Oct 12, 2021
In this episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, Mandy Bayha, Director for Culture, Language, and Spirituality for the Délįnę Got'įnę Government, talks with Dr. Andrew Spring about the importance of traditional knowledge and language for community wellbeing and resilience Délįnę, NWT. Beginning with a conversation about community resilience in the face of major crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic Mandy traces connections between colonialism, traditional economies, and food security and explains how Elder knowledge and youth engagement inform all the work taking place in the community.
Contributors
Guests: Mandy Bayha & Andrew
Spring
Co-Producers & Hosts: Amanda Di
Battista & Laine
Young
Sound Design & Editing: Adedotun
Babajide
Support &
Funding
Wilfrid Laurier University
The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food
Systems
Voicing Change: Co-creating Knowledge and
Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems (SSHRC Funded)
Balsillie School for International
Affairs
CIGI
Music
Credits
Keenan
Reimer-Watts
Sounds
Neala McLeod
Resources
Délįnę Got’įnę Government
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada:
Calls to Action
Moving Beyond Acknowledgments-
LSPIRG
Whose Land
Connect with
Us:
Email: Handpickedpodcast@WLU.ca
Twitter: @Handpickedpodc
Facebook: Handpicked
Podcast
Discussion Questions:
Glossary:
Climate Change
Adaptation
“Climate change adaptation refers to
actions that reduce the negative impact of
climate change, while taking
advantage of potential new opportunities. It involves adjusting
policies and actions because of observed or expected changes in
climate. Adaptation can be reactive, occurring in response to
climate impacts, or anticipatory, occurring before impacts of
climate change are observed. In most circumstances, anticipatory
adaptations will result in lower long-term costs and be more
effective than reactive adaptations.”
Elders
“Elders are very important members of
First Nation, Métis, and Inuit communities. The term Elder refers
to someone who has attained a high degree of understanding of First
Nation, Métis, or Inuit history, traditional teachings, ceremonies,
and healing practices. Elders have earned the right to pass this
knowledge on to others and to give advice and guidance on personal
issues, as well as on issues affecting their communities and
nations. First Nation, Métis, and Inuit peoples value their Elders
and all older people and address them with the utmost
respect.”
Food
Security
Food security is the ability to access
safe, nutritious, culturally appropriate, and sufficient food all
year round. A person or community is food insecure when people
cannot afford or have limited or no access to
the food they need to nourish their bodies. The UN Food
and Agriculture Organization state that “food insecurity can affect
diet quality in different ways, potentially leading to
undernutrition as well as. . .
obesity.”
Food
Sovereignty
“Food sovereignty is the peoples’,
Countries’ or State Unions’ RIGHT to define their agricultural and
food policy.”
Indigenous Food
Systems
“Within the
context of the work described here, we maintain that Indigenous
People are those who retain knowledge of the land and food
resources rooted in historical continuity within their region of
residence. The local food systems that they are currently using are
those we define as “traditional food systems”, which invariably
include some foods that may be used by many outside of
the indigenous culture (e.g. salmon). In essence, we describe
as “traditional foods” those foods that Indigenous Peoples have
access to locally, without having to purchase them, and within
traditional knowledge and the natural environment from farming or
wild harvesting.”
Informal Economy of
Food
Economies of food that emphasize
“personal relationships, trust, and non-market values, which are
inherently challenging to define and often impossible to quantify.”
Informal economies of food are “spaces for non-traditional forms of
innovation as well as opportunities for deep insights into social
relationships, cultural meanings, and environmental values...and
challenge us to think of economic systems in far more complex ways
than mainstream economic theory would
propose.”
Land
Claim
“In 1973, the federal government
recognized two broad classes of claims — comprehensive and
specific. Comprehensive Claims: Comprehensive claims are based on
the assessment that there may be continuing Aboriginal rights to
lands and natural resources. These kinds of claims come up in those
parts of Canada where Aboriginal title has not previously been
dealt with by treaty and other legal means. While each claim is
unique, frequently these claims include such things as land title,
fishing, trapping, and resource rights and financial compensation –
hence the "comprehensive". Specific Claims: Specific claims declare
grievances over Canada's alleged failures to discharge specific
obligations to First Nations groups. Land claim agreement: A term
used by the federal government to refer to a negotiated settlement
with a First Nation on lands, land usage, and other
rights.”
