Keeping ‘our’ land: property, agriculture and tensions between Indigenous and settler visions of food sovereignty in Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper situates literature on food sovereignty and land reforms in relation to academic and popular writings about land issues in Canada. We argue that settler Canadian food sovereignty scholarship and activism has yet to sufficiently grapple with the implications of private property ownership in relation to ongoing processes of settler colonialism. We also argue that efforts to advance ecologically sustainable farming practices in Canada need to confront private property ownership in terms of its contribution to both capitalist and colonial violence.

KEYWORDS:

• food sovereignty
• land reform
• Indigenous food systems
• settler colonialism
• agriculture
• landownership
• capitalism

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for comments and encouragement received from participants at the 2015 Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS) conference session where this paper was first presented. Thanks also to Scott Prudham, Emily Eaton and the University of Toronto Working Group on Environmental Politics for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

We also very much appreciate the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and pertinent suggestions that helped us to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lauren Kepkiewicz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. Through her research, she attempts to understand the ways that food connects us to land in the context of the Canadian settler colonial state. In addition to working with her department’s Food, Equity and Activism Study Team (FEAST), Lauren is involved in the Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement (CFICE): Community Food Security Hub based at Carleton University.

Bryan Dale is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. His research looks at the connections between food sovereignty, agroecology and climate change. He has analyzed La Vía Campesina’s international organizing on these issues, as well as Canadian farmers’ struggles. He is interested in activist scholarship, and is a non-farmer member of the National Farmers Union and Union Paysanne, the La Vía Campesina member organizations in Canada.

Notes

1 For those unfamiliar with the reference, ‘keep our land’ is a line from the Canadian national anthem.

2 We offer the critique that follows with humility, aware of the privilege often afforded to academic perspectives and the need for scholarship and theorizing that can serve movements rather than re-inscribe white, settler and/or patriarchal assumptions and power relations (Bradley and Herrera 2015; cf. Bevington and Dixon 2005).

3 Specific examples of alternative land access models are evident across the country, from British Columbia (see Dennis and Wittman 2014; Wittman, Dennis, and Pritchard 2017) to Ontario (see Caldwell and Hilts 2005) to Quebec (see Banque de Terres Agricoles 2016) to Prince Edward Island (see NFU 2015, 23).

4 For more information on the Site C dam, see Bakker, Christie, and Hendriks (2016); Dusyk (2011).

5 Among others, see Wittman, Desmarais, and Wiebe (2011); Morrison (2008, 2011); Desmarais and Wittman (2014); Levkoe et al. (2012); and Andrée et al. (2011).

6 According to the original pillars, food sovereignty ‘1. Focuses on Food for People; 2. Values Food Providers; 3. Localizes Food Systems; 4. Puts Control Locally; 5. Builds Knowledge and Skills; [and] 6. Works with Nature’ (PFPP 2011, 10). The seventh pillar, ‘food is sacred’, conceptualizes food as a responsibility rather than a commodity (PFPP 2011, 12).

7 This is not to suggest that Indigenous nations are homogeneous in their worldviews. Rather, we draw from Indigenous studies literature, which highlights commonalities across different nations’ cosmologies, particularly those that contrast with Western perceptions and relations to land.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for financial support provided through the Doctoral Fellowship programme [grant number 752-2016-1032] as well as the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship programme [garnt number 767-2013-1328-A28]. This work was also supported by SSHRC Insight Grant #76166 – ‘Unsettling Perspectives and Contested Spaces: Building Equity and Justice in Canadian Food Activism’.