Indigenous Food Systems Network

Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is often compared to the ethics of many North AmericanIndigenous communities, like Tribes and First Nations. At the heart of Leopold’s land ethic arethe ideas that humans should consider themselves as “plain citizens” of the biotic community and that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the bioticcommunity.”
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Members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, joined by prominent environmental advocates, went out to Burrard Inlet today to participate in a prayer ceremony for the earth and protest against oil sands development, as well pipeline expansions and tanker traffic along the coast. Participants rowed their boats near the terminal of American pipeline giant Kinder Morgan, which intends to triple the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and potentially quadruple oil tanker traffic around Burrard Inlet.

The Haida recognize that nature and culture are intrinsically connected, and that the protection of the natural and cultural values on Haida Gwaii is essential to sustaining their culture. The Haida have always had Guardian Watchmen who protected the land and sea from harm. Guardians and Watchmen now work in fisheries, forestry, heritage and parks programs to support the Council of Haida Nations’ priority to protect the Aboriginal rights and title of Haida people.

Wild rice is a traditional food that has virtually disappeared from the diets of Ontarian First Nations peoples and the waterways where it once flourished in the "rice bowl" of Turtle Island.

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Vol 12 The Name of the Grain.pdf

Hi Flora
PicI am writing you today to ask that you send off a quick letter before November 7th to the federal government about a trout-filled lake on BC's Chilcotin Plateau west of Williams Lake. If the feds take the action we are asking them to take, they will be saving the lake and whole lot of time and money as well.
The lake I am talking about is Fish Lake. If that name sounds familiar it should.

Wild Salmon People,

The Disease Hearings at the Cohen Inquiry have been riveting. Finally, we are getting a look behind the scenes at how much consideration the wild sockeye have been given by DFO. Dr. Kristi Miller has shown up daily in the audience shadowed by a very large government security guard wearing an earpiece. Salmon farm executives are there, Chief Bob Chamberlin, Dan Cody DFO, Policy Advisor and lots of wild salmon people are also witnessing this.

Our program to advocate for indigenous peoples affected by multilateral development banks is a cornerstone of the work at the Indian Law Resource Center. This project began in the late 1970s when the Center represented the Yanomami people of Brazil. The Yanomami lived a peaceful and self-sufficient life, with no ties to the global economy, until Brazil received money from the World Bank to build a road through their territory. The road unleashed chaos within the Yanomami communities. Road workers brought malaria and many Yanomami died because they had no resistance to the disease.

We the undersigned citizens of Canada stand against the biological and social threat and commerce of industrial marine net-cage feedlots using our global oceans. The science is clear: these operations risk wild salmon populations by intensifying disease and deplete world fishery resources to make the feed. They privatize ocean spaces and threaten our sovereign rights to food security.

We call on the Government of Canada to take the appropriate measures to get open-net aquaculture out of our federal waters:

RAVEN is a charitable organization that provides financial resources to assist Aboriginal Nations within Canada in lawfully forcing industrial development to be reconciled with their traditional ways of life, and in a manner that addresses global warming or other ecological sustainability challenges.

The concept of food sovereignty was developed by Via Campesina and brought to the public debate during the World Food Summit in 1996 and represents an alternative to neoliberal policies. Since then, that concept has become a major issue of the international agricultural debate, even within the United Nations bodies. It was the main theme of the NGO forum held in parallel to the FAO World Food Summit of June 2002.