Skip to main content
Log in

Food sovereignty as decolonization: some contributions from Indigenous movements to food system and development politics

  • Published:
Agriculture and Human Values Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles (including women’s rights, a shared opposition to genetically modified crops, and a demand for agriculture to be removed from current international trade agreements). In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The viewer is an online phrase-usage graphing tool attached the Google Books word search database. It charts the annual instances of letter combinations (“ngrams”) or words and phrases, selected by the user, as found in 5.2 million digitized books spanning the publication years 1500–2008.

  2. These political-discursive visions of Indigenous self-determination differ from normative-theoretical accounts in a number of ways, yet a key commonality is their thoroughgoing refusal of gendered analyses of contemporary colonialism or the persistent, essentialist divisions and oppressions induced by colonization. Even the most popular accounts are conspicuously un-gendered (see for example, Alfred 1999; Alfred 2005; Alfred and Corntassel 2005; Corntassel 2008). Thus colonial governments and anticolonial theorists may unwittingly work in tandem to “normalize and perpetuate an irrelevance of gender and the disenfranchisement of Indian women in Native sovereignty struggles” (Barker 2006, p. 128).

  3. This is a live debate in the field of Indigenous Studies and in Indigenous politics generally. The language used earlier in this paper—that of ‘right relationships’—is preferable to a discourse that implies a morally autonomous, modernist self (and further, of a conceptualization of the individual that itself ‘performs’ imperialism). This being said, the vocabulary of rights is well-suited to framing wrongdoing and justifying forward-looking change and/or backward-looking redress, while having the added benefit of being widely recognized and ‘spoken’ as such. Accordingly, the utility of rights in stemming the further colonialist erosion of Indigenous nations and territories has been noted by many Indigenous (and in particular, feminist Indigenous) scholars, while globally human rights have become the lingua franca of international Indigenous advocacy. See for example, Gabriel 2011; Kuokkanen 2012. .

  4. Adding insult to injury, governmental publications (such as Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide - First Nations, Inuit and Métis) list bannock as a traditional food, an example of “how [Indigenous] people got, and continue to get, nutrients found in milk products” (and which must now be replaced by milk products as prophylaxis against the premature mortality and morbidity stemming from the colonial dietary shift) (Health Canada 2007, p. 3).

  5. Manoomin was also a key staple of the traditional food systems and economies of many Anishnaabeg whose communities lie to the north of Minnesota, in Ontario and Manitoba (A. Mills, personal communication, 24 October 2013).

  6. Non-Indigenous fishermen and hunters invariably resist any assertion that boils down to a non-universal right to hunt or fish out-of-season.

References

  • Adelson, N. 2000. ‘Being alive well’: Health and the politics of Cree well-being. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agarwal, B. 2014. Food sovereignty, food security and democratic choice: Critical contradictions, difficult conciliations. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–22. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876996.

  • Alfred, T. 1999. Peace, power, righteousness: An Indigenous manifesto. Don Mills: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alfred, T. 2005. Wasáse: Indigenous pathways of action and freedom. Peterborough: Broadview.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alfred, T., and J. Corntassel. 2005. Being Indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism. Government and Opposition 40(4): 597–614.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anaya, S.J. 2000. Indigenous peoples in international law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, M.K. 2005. Tending the wild: Native American knowledge and the management of California’s natural resources. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, J.C. 1998. Land speaking. In Speaking for the generations: Native writers on writing, ed. S.J. Ortiz, 175–194. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barker, J. 2006. Gender, sovereignty, and the discourse of rights in Native women’s activism. Meridians 7(1): 127–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berkes, F. 2008. Sacred ecology. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, H. 2014. Food sovereignty via the ‘peasant way:’ A sceptical view. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–33. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.852082.

  • Burnett, K., and S. Murphy. 2014. What place for international trade in food sovereignty? Journal of Peasant Studies 1–20. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876995.