Land
Stewardship
“In its broadest sense, stewardship is
the recognition of our collective responsibility to retain the
quality and abundance of our land, air, water and biodiversity, and
to manage this natural capital in a way that conserves all of its
values, be they environmental, economic, social or
cultural.”
On the Land
Camp
“Camps on the land are a strong force
for community development, bringing youth and elders together in a
non-urban environment where traditional knowledge and skills can be
passed on among generations through direct
experience.”
Reconciliation in
Action
“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
was established in 2008 to document the experiences of residential
school Survivors before, during and after their time in residential
schools and to lay the foundation for a new relationship based on
mutual respect and understanding in
Canada.
Throughout the TRC’s work, the process of healing and reconciliation evolved. Thousands of Canadians began to understand the depth of harm imposed on Indigenous Peoples and were inspired to take action to right past wrongs. Following the release of the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, governments, organizations, corporations, churches and countless community groups started taking on new policies, projects and plans with the goal of mending the broken relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, communities and organizations.
While there are many achievements to be celebrated, the hard work of reconciliation and structural reform necessary to transition this country into a respectful and safe place for Indigenous Peoples will take years. This presents a deep challenge for this nation — while the big work of changing the nature of our relationship at a structural level continues to evolve, the many forms of crisis experienced within Indigenous communities continues to rage. Children continue to be disproportionately represented in the child welfare system, suicide remains at epidemic levels in certain communities and Indigenous Peoples continue to experience a lesser quality of life than non-Indigenous people.
Given the long history of broken promises and false hope, it remains difficult for many Indigenous communities to trust that meaningful change will occur. Sadly, the past history of Canada is littered with many aspirational ideas but little transformative change. Reconciliation remains a massively complex exercise for this nation — one with great depths that many are only beginning to understand. Significant reform in the areas of law, legislation and justice must all occur. Likewise, deeply held racist conceptions of Indigenous Peoples must also be eliminated from society. All Canadians have been called upon to embrace this work, and each is asked to contribute to the overall work of reconciliation.”
Self-Determination /
Self-Government
“The promise of self-government and the
spirit behind that movement was that we were going to be
self-determining, that it was going to give us our right to make
decisions about our own future back to us where it belonged, where
it should have never been taken to begin with. And so, the
idea behind self-governance as it relates to education is that
we're going to teach our own children what's important to us, what
the value, what our values are. And it's really
important that, you know, we are teaching our children their
way of life, who they are, their
identity.”
Mandy Bayha, discussing Délįnę Got’įnę Government in “We walk in the footsteps of our ancestors”: Traditional knowledge, youth engagement, and resilience in Délįnę
Sustainable Food
System
Food systems that are “socially just,
support local economies; are ecologically regenerative, and foster
citizen engagement.”
Traditional
Food
Traditional food, also called country
food, describes traditional Indigenous food, including game meats,
migratory birds, fish and foraged foods. In addition to providing
nourishment, traditional food is an integral part of Indigenous
identity and culture and contributes to self-sustainable
communities. Environmental and socioeconomic changes have
threatened food security, making traditional food more expensive
and difficult to harvest. Despite these challenges, Indigenous
communities, in partnership with various levels of government and
non-profit organizations, continue to work towards improving access
to traditional food.
Traditional
Knowledge
“Although there is no universally
accepted definition of “traditional knowledge,” the term
is commonly understood to refer to collective knowledge of
traditions used by Indigenous groups to sustain and adapt
themselves to their environment over time. . .
. Traditional Knowledge is usually shared among Elders,
healers, or hunters and gatherers, and is passed on to the next
generation through ceremonies, stories or
teachings.”