Indigenous Food Systems Network

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.

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.

In the film Our Land, My People, the Lubicon people tell the story of their 30 year struggle for justice. It's a story of environmental destruction and shocking discrimination. It's also a story of determination and hope.

An amazing lecture by Maude Barlow on the Global Water Crisis.

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She also served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly.

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.

The Sir Wilfred Laurier Memorial outlines the history of the relationship between the Secwepemc (original inhabitants of the Shuswap geographic region in the southern interior of B.C.) and the European settlers up to the period of 1910.

ork – Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty

On February 1, 2010, the Indigenous Food Systems Network Website was launched! The IFSN Website Project is a web-based centre for increasing awareness of issues, concerns and strategies related to protecting, conserving and restoring the myriad of Indigenous food based cultures across Canada.

Related File: 

The following file is a 61 KB pdf document you many need to download Adobe Reader to open the file.

IFSN_Website_Launch_Press_Release_Feb_2.10.pdf

At GRAIN, we are extremely concerned that today's global land grab is only going to make the food crisis worse. For it pushes an agriculture geared toward large scale monocultures, GMOs, throwing farmers off the land in favour of machines, and lots of chemicals and fossil fuels. This is not an agriculture that will feed everyone. It's an agriculture that feeds speculative profits for a few and more poverty for the rest. Of course we need investment.

After seeing the film Avatar, the recent release by James Cameron dealing with allegorical Indigenous Peoples on an alien planet that humans seek to colonize, displace and finally eliminate in order to access the rich resources in their territories, a few reflections emerge. The first is a more than passing resemblance to the actual reality of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and beyond, the bounty of whose land and resources have cost them great suffering at the hands of colonizers and would-be-saviours.

The purpose of this project was to engage Aboriginal communities in discussions that would enable individuals and groups involved with food related action to explore and identify ways that the B.C. Food Systems Network (BCFSN) - Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (WGIFS) can support their work on increasing food security.

File: 

The following file is a 283 KB pdf document you many need to download Adobe Reader to open the file.

WGIFS_Final_Report_March_08.pdf