US Food Sovereignty Alliance (n.d.) focuses on the following principles to approach food sovereignty:
FOCUSES ON FOOD FOR PEOPLE
Food sovereignty puts the right to sufficient, healthy, and culturally appropriate food for all people at the center of food, agriculture, livestock, and fisheries policies.
VALUES FOOD PROVIDERS
Food sovereignty values all those who grow, harvest, and process food, including women, family farmers, herders, fisherpeople, forest dwellers, Indigenous peoples, and agricultural, migrant, and fisheries workers.
LOCALIZES FOOD SYSTEMS
Food sovereignty brings food providers and consumers closer together so they can make joint decisions on food issues that benefit and protect all.
PUTS CONTROL LOCALLY
Food sovereignty respects the right of food providers to have control over their land, seeds, and water and rejects the privatization of natural resources.
BUILDS KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
Food sovereignty values the sharing of local knowledge and skills that have been passed down over generations for sustainable food production free from technologies that undermine health and well-being.
WORKS WITH NATURE
Food sovereignty focuses on production and harvesting methods that maximize the contribution of ecosystems, avoid costly and toxic inputs, and improve the resiliency of local food systems in the face of climate change. Across Indian Country, both established Tribal programs and grassroots projects seek to supply nutritious and affordable foods to Tribal members. Tribes continue to make progress, though many Tribal members remain hungry and unhealthy, without a voice to decide what their community eats and where the food is sourced from. Elizabeth Hoover writes in her book Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States, “Many Native people are just now rediscovering their traditional foods, and any news story about an Indigenous chef or a successful garden harvest is felt to be a unique and exciting step toward a vision of food sovereignty” (Hoover, 2019). For the Menominee Reservation, our Indigenous foods are valued. Our very name, Omaeqnomenewak , translates into “people of the wild rice.” Many families actively practice gardening, harvesting, hunting, and gathering. Related to this, many families prepare foods using recipes shared generation after generation.
8
Powered by FlippingBook