  • Cajete, G. 2004. Philosophy of native science. In American Indian thought: Philosophical essays, ed. Anne Waters, 45–57. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chiefs of the Shuswap Okanagan and Couteau Tribes of British Columbia. 1910. Memorial to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of the Dominion of Canada. Williams Lake: Northern Shuswap Treaty Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Choudry, A. 2010. Against the flow: Maori knowledge and self-determination struggles confront neoliberal globalization in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education, and culture, ed. D. Kapoor, and E. Shizha, 47–62. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comandante Esther. (2003). Words of Comandanta Esther for the Vi’a Campesina mobilization, part of the actions against neoliberalism in Cancun, September of 2003. Chiapas95 newslist. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.native/ibaqPvNK3VM.

  • Corntassel, J. 2008. Toward sustainable self-determination: Rethinking the contemporary Indigenous-rights discourse. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 33(1): 105–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, M. 2001. Late Victorian holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the third world. London, New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • de la Cadena, M., and O. Starn. 2007. Indigenous experience today. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • de las Casas, B. 1967. The life and writings of Bartolomé de las Casas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Saussure, F. 1966. Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Vittoria, F. 1977 (1532). On the Indians lately discovered. In The expansion of Europe: The first phase, ed. J. Muldoon, 112–113. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

  • Deloria Jr, V. 1979. Self-determination and the concept of sovereignty. In Economic development in American Indian reservations, ed. R. Dunbar Ortiz, 22–28. Albuquerque: Native American Studies - University of New Mexico.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria Jr, V., and C.M. Lytle. 1984. The nations within: The past and future of American Indian sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria Jr, V. 2000. Traditional technology. In Power and place: Indian education in America, ed. V. Deloria Jr, and D. Wildcat, 57–65. Golden: Fulcrum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmarais, A.A., and H. Wittman. 2014. Farmers, foodies and First Nations: getting to food sovereignty in Canada. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–21. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876623.

  • Edelman, M. 2014. Food sovereignty: forgotten genealogies and future regulatory challenges. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–20. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876998.

  • Fanon, F. 1965. The wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez, C. 2003. Coming full circle: A young Man’s perspective on building gender equality in Aboriginal communities. In Strong women stories: Native vision and survival, ed. K. Anderson, and B. Lawrence, 242–254. Toronto: Sumach Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forbes, J. 2008. Columbus and other cannibals. New York: Seven Stories.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. 1973. The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gabriel, E. 2011. Aboriginal women’s movement: A quest for self-determination. Aboriginal Policy Studies 1(1): 183–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh, K. 2010. Indigenous incitements. In Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education, and culture, ed. D. Kapoor, and E. Shizha, 35–46. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, N. 2011. Fanonian practices in South Africa. Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • GRAIN. 2005. Food sovereignty: turning the global food system upside down. Seedling. http://www.grain.org/article/entries/491-food-sovereignty-turning-the-global-food-system-upside-down.

  • Greenwood, M., and S. de Leew. 2007. Teachings from the land: Indigenous people, our health, our land, and our people. Canadian Journal of Native Education 30(1): 48–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Health Canada. 2007. Eating well with Canada’s food guide. In First Nations, Inuit and Métis, ed. Health Canada. Ottawa: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada.

  • Henninger-Voss, M.J. 2002. Animals in human history: The mirror of nature and culture. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holly, M. 1990. Handsome Lake’s teachings: The shift from female to male agriculture in Iroquois culture—an essay in ethnophilosophy. Agriculture and Human Values 7(3/4): 80–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holt-Giménez, E. 2006. Campesino a campesino: Voices from Latin America’s farmer to farmer movement for sustainable agriculture. Oakland: Food First Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, M. 1999. Impact of globalization on marginalized societies and the strategies of indigenous people. In Alternatives to globalization: Proceedings of International Conference on Alternatives to Globalization, ed. Anthony Tujan, 101–106. Manila: IBON Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jenks, A.E. 1901. The wild rice gatherers of the Upper Lakes: A study in American primitive economics. Washington: Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, B. 1995. The manitous. New York: Harper-Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapoor, D., and E. Shizha. 2010. Indigenous knowledge and learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa: Perspectives on development, education, and culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kidwell, C.S. 1994. What would Pocahontas think now? Women and cultural persistence. Callaloo 17(1): 149–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kloppenburg, J. 2014. Re-purposing the master’s tools: The open source seed initiative and the struggle for seed sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–22. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.875897.

