Methodology and Conceptual Framework

Key Findings

It is challenging to measure food security, given the diversity and complexity of Canadian Aboriginal peoples and of their food systems in the northern context.

Studies on food (in)security vary in scale, scope, depth, and method. As a result, it is difficult to compare data sets to identify geographical and temporal trends and patterns in food security.

Both traditional and Western scientific knowledge represent valuable sources of evidence for food (in)security among Aboriginal peoples in northern Canada.

The literature on northern food security lacks a universally accepted analytical framework that can fully explain how social, cultural, and material conditions are linked, as well as the transformations driving changes in diet and ways of life in northern Aboriginal communities.

Tackling food insecurity in northern Canada head on requires conceptualizing it first and foremost as an issue that affects human well-being. The Panel’s conceptual framework is explicitly people-centred and presents the complex interplay between northern Aboriginal peoples and their cultures, rights, resources, health, and the broader “framing” factors contextualizing these issues. This approach emphasizes the direct and serious impacts of food (in)security on people’s lives and livelihoods.

Further research is required to clarify the processes by which some of the factors in the Panel’s framework, such as gender, and knowledge and preferences, act as enablers of or barriers to food security for diverse groups of northern Aboriginal peoples.

This chapter introduces the Panel’s methodology and approach to the assessment, along with the Council’s standard assessment process. The chapter begins by describing the data sources from published peer-reviewed literature and explaining how the Panel incorporated diverse Western and traditional knowledge sources into the assessment. It goes on to introduce a conceptual framework to visualize and convey the complex inter-relationships that allow for a holistic understanding of food security for northern Aboriginal peoples. The Panel developed this framework to overcome the lack of an adequate framework in the literature. The central themes of the framework are then discussed, followed by the “inner wheel” factors, “outer wheel” factors, and “framing” factors that exist within the framework.

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2.1 METHODOLOGY

To undertake the assessment, the Council appointed a multidisciplinary panel of national and international experts that included Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars with northern expertise in nutrition and non-Aboriginal health, environmental and health sciences, wildlife biology, economics, and technology, along with anthropology, sociology, history, law, and human rights. Panellists had in common extensive experience working with Aboriginal communities;

most had lived and worked in northern communities, and many continue to do so. The broad range of expert perspectives was necessary to create a balanced and well-rounded report. The Panel met five times over 15 months to draft content and discuss findings. A draft version was peer-reviewed by 11 experts appointed by the Council, and comments were responded to accordingly.

2.1.1 Sources of Evidence: Traditional and Western Knowledge

Council reports are primarily based on peer-reviewed, published academic literature. This report incorporates the literature of the natural, social, and health sciences, as well as published academic literature and credible grey literature that deals with traditional knowledge. The Panel considers traditional knowledge on a par with academic research. A model for respectfully bridging traditional and Western knowledge is the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a project guided by the Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee (ACIA, 2005). The Panel took a similar approach in its assessment.

Panel members brought to the assessment an informed body of knowledge on northern food security and health issues, much of it based on collaborative research projects with northern Aboriginal peoples. The Panel determined that because food security for northern Aboriginal peoples is multidimensional, a variety of perspectives, experience, and knowledge is required to fully understand its scope. Since Council methodology precludes direct stakeholder consultation, the Panel felt that effectively responding to the charge would require incorporating all available evidence sources, including those stemming from traditional knowledge and grey literature. As a result, the Panel sought the cooperation of national Aboriginal organizations and others to seek out additional evidence. The Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Circumpolar Council (Canada), the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and the Métis National Council were contacted. In addition, evidence was obtained from key individuals from Inuit Tuttarvingat and the National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO, no longer in existence); the Government of Nunavut and Government of the Northwest Territories; Nutrition North Canada; Health Canada’s Food Security Reference Group; Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada’s Northern Contaminants Program; and Statistics Canada.

Guided by its conceptual framework (described in Section 2.2), as well as by the expertise of its members, the Panel reviewed the following types of evidence:

• books and journal articles;

• information about ongoing northern research projects (e.g., posters, abstracts, websites), particularly from collaborative and participatory projects incorporating the expertise of northern Aboriginal peoples;

• studies and documents commissioned or prepared by the four Aboriginal organizations contacted and noted above;

• grey literature in the form of reports, documents, and presentations from territorial governments and departments, federal departments and programs including AANDC’s Northern Contaminants Program and Health Canada’s Food Security Reference Group, and international organizations including the Arctic Council, the UN, and the FAO;

• northern Aboriginal population and health statistics from reports and databases (e.g., International Polar Year (IPY) adult and child Inuit Health Surveys, Nunavik Inuit Health Survey, First Nations Regional Health Survey, First Nations Food, Nutrition and Environment Study, Statistics Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples Survey, Canadian Census, National Household Survey, and Canadian Community Health Survey);

• news articles that added context to current issues and trends that were not yet documented in the academic literature; and

• documents obtained through conference attendance, including the IPY 2011 Conference (Montréal, April 2012) and the Nunavut Food Security Symposium (Iqaluit, January 2013).

