Planting Seeds for Urban Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Growing SOAHAC’s Traditional Food Bag Program

The Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre (SOAHAC) originated twenty-five years ago to offer a blend of biomedical care and traditional healing to Indigenous Peoples living in the city of London, Ontario. High patient incidence of chronic health conditions led SOAHAC to engage in participatory research to assess patterns and determinants of Indigenous food security in London. Results demonstrated high levels of food insecurity, especially among single-mother-led families, and a strong desire for increased access to traditional foods. These efforts coincided with the creation of SOAHAC’s Traditional Food Bag Program, created to offer traditional foods through its broader Indigenous Food Bank offering. This research program aims to support and expand the current activities of SOAHAC’s traditional food bag Program.

This project is led by Dr. Chantelle Richmond at the University of Western Ontario, and funded by the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR).

The purpose of this Indigenous-led, community-engaged research is to….

  • 1

    Document how participants make meaning of traditional foods in their everyday lives, including how they access and/or gather, use, prepare and share traditional foods in their homes and with their families.

  • 2

    Examine if and how the Traditional Food Bag Program fosters a place for participants to express and deepen their sense of Indigenous identity and right to be Indigenous in the urban environment, including how it offers spaces of healing, wellness, and connection.

  • 3

    Illustrate how participants of the Traditional Food Bag Program interact with and care for urban spaces and one another.

  • 4

    To create rich, well-supported spaces to grow, evaluate and share participant knowledge of diverse Traditional Foods in an urban health-care setting.

The SRM Lab will mostly work under objective 3.

We aim to assist in these efforts by collating existing data sources on potential contamination risks (e.g., real-time stormwater overflows, brownfield sites and land use history), and supplementing with primary soil, water, plant, and animal sampling to fill knowledge gaps identified together with community members. Foraging and mapping may also occur.

Filling data gaps with primary sampling will focus on relevant ecological and human health compounds which will depend on the crops and animals harvested, the method of harvesting, and site history. These compounds may include heavy metals (e.g., mercury), novel contaminants (e.g., PFSAs), or bacteria (e.g., fecal e-coli in water).

Our focus will be on bringing information together in a way that matches temporal and spatial variability in resource use in a way that allows participants to learn the land. We will work closely with SOAHAC to ensure that any findings that affect public health are managed appropriately.