Chexw Ma Hal7h! Siyam and Siyay! T'Uy'Tanat kwi en snas! Cease Wyss Nia7mun!
My family is the Nahanee Family, from the Skwxwu7mesh Nation, and the Williams Family from Sto:lo Nation, the Wyss family from the Swiss Nation, and the Nihinu Family of Hawaii. Welcome to my beautiful home that you all know as Vancouver, and is known as many village names throughout this area, continuously inhabited by the Coast Salish People: Skwxwu7mesh, Whu- Muthqueam & Tseil-Watuth Nations!
I run the Urban Aboriginal Food Enhancement Program with Vancouver Native Health Society, through funding supported by AHIP- Aboriginal Health Initiatives Plan. I am a newly appointed member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council, and have recently joined the committee that works on PR, such as blogging.
Food Security has always been the most important element of my life, having grown up fishing when the salmon run, and picking berries when they are in season, as well as traveling with my mom and aunties to the Okanagan to pick up fruit to bring home and can for the fall and winter months.
Food Security is also Food Sovereignty, by this i mean that when we have our food supplies, and they are foods that we culturally relate to, we feel secure and we feel good. Knowing that you don't have to spend all of your hard earned cash on small amounts of food every week can bring about peace of mind, it also allows you to afford other things you need throughout the year.
Indigenous People living in Vancouver struggle for their traditional foods, and access is not as easy as it should be. When we think about the fact we can get bananas and oranges, which are shipped from California and Mexico, any day of the week, it might seem like a positive thing. If you are from those places, it is awesome! However, imagine that you are from a remote fishing village less than half the distance you might travel to Mexico, and yet accessing traditional berries like Salmon Berries, or Soap Berries, or Oolichan Grease, Herring Eggs and Halibut is far from your reach. This can present not only a sense of loss to a person who has grown up eating these foods, but their dietary needs change, and turn into health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity. Even having to change from seaweed to regular salt can create a number of new health concerns that you may not have been dealing with prior to your move to the urban environment.
The system of trading foods becomes less accessible, and now one is forced to work for a small wage, which barely affords an equal amount of food than one was able to access prior to this system.
Access to affordable food that is more culturally appropriate, and is dignified access, is not commonplace here in Vancouver. Again, many people assume that Indigenous people in Canada have endless access to our traditional foods, but this is a myth, a dangerous one, as we do not. I live in this city, and my traditional territory is in Vancouver. However, I am not permitted to gather salmon berries, huckleberries, or any berries or mosses, or roots from the local parks where they grow in abundance. Nor am i allowed to hunt for food in the urban areas in and around Vancouver. This makes my life challenging, as I am now expected to get a job, or in my case, being a single parent with no credentials, i.e., Masters degree, etc, i am forced to work in a number of jobs to afford to live and pay rent, in my traditional territory, as well as to buy food that is not culturally appropriate to my DNA.
For this reason, I have spent most of my adult life seeking out ways of accessing the traditional foods i require to feel as good as i can, while not burning myself out with a number of jobs which i need to work in order to buy salmon from local fishermen, and to buy seasonal berries as i require them for my diet to stay as close to my sense of normal as i can get.
I have to garden in order to afford to eat fresh vegetables and fruits that are more common to my diet. I cannot as yet, get back to my original diet that my ancestors ate, as most of those roots and tubers and fruits have been destroyed through colonization and population growth. The salmon are almost gone. The shellfish i once fished for are poisoned from the traffic that clogs our water systems in the Burrard Inlet.
Today I garden, I run and participate in an Aboriginal Food buying club and i help promote Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the city. I encourage people to think about eating with others more, to try to eliminate a sense of loneliness at our dinner times, and generally remind urban Indigenous people that there are many sources of food gathering they can access in this urban environment, without being harassed about what are our inherent rights and freedoms.
I look forward to posting more blogs, and I will be seeking input from the Indigenous Communities currently dwelling here in Vancouver.
Huy Mal7h!
T'Uy'Tanat-Cease Wyss
