Indigenous women’s worldview in food-related research: Rematriating food, bodies and lands

Abstract

Western discourses around food (in)security and nutrition often focus on food access primarily through male-driven efforts. In turn, the gendered dimension is missing. Yet Indigenous food systems cannot be fully understood without Indigenous women’s worldview, challenges and labour. Our critique points to the importance of centering Indigenous women’s embodied knowledge systems in our food related research. 
 
 Novelty:
 Rematriating food research regenerates the complexities of kinship wellbeing, sustainable economies, and body sovereignty.
 

Wapekeka’s COVID-19 Response: A Local Response to a Global Pandemic

“…Often, this would mean that women would leave the gym after a long shift of food organization and distribution to go home to manage their own households. This demonstrates the integral roles that women play in food procurement, a role that is often overlooked in research [ 54 , 56 ], even though women tend to bear a larger burden of food insecurity in households [ 65 ].…”

“…This time spent visiting outside of semi-structured interviews is an extremely important part of community-based participatory research and Indigenous methodologies [ 53 ], and led to many informal conversations that helped create a full story. Intentionally, two interviewees were men and four were women, as we wanted to place a greater emphasis on Indigenous women’s perspectives which are often missing from research on food mobilization [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. Since J.B. was a key leader in the food mobilizing efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to “interview” him as well, and include some key quotes, as his front-line experiences in the field were invaluable contributions to understanding the experiences of the harvesters.…”

Decolonizing research in high-income countries improves Indigenous peoples’ health and wellbeing

“…Ten research articles are included in the collection, all which have free access (Blanchet et al 2022;Blekkenhorst et al 2022;Cooper 2022;Ferreira et al 2022;Ironside et al 2021;McKay and Godrich 2021;McEachern et al 2022;Robidoux et al 2021;Senftleber et al 2021;Valaitis et al 2022; the main collection page can be accessed here: https://cdnscience pub.com/topic/apnm-strength-based). These articles discuss health research with Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, and Greenland, high-income countries where Indigenous peoples have experienced European colonialism.…”

“…These articles discuss health research with Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, and Greenland, high-income countries where Indigenous peoples have experienced European colonialism. One article presents a current opinion of Indigenous women's worldview of food-related research in Canada (Ferreira et al 2022), five articles address a diversity of decolonizing health promotion research in Canada (Blanchet et al 2022;Cooper 2022;McEachern et al 2022;Robidoux et al 2021;Valaitis et al 2022), one article describes the relationship between social determinants and physical activity among Indigenous adults in Canada (Ironside et al 2021), two review articles summarize health interventions in Australia (Blekkenhorst et al 2022;McKay and Godrich 2021), and one review article describes the role of genetics and lifestyle changes on metabolic health in Inuit in Greenland, since colonization (Senftleber et al 2021). Most articles have Indigenous authors to ensure an Indigenous perspective.…”

“…In Canada, colonial processes and policies actively removed Indigenous women's influential role in shaping traditional economies, governance, social kinship, and cultural and spiritual systems (Delormier et al 2017;Lemke and Delormier 2017). In their current opinion article, Ferreira et al (2022) made the case that colonial policies of erasure have led to an under-representation of Indigenous women in food-related research. The exclusion of Indigenous women's knowledge about food and food systems has led to devastating health outcomes; food insecurity; disconnection to land, kin, language, and life; systemic violence and racism; relational tensions; and state dependency.…”