Violence as care: Indigenous policy and settler colonialism

In this chapter, the author discusses how Indigenous People are enacting food sovereignty and revitalising our sacred relationships to our ancestral homelands. The author asserts that food sovereignty must honour the wisdom and values of ancestral knowledge in maintaining responsible and respectful relationships with the natural world. Hence, for Tseshaht/Nuu-chah-nulth people, food sovereignty is grounded in our philosophies of ʔuʔaałuk, to take care of, ʔiisaak, to be respectful, and hišukʔiš c̓awaak, everything is interconnected. The author analyses how/if Indigenous food sovereignty can be realised through Canadian domestic policy reform, utilising articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a framework. The chapter argues that, while political and legal recognition of Indigenous rights can be significant to Indigenous self-determination and food sovereignty, placing emphasis on a rights-based discourse that focuses on state political and legal recognition of Indigenous rights rather than food sovereignty initiatives within our communities is to be questioned.