  • Kuokkanen, R. 2012. Self-determination and Indigenous women’s rights at the intersection of international human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 34(1): 225–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campesina, La Via. 1996. Tlaxcala declaration. Tlaxcala: La Via Campesina.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaDuke, W. 2006. The people belong to the land. In Paradigm wars: Indigenous peoples’ resistance to globalization, ed. V. Tauli-Corpuz, and J. Mander, 23–25. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaDuke, W. 2005. Recovering the sacred: The power of naming and claiming. Cambridge: South End Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaDuke, W. 2008. Wild rice: Maps, genes and patents. Co-Op Reporter, 26–27. Sacramento: Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op.

  • LaRocque, E. 1996. The colonization of a Native woman scholar. In Women of the First Nations: Power, wisdom, and strength, ed. C. Miller, and P. Chuchryk, 11–18. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucashenko, M. 1996. Violence against Indigenous women: Public and private dimensions. Violence Against Women 2(4): 378–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martínez-Torres, M.E., and P.M. Rosset. 2014. Diálogo de saberesin La Vía Campesina: Food sovereignty and agroecology. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–19. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.872632.

  • Martínez-Torres, M.E., and P.M. Rosset. 2010. La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement. Journal of Peasant Studies 37(1): 149–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D.B. 1994. Space, place, and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthews, T. 1998. “No one ever asks, what a man’s role in the revolution Is:” Gender and the politics of the Black Panther Party, 1966–1971. In The black panther party reconsidered: Reflections and scholarship, ed. C.E. Jones, 267–304. Baltimore: Black Classic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMichael, P. 2008. Development and social change: A global perspective. Thousand Oaks, London: Pine Forge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMichael, P. 2004. Global development and the corporate food regime. Symposium on New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development, XI World Congress of Rural Sociology. Trondheim.

  • McMichael, P. 2014. Historicizing food sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–25. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876999.

  • McMichael, P. 1992. Rethinking comparative analysis in a post-developmentalist context. International Social Science Journal 44(3): 351–366.

    Google Scholar 

  • Medicine, B. 1991. The hidden half lives. In Cante ohitika win (brave-hearted women): Images of Lakota women from the Pine Ridge Reservation South Dakota, ed. C. Reyer. Vermillion: University of South Dakota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, S.A. 2008. Native America writes back: The origin of the Indigenous paradigm in historiography. Wicazo Sa Review 23(2): 9–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MDNR. 2008. Natural wild rice in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

    Google Scholar 

  • Monture-Angus, P.A. 1995. Thunder in my soul: A Mohawk woman speaks. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, E.F., and E. Ostrom. 2005. Seeing the forest and the trees: Human-environment interactions in forest ecosystems. Cambridge, London: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, G.T. 1992. International law and politics: Toward a right to self-determination for Indigenous Peoples. In The state of Native America: Genocide, colonization, and resistance, ed. M.A. Jaimes, 55–86. Boston: South End Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrison, D. 2011. Indigenous food sovereignty: a model for social learning. In Food sovereignty in Canada: Creating just and sustainable food systems, ed. H. Wittman, A.A. Desmarais, and N. Wiebe, 97–113. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Onawa, A. 2010. Will the real wild rice please stand up?. St. Paul: Hampden Park Co-Op.

    Google Scholar 

  • Patel, R. 2009. What does food sovereignty look like? Journal of Peasant Studies 36(3): 663–673.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patel, R. 2006. Transgressing rights: La Via Campesina’s call for food sovereignty. Feminist Economics 13(1): 87–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pithouse, R. 2006. Rethinking public participation from below. Critical Dialogue 2: 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pithouse, R. 2003. ‘That the tool never possess the man’: Taking Fanon’s humanism seriously. Politikon 30: 107–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, K. 1944. The great transformation. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pope Paul III 1537. Sublimus dei. Papal Encyclicals Online. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm.

  • Pratt, M.L. 2007. Afterword: Indigeneity today. In Indigenous experience today, ed. M. de la Cadena, and O. Starn, 397–404. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pulido, L. 2006. Black, brown, yellow, and left: Radical activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley, London: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • R. v. Sparrow. 1990 1 S.C.R. 1075.

  • RCAP. 1996. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal PeoplesVolume II: Restructuring the Relationship. Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

  • Robertson, T. 2005. White Earth members seek ban on genetically modified wild rice. Minnesota Public Radio (8 March).

  • Rosset, P. 2003. Food sovereignty: Global rallying cry of farmer movements. Oakland: Institute for Food and Development Policy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salmón, E. 2000. Kincentric ecology: Indigenous perception of the human-nature relationship. Ecological Applications 10(5): 1327–1332.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searles, E. 2002. Food and the making of modern Inuit identities. Agriculture and Human Values 10(1): 55–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, K. 2008. Indigeneity and political theory: Sovereignty and the limits of the political. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silva, N., and D. Nelson. 2005. Hidden kitchens. Emmaus: Rodale Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. 2007. Native American feminism, sovereignty and social change. In Making space for Indigenous feminism, ed. J. Green, 93–107. Black Point & London: Fernwood.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, L.T. 1999. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stavenhagen, R. 2006. Indigenous Peoples: Land, territory, autonomy and self-determination. In Promised land: Competing visions of agrarian reform, ed. M. Courville, R. Patel, and P. Rosset, 208–220. Oakland: Food First Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trask, H. 1993. From a Native daughter: Colonialism and soverignty in Hawai’i. Monroe: Common Courage Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tully, J. 2000. The struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of freedom. In Political theory and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. D. Ivison, P. Patton, and W. Sanders, 36–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, N. 2003. Passing on the news: Women’s work, traditional knowledge and plant resource management in Indigenous societies of north-western North America. In Women and plants: Gender relations in biodiversity management and conservation, ed. P.L. Howard, 133–149. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, N.J. 2005. The Earth’s blanket: Traditional teachings for sustainable living. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

    Google Scholar 

  • Udel, L.J. 2001. Revision and resistance: The politics of Native women’s motherwork. Frontiers A Journal of Women Studies 22(2): 43–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van der Ploeg, J.D. 2014. Peasant-driven agricultural growth and food sovereignty. Journal of Peasant Studies 1–32. doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876997.

  • Van Gelder, S. 2008. An interview with Winona LaDuke. Yes! Magazine. Bainbridge Island, Washington: Positive Futures Network.

  • Vennum, T. 1988. Wild rice and the Ojibway people. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Via Campesina. 2006. What is food sovereignty? Food sovereignty and trade. http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/food-sovereignty-and-trade-mainmenu-38/33-food-sovereignty.

  • Waziyatawin. 2008. What does justice look like?. St. Paul: Living Justice Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wicanhpi Iyotan Win. 2010. In defense of our own foods. Áŋpaó Dúta 2. Minnesota: Áŋpaó Dúta.

  • Wilson, A.C. 2005. Reclaiming our humanity: Decolonization and the recovery of Indigenous knowledge. In War and border crossings: Ethics when cultures clash, ed. P.A. French, and J.A. Short, 255–263. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woody, E. 1998. Voice of the land: Giving the good word. In Speaking for the generations: Native writers on writing, ed. S.J. Ortiz, 148–173. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wooster, R. 1988. The military and United States Indian policy 1865–1903. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Youngblood Henderson, J. 2000. Postcolonial ghost dancing. In Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision, ed. M. Battiste, 57–76. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for editorial and reviewer comments in improving this piece, and extend thanks to the members of the Indigenous Studies Workshop at the University of Victoria for their valuable feedback. The usual disclaimer applies.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sam Grey.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Grey, S., Patel, R. Food sovereignty as decolonization: some contributions from Indigenous movements to food system and development politics. Agric Hum Values 32, 431–444 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9548-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9548-9

Keywords

Navigation