Build and Broaden: Build and Broaden Indigenous Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Symposium

The Build and Broaden Indigenous Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Symposium will provide opportunities for researchers, practitioners and community members to share common interests in the field of Indigenous agriculture and foods. Content of the symposium will be focused on four major themes in the area of Indigenous foods: ecology, economy, diversity, and sovereignty.

Symposium attendees will view presentations, engage in discussions, and participate in hands-on demonstrations regarding Indigenous foods. Sovereignty is defined as self-governance, authority, jurisdiction and agency, thus Indigenous food sovereignty means Indigenous people have the authority, agency and ability to define what is food, how food should be grown, cared for, harvested, processed, consumed, and related to.

As Indigenous people everywhere struggle yet persevere in redefining all their relationships, this relationship to the plant and animal worlds is key to deepening the ancient relationships all people have to their ancestral and adopted foods. This project will help bring these newly defined relationships to all the people living across Turtle Island (North America) through its objectives and outcomes, including proceedings.

Indigenous foods are under-researched in our society, and as such, only scant evidence exists regarding contemporary scholarly work in this area. Symposia like this are vital to the collective understanding of the relationships between humans and food in general, and Indigenous foods specifically. It is estimated that currently, only five of the regularly occurring events focused on food studies across the nation are focused on Indigenous foods.

Given the unique status of American Indian tribes in the US, it is important to develop a shared understanding of sovereignty in relation to food and food systems. Lastly, the relationship between traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and scientific ecological knowledge (SEK) in relation to Indigenous foods, although little studied, has the potential to address food insecurity worldwide.

TEK and SEK studies of Indigenous foods are both core to addressing world food shortages, health and nutrition, and Indigenous/non-Indigenous rights.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.