Indigenous Food Security

Harmony Garden is located in North Vancouver,specifically, in the village of Humulchs'n. This garden is a community effort that was initiated by a small group of Elders in the community, who had started a Community Kitchen in the basement of St Paul's Church in the village of Sla7an, which is also located in North Vancouver.

The food security in this community was almost non-existent, until this program began through the dedicated efforts of the Elders. They saw the need to provide a hot meal for community members, and find out how they were doing with their nutritional needs, and whether or not they were being met.

The initial idea was to start a soup kitchen, and with some progressive suggestions towards Community Kitchens, these Elders were convinced! It was more exciting to imagine how cooking together would be able to help them build community, learn about their cousins, aunties, uncles, and other relatives, and what they were doing on a weekly basis.

The typhoon that hit the Easy Coast of Taiwan this summer, left several miles of driftwood on the shorelines. Indigenous people here are gathering the wood to make furniture, as well as to re-build their homes that were destroyed during the typhoon. There are still many villages that are being re-built, and there are many homeless people, mainly in the mountains along the East Coast. It is incredible how resilient the people here are. This young man is making his living from working in an artists' collective, and he goes fishing daily to contribute to the collective and help keep everyone fed on local and sustainable food systems.