Nimíciwinán, nipimátisiwinán – “Our food is our way of life”: On-Reserve First Nation perspectives on community food security and sovereignty through oral history in Fisher River Cree Nation, Manitoba

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shailesh Shukla ◽  
Jazmin Alfaro ◽  
Carol Cochrane ◽  
Cindy Garson ◽  
Gerald Mason ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Community Food Security ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Indigenous Foods ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Food insecurity in Indigenous communities in Canada continue to gain increasing attention among scholars, community practitioners, and policy makers. Meanwhile, the role and importance of Indigenous foods, associated knowledges, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples (Council of Canadian Academies, 2014) that highlight community voices in food security still remain under-represented and under-studied in this discourse. University of Winnipeg (UW) researchers and Fisher River Cree Nation (FRCN) representatives began an action research partnership to explore Indigenous knowledges associated with food cultivation, production, and consumption practices within the community since 2012. The participatory, place-based, and collaborative case study involved 17 oral history interviews with knowledge keepers of FRCN. The goal was to understand their perspectives of and challenges to community food security, and to explore the potential role of Indigenous food knowledges in meeting community food security needs. In particular, the role of land-based Indigenous foods in meeting community food security through restoration of health, cultural values, identity, and self-determination were emphasized by the knowledge keepers—a vision that supports Indigenous food sovereignty. The restorative potential of Indigenous food sovereignty in empowering individuals and communities is well-acknowledged. It can nurture sacred relationships and actions to renew and strengthen relationships to the community’s own Indigenous land-based foods, previously weakened by colonialism, globalization, and neoliberal policies.

Fulfilling the Right to Food for South Africa: Justice, Security, Sovereignty and the Politics of Malnutrition

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 112-152
Author(s):  
Busiso Helard Moyo ◽  
Anne Marie Thompson Thow
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Food Justice ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Right To Food ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

Despite South Africa’s celebrated constitutional commitments that have expanded and deepened South Africa’s commitment to realise socio-economic rights, limited progress in implementing right to food policies stands to compromise the country’s developmental path. If not a deliberate policy choice, the persistence of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms is a deep policy failure.  Food system transformation in South Africa requires addressing wider issues of who controls the food supply, thus influencing the food chain and the food choices of the individual and communities. This paper examines three global rights-based paradigms – ‘food justice’, ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’ – that inform activism on the right to food globally and their relevance to food system change in South Africa; for both fulfilling the right to food and addressing all forms of malnutrition. We conclude that the emerging concept of food sovereignty has important yet largely unexplored possibilities for democratically managing food systems for better health outcomes.

Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Natural Resources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Right

The issue of sovereignty over natural resources has been a key element in the development of international law, notably leading to the emergence of the principle of States’ permanent sovereignty over their natural resources. However, concomitant to this focus on States’ sovereignty, international human rights law proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination over their natural resources. This has led to a complex and ambivalent relationship between the principle of States’ sovereignty over natural resources and peoples’ rights to natural resources. This chapter analyses this conflicting relationship and examines the emergence of the right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural resources and evaluates its potential role in contemporary advocacy. It notably explores how indigenous peoples have called for the revival of their right to sovereignty over natural resources, and how the global peasants’ movement has pushed for the recognition of the concept of food sovereignty.

“Community Interests” and the Role of International Law in the Creation of a Global Market for Agricultural Land

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen von Bernstorff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
The One

The chapter explores the notion of “community interests” with regard to the global “land-grab” phenomenon. Over the last decade, a dramatic increase of foreign investment in agricultural land could be observed. Bilateral investment treaties protect around 75 per cent of these large-scale land acquisitions, many of which came with associated social problems, such as displaced local populations and negative consequences for food security in Third World countries receiving these large-scale foreign investments. Hence, two potentially conflicting areas of international law are relevant in this context: Economic, social, and cultural rights and the principles of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and “food sovereignty” challenging large-scale investments on the one hand, and specific norms of international economic law stabilizing them on the other. The contribution discusses the usefulness of the concept of “community interests” in cases where the two colliding sets of norms are both considered to protect such interests.

scholarly journals Forging Political Cadres for Re-Peasantization: Escuela de Acción Campesina (Spain)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4061
Author(s):  
David Gallar-Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Training Process ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Participatory Workshop ◽  
Global North ◽  
Training Schools ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology ◽  
La Via Campesina

Bolstering the political formation of agrarian organizations has become a priority for La Vía Campesina and the Food Sovereignty Movement. This paper addresses the Spanish case study of the Escuela de Acción Campesina (EAC)—(Peasant Action School), which is a tool for political formation in the Global North in which the philosophical and pedagogical principles of the “peasant pedagogies” of the Training Schools proposed by La Vía Campesina are put into practice within an agrarian organization in Spain and in alliance with the rest of the Spanish Food Sovereignty Movement. The study was carried out over the course of the 10 years of activist research, spanning the entire process for the construction and development of the EAC. Employing an ethnographic methodology, information was collected through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, a participatory workshop, and reviews of internal documents. The paper presents the context in which the EAC arose, its pedagogical dynamics, the structure and the ideological contents implemented for the training of new cadres, and how there are three key areas in the training process: (1) the strengthening of collective union and peasant identity, (2) training in the “peasant” ideological proposal, and (3) the integration of students as new cadres into the organizations’ structures. It is concluded that the EAC is a useful tool in the ideological re-peasantization process of these organizations.

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