals and specific agricultural techniques. Indigenous food sovereignty goes beyond rights-based rhetoric to address Indigenous peoples’ roles and interactions with their environment. Furthermore, Native Americans and supporters must undertake initiatives to restore traditional foods and ecological knowledge by exercising ownership over their practices.
References
Ahern, E. S. (2020). Resistance and renewal: How native food sovereignty movements should guide human rights and social work. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 5(4), 236-245.
Blanchet, R., Batal, M., Johnson-Down, L., Johnson, S., & Willows, N. (2021). An Indigenous food sovereignty initiative is positively associated with well-being and cultural connectedness in a survey of Syilx Okanagan adults in British Columbia, Canada. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1-12.
Chabvuta, E. T. (2019). Discourses of seed saving in New Mexico (Doctoral dissertation, New Mexico State University).
Coté, C. (2016). “Indigenizing” food sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous food practices and ecological knowledge in Canada and the United States. Humanities, 5(3), 57.
Deer, F. (2016). Indigenous perspectives on education for well-being in Canada. Education for Sustainable Well-Being Press.
Reitsma, L., Light, A., Zaman, T., & Rodgers, P. (2019). A respectful design framework. Incorporating indigenous knowledge in the design process. The Design Journal, 22(1), 1555-1570.
Robin, T. (2019). Our hands at work: Indigenous food sovereignty in Western Canada. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 9(B), 85-99.
Martens, T., Cidro, J., Hart, M. A., & McLachlan, S. (2016). Understanding Indigenous food sovereignty through an Indigenous research paradigm. Journal of Indigenous Social Development, 5(1), 18-37.
Pace, K. (2015). Indigenous Agriculture and Sustainable Food. Sustainable Food Center.
Settee, P., & Shukla, S. (Eds.). (2020). Indigenous food systems: Concepts, cases, and conversations. Canadian Scholars.