"Our Original Instructions: Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Anishinaabe Youth Education in the Twin Cities"
Live stream with option to engage in person at 537 Heller Hall (ICGC)
Abstract: How can Indigenous food sovereignty offer decolonial possibilities for Native youth education? Food sovereignty has been defined in the Declaration of Nyéléni as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food [and] the right to define their own food & agriculture systems.” While the practice of food sovereignty in Indigenous communities is not new, this term has gained popularity in the last few decades as a way for Indigenous people to reclaim food systems, traditions, language, and health. This talk considers how Indigenous food sovereignty offers pathways towards educational reclamation, with a particular focus on Ojibwe epistemologies and land-based learning in the Twin Cities Native American community.
About the Speaker
Phoebe Young is a Saginaw Chippewa descendant from Michigan, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in History and Ethnic Studies and worked in Minneapolis as the Community Programs Coordinator at Dream of Wild Health. She plans to study how resource extraction during the twentieth century in the Midwest has affected tribal sovereignty in Ojibwe communities, and how food sovereignty has served as a revitalization of culture, history, and tradition in the midst of these extraction projects. She hopes to develop this research into an indigenous food sovereignty curriculum for high school students.