Indigenous Food Sovereignty

Environmental Studies and Forestry: Indigenous Food Sovereignty

In a healthcare perspective, food has various concepts that determine the overall well-being of an individual, depending on the type, the production and the nutrition value. Land provides food to the human beings in the form of seeds, fruits, leaves, and stems that constitute natural diets and nutrients. The progress from the past to the current world has experienced environmental changes, the evolution of humankind, and technological developments and innovations that have influenced food production systems to move away from the indigenous to genetically modified foods. Due to the importance of indigenous food in providing a health and sustainable food security, the contemporary

Indigenous food sovereignty is a modern approach towards food systems that aim at creating sustainable, just, and reliable food systems in indigenous communities. The concept seems new to the majority of the people, but the wisdom, values, and knowledge regarding indigenous food sovereignty were built many thousands of years ago. The concept of indigenous food sovereignty has various definitions that bring different perspectives. However, to avoid biases and limitations that the definitions impose on the concept, the concept is considered as a description rather a definition.

The approach describes all the modern-day strategies developed and designed to support and enable the capability of the native communities in sustaining the friendly way of interacting with the environment. The description provides a clear picture of indigenous food systems in supporting the direct and indirect transfer of energy to the modern agriculture-based economy that was industrialized and developed by the settlers through the process of colonization (Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty ). Embracing indigenous foods, the indigenous ways of food production, and agriculture is important especially in the contemporary society where genetically modified foods have resulted in negative health impacts, food insecurity, and development of environmental non-friendly policies in agriculture and food

The approach targets the adoption of the indigenous knowledge, values, and wisdom in the food production and agricultural activities in the modern world. However, the Canadian movement on Food Sovereignty does not insist on the traditional food production methods but targets on the use of the modern technology in food production to ensure food security through increased productivity (Raj, 2009). Additionally, the aim of the indigenous food sovereignty approach is to ensure that the food production systems remain natural and consider all the ecosystem factors. Such considerations aim at ensuring the production of safe and healthy foods as compared to the Canadian movement that does not mostly consider the health factor in the food production