A Trip To Indian Country

via Wikipedia

I've spent a chunk of the morning in Indian Country--well, I've spent my whole life in Indian Country, particularly now that I live on unceeded First Nations territory. But this morning was spent at the website Indian Country, the First Nations news and culture site. And I've been having a great time.
I've been interested in First Nations issues and culture since reading a biography of Tatanka Yotanka back in elementary school, and his story, and the story of the Lakota, gave rise to my concern for social justice issues. there's an excellent primer on the Canadian situation at 8th Fire.
First Nations also face the problems with our food systems on a reglar basis. There are high rates of diabetes in First Nations communities, for example. A couple of years ago, the CBC ran a documentary about an experiment in low-carb dieting that took place in Alert Bay, here on the West Coast. (There is a short report on the experiment here).
Indian Country, the website,  has a number of interesting food-related articles. A couple of days ago, they reported on recent research into the addictive qualities of carbohydrates:

New research, published June 26 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, proves there's truth behind the belief that food can be addictive.
Brain imaging reveals that after eating highly processed carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, rice, baked goods and other starches, the same pleasure centers of the brain light up as when a person takes drugs such as cocaine and heroin, The New York Times reports. In both cases, dopamine levels, which trigger happiness and feelings of reward, spike and then deplete, thus fueling addiction.

This isn't news to anyone who has read Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss.

Moss reports on research going back decades that shows substantial similarities between the brain's experience with salt, sugar, and fat and the brain's experiences with narcotics.
Indian Country also has an excellent recipe section, concentrating on brief histories about First Nations use and preperation of different foods ( like duck and sweetbreads) and a recipe that reflects that history.
IC also reports on a local urban agriculture project affecting one First Nation:

An $8,100 grant from the Maine Community Foundation will help grow more fresh organic food for the Penobscot community on Indian Island.
The Peoples’ Garden began as a collaborative among multiple Penobscot Indian Nation governmental departments that were interested in finding ways to ensure food security for future generations. It is a volunteer, intergenerational community garden group located on Indian Island. The funds will be used to increase production and availability of fresh organic food for the Penobscot community while revitalizing community green space.
During summer 2011, a 30’x70’ high tunnel hoop house was erected at a site where a crumbling basketball court once existed.  The court was removed, the site cleaned up, and the hoop house given to the community for a community garden.

I really need to thank the edotors and writers at Inndian Country for an enjoyable couple of hours of browsing.

Stop Food Banks Now!

I'm in love! Over at Civilieats they're talking about:

What if the little old ladies who run the neighborhood church food pantry rebelled? What if they said “we’re 70 years old, we’ve been feeding people for 20 years, and hell if we want to do it for another 20?” What if they demanded that the government reduce the incidence of poverty so that food pantries don’t need to exist in the first place?
Hard to imagine? Well, that’s exactly what has happened in the province of Ontario. With the support of an experienced community organizer, volunteers from emergency meal programs, and food banks (what we call a food pantry in the U.S.) have decided to form a “union.” They’re calling it Freedom 90, a spoof on the “Freedom 55” financial planning advertisements that promise the good life to Canadians who work hard and invest their savings wisely, so they can retire by 55.
Tongue in cheek, yet deadly serious, these volunteers want to “retire” by the time they hit 90. They are tired of the perpetual emergency of having to provide free food boxes every week for the past two decades, but are compelled to continue because of the need they see in their communities.

We're thirty years into a slow-motion famine in Canada. And what's worse, it is a famine that was planned for, and brought about by, our own government in order to funnel more money into the pockets of the 1%. They knew what they were doing, they decided to do it, and they were amply warned when they did it. But no member of the Mulroney government (or any of those that followed without reversing the policies) will ever be brought to bar to answer for the destruction and death their policies have caused.
Food security is thought (viz. Watts and Bohle in The space of vulnerability: the causal structure of hunger and famine  Progress in Human Geography 17:43-67.) is a function of elements: the exposure to a risk or hazard, the capacity to adapt to this hazard, and the potential of the problem to have severe consequences. While most threats to food security come from natural hazards--lack of rainfall, global warming, desertification-- we don't expect the hazard to be caused by our own government. Particularly not in a "democracy" such as ours. But that is exactly what the neo-liberal policies pursued under Mulroney et al. have done. Food banks sprang up immediately as the Mulroney government attacked income re-distributive programmes in Canada. And they have never gone away.