While the Panel had a rich evidence base from which to respond to the charge, it noted that useful and critical evidence also lies with traditional knowledge holders who have lived experience in northern Canada. A comprehensive review of northern food security derived from first-hand knowledge has yet to be undertaken in Canada.

2.1.2 Measuring Food Security

Appropriate measurement of food (in)security is essential for building food and economic aid strategies, reinforcing global monitoring systems, and assessing and informing program and policy responses (Jones et al., 2013). Globally, multiple approaches to measuring food (in)security exist. However, as a 2013 compendium and review of measurement tools revealed, there are a number of measurement challenges such as measuring dietary adequacy, differentiating between components of food access, identifying cut-off points for defining food insecurity, acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of various metrics, moderating response bias, and validating measures (Jones et al., 2013).

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In December 2012, the Arctic Human Health Expert Group of the Arctic Council organized a workshop on food security, with the goal of providing a basis for the selection of indicators relevant to food and water security in the circumpolar context. The background report (Nilsson & Evengård, 2012) noted that, as of 1999, approximately 200 definitions and 450 indicators of food security had been developed (Hoddinott, 1999). As an example, food access indicators identified included food security scores; monetary food costs; non-monetary food accessibility; the presence of a hunter, fisher, or collector in a family; and the physical ability (equipment, game close at hand, etc.) for hunting, fishing, collecting, or herding. The Nilsson and Evengård report represents a first step towards obtaining general agreement on the value of several indicators appropriate to understanding northern Canada — indicators that can be used to monitor change and drive collaboration between Arctic Council member states and permanent Indigenous participants (Nilsson & Evengård, 2012).

Much of the available information on the health conditions of northern Canadian Aboriginal populations is based on many smaller regional and community studies, in addition to a small number of large national surveys.

The Panel noted that although these do contribute some information to the state of knowledge on food security and health in northern Canada, they cover different geographic areas and populations and do not always use comparable methods of data collection, thus making it difficult to draw conclusions across communities. Even when similar types of data are collected, differences in methodology, target populations, definitions used, and geographic coverage can render the data incomparable (Loppie Reading & Wien, 2009). This has implications for policy formation. The Panel also noted the significance of the limited gender-specific data relating to food security given the impact of food insecurity on women. Further, there is limited peer-reviewed and grey literature on Métis and food security.

In summary, food security measurement methods used to date have been valuable, but their ability to respond to the complexity of dimensions underlying food security in the Canadian Aboriginal and northern context is limited. This limits the extent to which (a) researchers can understand the inter-relationships between health and food systems across regions at the individual and community levels, and (b) northern Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the circumpolar world can identify common issues affecting their respective regions to work in partnership to mitigate food insecurity. While these challenges represent barriers to a full understanding of the scope of the problem, research to date clearly shows that food insecurity is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by all available means for the health of northern Aboriginal peoples. To aid in

the selection of appropriate food security metrics for future research projects, Jones et al. (2013) suggest that it is important to identify the specific components of food security that are to be measured; the data’s intended application and purpose; the timeframe to be measured (e.g., chronic versus acute food insecurity); whether or not the survey is intended to have multiple iterations;

the scale (e.g., household, national); and the resources that are available.

2.1.3 More on Traditional Knowledge: Definitions and History

Terms such as Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, traditional knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge, Aboriginal knowledge, and Indigenous ecological knowledge or Indigenous knowledge are used to describe knowledge and ways of knowing developed by Indigenous peoples. Many of the definitions of traditional knowledge share the element of intergenerational knowledge transmission, as exemplified by Huntington’s (1998) description of traditional knowledge as “a system of experiential knowledge gained by continual observation and transmitted among members of a community,” and that of Brant (in Bombay, 1996), who characterized knowledge transmission as “a body of information about the connected elements of the natural environment which traditional Indigenous people have been taught, from generation to generation.”

In Canada, the Traditional Knowledge Working Group of the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) was one of the first government policy-makers to attempt to define traditional knowledge (see Legat, 1991). In 1997 the GNWT established a government-wide traditional knowledge policy (Traditional Knowledge Policy 53.03), whereby

the Government recognizes that Aboriginal traditional knowledge is a valid and essential source of information about the natural environment and its resources, the use of natural resources, and the relationship of people to the land and to each other, and will incorporate traditional knowledge into government decisions and actions where appropriate (GNWT, 2005).

The Government of Nunavut similarly incorporated Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit — “that which Inuit have always known to be true” — into official government decision-making (Tagalik, 2010). Several international organizations acknowledge the value of traditional knowledge and actively incorporate it into their reports, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (Nakashima et al., 2012); the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, n.d.); the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, n.d.); the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB, 2006); the United Nations Conference on

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Trade and Development (UNU-IAS, 2013); and UNESCO and the International Council for Science (ICS, 2002). Traditional knowledge also informs many of the publications of the Arctic Council. For the Canadian Chairmanship (2013–2015), the Minister responsible for the Arctic Council, Leona Aglukkaq, has prioritized the challenges facing the peoples of the Arctic and recognized the importance of traditional knowledge to their ways of life (Aglukkaq at Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, 2013).

2.2 THE PANEL’S APPROACH TO THE ASSESSMENT: