FRAMING FACTORS

The six contextual factors (themes of discussion), intergenerational well-being, economies, environmental change, place, gender, and colonialism, provide a broader context wherein each enables or acts as a barrier to food security, food sovereignty, and the livelihood and well-being of northern Aboriginal peoples.

Each contextual factor (hereafter noted as factor) is linked in multidirectional relationships with northern Aboriginal peoples and the issues affecting their food security and food sovereignty. For example, community assets can be activated to build culture and health, with positive implications for intergenerational well-being; and, similarly, the degree to which intergenerational well-being is achieved has implications for individual and community health and culture.

Blackstock (2008) notes:

Aboriginal peoples view themselves as a link in a long chain of people who have come before and those who will follow. In this context, you are special to the extent that you live in a good way and pass along the information and values necessary to sustain your group across time.

Intergenerational well-being is both a requirement for food security (e.g., the health and well-being of community members and individuals enable them to pass along traditional knowledge, skills, and values) and an outcome of food security (e.g., health and well-being are promoted by and through access to nutritious traditional/country and market food). Intergenerational well-being is important to the overall picture of Aboriginal community health and wellness, as well as to the connection community members have to their land and culture. Without a factor that attends to the continuity across generations and the historical traumas and losses Aboriginal people have experienced, the contemporary realities of food insecurity and resultant poor health outcomes could not be fully articulated, nor could ideas for empowering strategies that enable people to maximize their human potential.

Economies as a framing factor speaks to how people’s modes of living, including obtaining food, differ in the North from other parts of Canada. This factor highlights the North’s mixed economic model, which combines traditional (subsistence) and market (wage) economies, both of which are tied to greater economic currents and to rapidly changing realities in communities and households. Market food is costly to import and distribute in the North.

Methods for obtaining traditional food (such as caribou, seal, and whale) are both capital- and labour-intensive (requiring gas, boats, all-terrain vehicles, snow machines, rifles, ammunition, and time on the land). Wage economies are one piece of this issue, but do not encapsulate the larger concepts of consumerism and capitalism that contribute to issues surrounding environmental change, intergenerational well-being, and even understanding of place. Poverty and the complex socio-economic realities that individuals and communities face constitute but a few issues that provoke adaptive and resilient behaviours resulting in complex combinations of wage-earning and traditional activities to provide food.

The literature calls for more interdisciplinary and integrated research addressing the interactions between food security and global environmental change (Ingram et al., 2010). Environmental change is occurring rapidly in the Arctic, with implications across the framework and strong links to both food security and food sovereignty. In the North, more so than in other regions of the world,

33 Chapter 2 Methodology and Conceptual Framework

environmental change has significant impacts on food systems, given that Aboriginal livelihoods are closely linked with climate, weather, and ecosystems that support and affect hunting, fishing, trapping, and other food procurement activities. Climate change and the resulting sea-ice loss and permafrost melt (ACIA, 2004) are changing access to wildlife and other traditional food, and may play a significant role in the uptake of market-based food of “lesser quality and cultural relevance” in northern communities (Ericksen et al., 2010).

Although northern Aboriginal peoples have always lived with and responded to climate variability and change, such resilience has been facilitated by highly adaptable cultural practices. Younger generations may be more at risk due to their lack of experience in hunting and to changing social circumstances that offer them less access to experienced hunters (Ford et al., 2006). “Putting the human face on climate change” (Nickels et al., 2005) requires analysis at all levels to understand how communities are both vulnerable and adapting to rapid environmental change.

As a place, the Canadian North has unique geographic, cultural, political, and historical features that require attention at the broadest level of analysis. While northern communities vary physically, socially, culturally, and economically, most are situated in remote areas and this creates enablers of and barriers to food security and food sovereignty that must be considered. Further, Aboriginal peoples have important connections with their lands, and this linkage between place and health contributes to cultural, spiritual, emotional, physical, and social well-being that is important in understanding northern communities (Wilson, 2003).

Gender consistently intersects with the other variables in the framework.

Although women play an important role in achieving food security at several levels, they tend to be disproportionately affected by food insecurity, hunger, and poverty on a global scale (OUNHCR & FAO, 2010). In northern Canada, too, results from the limited studies on this topic suggest that women tend to have specific food security concerns related to feeding their children (Healey &

Meadows, 2008), and Canadian Inuit women are more likely than men to be food insecure (Ford & Berrang-Ford, 2009). The Panel noted the paucity of data both at the household level and particularly at the gender level.

As a final point, the Panel recognized the significant impact of colonialism, and environmental dispossession, on food security for northern Aboriginal peoples, and considered it a fundamental factor. Aboriginal peoples’ struggle with the impacts of colonialism consists in large part of efforts to redress the consequences of being forcibly removed from the land or being denied access to the land to continue traditional cultural activities, as well as the psychological,

physical, and financial effects of dispossession (Alfred, 2009). One of the most powerful methods of assimilation was the residential school system, which is

“often considered the vanguard of genocide and re-socialization of Aboriginal peoples” (Loppie Reading & Wien, 2009). The effects of colonialism and residential schooling have been widespread and, in many cases, traumatic.

Without parents and Elders to pass on their knowledge, generations of children were unable to acquire skills and knowledge in traditional approaches to the land, harvesting, survival, and social support, with clear implications for food security and food sovereignty.

35 Chapter 3 Food Insecurity: The Scope of the Problem

• Rates of Food Insecurity

• Food Security and Links to Health

• Conclusions

3

Food Insecurity: The Scope of the Problem