Examining Local Food Procurement, Adaptive Capacities and Resilience to Environmental Change in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories

Abstract

By exploring localized adaptation strategies for climate change, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of local perspectives and efforts regarding food procurement in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories (NT). The benefits and risks associated with engaging in local food procurement activities are key topics explored. Strategies to manage food insecurity and local approaches to encourage food procurement are also considered. This study was informed by Indigenous methodologies, which guided all aspects of this research. While the researchers have collaborated with community members since 2010, evidence for this study was collected during two field seasons in the spring and fall of 2018, using semi-structured interviews with Elders, land-users, and knowledgeable community members. Findings support decentralized policy developments which focus on the integration of local voices into decision-making processes and program implementation. Food policies must reflect the needs of residents at localized levels and the distinct socio-cultural and economic barriers to procuring food, and they must encourage overall community resilience and adaptive capacities to climate-related change. This research supports regional and national efforts to reduce food insecurity across northern Canada by documenting traditional knowledge concerning climate change and local food practices in Fort Providence.

Generations of gardeners regenerating the soil of sovereignty in Moose Cree First Nation: An account of community and research collaboration

“…Part of these plans involved recruiting a horticultural student (TK) from Thompson Rivers University 1 in Kamloops, British Columbia to support garden development, which we had done with three of the four communities prior to the pandemic. Accompanying this student was EV, who was involved with our previous fieldwork in another partner community in the Northwest Territories, where she worked with community members on ongoing local food initiatives in this region (Ross & Mason, 2020a, 2020b. Our team met with the newly recruited students-who, in addition to being formally trained in horticulture, had extensive commercial vegetable farming experience-to discuss the potential activities to be offered in Moose Factory.…”

Recommendations for Integrating Evidence-Based, Sustainable Diet Information into Nutrition Education

“…Another consideration for local food systems and their sustainability is resiliency. Local food systems have been theorized and demonstrated to more effectively respond and adapt to crisis situations, including economic changes [150,151], climate change [152,153], and pandemics (such as the ongoing, novel coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak) [154][155][156][157][158], whereas global food supply chains have faltered under similar pressures. As severe weather events have been predicted to increase globally over the next decades [9], and the true risk of future economic crises or pandemics is unknown, the relevancy of food system resiliency to crises will likely persist in the near future, which further supports the notion that actively engaging in local food systems should have a place in nutrition education.…”

Tensions in Fostering ‘local food’ in the Northwest Territories: Contending with Settler Colonialism in Northern Research

“…As with many of the accounts based on changing climate, which range in the degrees to which they recognize the historical and current practices of agriculture in these regions, they present agriculture as emerging. Notable exceptions can be found in those climate-centred literatures that raise the issues of past agricultural projects led by outsiders that have not met the needs or interests of the communities they are situated (Ross & Mason, 2020;). Yet, the specific colonial legacies of agriculture in the North are largely left out in these works.…”

“…In many cases, the emergent references to agricultural-based provisioning coincides with the renewed interest by the State to pursue a northern agricultural industry. Many explicitly leverage State-led agricultural strategies for their research -both federal (Naumov et al, 2020) and territorial in the case of the NWT (Hannah et al, 2020;Ross & Mason, 2020). who she says, "allude to the 'promise' of 'hydroponic arrangements', but also stress that small-scale kitchen agriculture had recently been successfully carried out in the region" (p.…”

“…As Whyte (2017) explains, "Indigenous peoples often describe food injustice as a violation of their collective self-determination over their food systems" (p. 2). An important lesson that this tension left me with is in understanding how overemphasizing the coloniality of agricultural pursuits renders invisible Indigenous-led agricultural projects (cf: Johnston & Spring, 2021;Ross & Mason, 2020;Simba & Spring, 2017). Even it if is often the case, it should not be assumed that southerners and settlers alone are leading the development of agricultural systems in the territory.…”