Grant: College & Community Social Innovation Fund

Food insecurity is a major problem affecting Indigenous communities across Canada. Nearly half of individuals living on ancestral lands experience a lack of access to safe and nutritious foods that are culturally important. The decline in traditional food consumption results in cultural food insecurity and increases the prevalence of health-related issues in affected communities. To promote cultural food security, develop food sovereignty, and improve the health of individuals living in remote Indigenous communities in Alberta, our study proposes to help community partner members cultivate orchards of foods native to their ancestral lands. The overall goals of this project are to: (1) Identify traditional and local plants of interest with our partnered communities, (2) Establish and maintain orchards of culturally important plants to produce a stable supply of traditional foods, (3) Train partnered communities to collect seeds, propagate species, solve plant-related issues, and establish and monitor orchards for food production, and (4) Increase the awareness and knowledge of traditionally important foods within Indigenous communities by engaging youth and hosting learning workshops. Our community orchard project aims to decolonize Indigenous food systems by establishing growing spaces for traditional plants and by engaging and empowering Indigenous peoples on their ancestral lands. We intend for these community orchards to be a method to preserve Indigenous traditions and culture, bring people together, and help improve residents’ physical and mental well-being. Successful results will help to initiate similar programs across Alberta and Canada. These orchard programs can eventually be expanded to help provide Indigenous peoples living in urban areas with traditional foods. The results from this project will also be published under open access to help researchers understand the costs and challenges associated with growing traditional plants in remote areas to help achieve food security in Indigenous communities.