Helping Indigenous communities attain food security
After a ten hour road trip to deliver chicks to a northern community for a backyard chicken project, Byron Beardy was ready the next morning to talk about food sovereignty in Manitoba's First Nations.
Raised in Wasagamack First Nation, Beardy is the program manager for Four Arrows Regional Health Authority's Kimeechiminan Food Security department. In his work, he helps Anishininiw people of the province's Island Lake region reconnect with their food systems by incorporating historic and cultural practices. His goal is to help communities attain food sovereignty, which involves the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.
We asked him about the problem of food insecurity that many Indigenous communities face and how food sovereignty is one way to combat it.
How do you define food insecurity for Indigenous communities?
The accepted definition of food security is the availability of fresh, affordable and healthy foods. Right off the hop, our communities will be food insecure because we are not able to produce as much food as we'd like to within our communities. We have to fly it in, which brings food prices higher. That's one way to look
at food security, but there's also the definition as brought on by the community itself.
I had a teaching from my grandmother when I was a little boy. I knew I was going to eat if I was to go visit my grandma. One day, I decided that I would go home first, eat, then go to my grandmother's and eat again. My grandmother asked me, `did you eat?' I didn't want to lie
so I told her I ate a little bit. That's when she told me nobody eats a lot. That was it. So I carry that concept with me in my work. If you eat, it's a good thing and if you don't, it's a bad thing, which is outside the common definition of food security.
Your work focuses on Indigenous food sovereignty. Can you elaborate on how it is an important response to food insecurity?
In 2016, the Four Arrows Regional Health Authority hosted the inaugural Indigenous Food Sovereignty Summit. We invited representatives from Manitoba's First
Nations, Cree, Ojibway, Dene, Anishininiwak and Dakota to talk about food sovereignty and food skills. It was about them sharing their stories and we documented what they said.
Common themes were predominant throughout the summit, which led us to
understand that there are
six pillars of Indigenous food sovereignty: land, women, youth, elders, spirit and celebration and language.
Those elements are very integral to food sovereignty because it's not just from fork to mouth. To me, food sovereignty flows from that knowledge of who you are, where you come from and how you
live in relation with others.
Loss of language, ceremony and other effects of colonialism affect First Nations’ relationship with food. What role do traditional teachings play in helping attain food sovereignty?
I think the biggest factor that we are missing when we talk about food security
is the actual language. The language of our Indigenous people, unfortunately, was almost eradicated by residential schools. Our language is key. It doesn't matter if you're Indigenous, or if you're Irish or German, language is who you are.
For example, I look at something simple like a strawberry. In the language that was given to us, a strawberry is a twopart word. The first is heart, because that is what it looks like, and the other is fruit. On the outside, you see the seeds and we talk about spreading those and spreading love. The vines on the ground represent the blood that flows within Mother Earth. So when you explain all those things, you are not just using a word, but incorporating culture and tradition into the teaching that you make. That's how language plays an important role within food sovereignty.
How do you work with Indigenous communities to attain food sovereignty?
A big part of our work involves training, advocating and providing supplies to our communities. We don't
go and do it for them, but we help and assist them and partner with different organizations to bring in supplies. We then go there and teach whoever wants to learn.
Can you talk about some of the organizations that you work with?
When COVID hit, we worked with Breakfast Club of Canada, who were able to support our food aid program where we put good food packages together and then shipped them to provide a week's worth of fresh fruits and cereals to 1,800 adults and 3,300 children.
We also partner with one organization which was integral in putting up a farm within the borders of one of our communities, Garden Hill, and it's really successful. It's running all-year round, but it needs a boost in funding, because it hasn't produced enough to be on its own. Other organizations come in to assist in training and other outside groups help with donations.
You’ve been doing this for a long time. What motivates you to help communities attain food sovereignty?
I believe that the things that I do are not for me. I do these things for my grandchildren's grandchildren. I do this so that they know who they are and where they come from and how it relates to food.
I want to know that when they put me six feet under, that the wheels are turning towards that direction, that these teachings have been taught. I share freely because these teachings are not mine. They have been passed on by my teachers, my elders, my mentors. That's what motivates me.