Reviving food diversity through Indigenous knowledge

This NPR piece -- How Native American Tribes Saved A Giant, Ancient Squash From Oblivion -- offers an interesting example for thinking about the everyday impacts of colonization through changing eating habits and the cultivation of food. For many of the indigenous peoples in this story, the revival of 'lost' ancient foods like the giant Gete Okosman squash also represents cultural healing and revival in their communities.

The seed library maintained by the Jijak Foundation contains dozens of native varieties of corn, beans, tobacco, watermelon and ancient squash.  |  Rebecca Williams/Michigan Radio

Through the creation of a native seed library, the Jijak Foundation in Michigan is sharing the oral history of the seeds, reviving these 'lost' foods, and traditional farming techniques.

A Short Resource Guide to Food, Race, and Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation has been almost a buzzword lately, giving us anthropologists a lot of popular culture fodder on the topic -- and perhaps more importantly, spurring critical discussion about issues of power, cultural difference, and respect in the public sphere.

While many of these discussions have focused on fashion, or the ongoing debate about racist mascots in sports, we are less likely to see how cultural appropriation is also an issue in relation to food. In this piece, Bitch magazine has put together "A Short Resource Guide to Food, Race, and Cultural Appropriation" (2016), which includes video, podcasts, and texts on the issue.

I suggest that you get a snack before reading through the links.

Quick links and further reading:

• A Short Resource Guide to Food, Race, and Cultural Appropriation (2016, Bitch)
• anthro everywhere!'s past posts on cultural appropriation
• Tracing the erased histories & diaspora traditions in Southern cooking (17 February 2016, anthro everywhere!)

Local food, global labour

The globalized movement of things, money, ideas, images and people has become more frequent and normal than any time in history. This is especially the case for those of us in North America, where what we eat has travelled to our grocery stores from across the world. This concern for where our food comes from has prompted many people to "eat local" and champion the idea of farm-to-table meals.

But, something that we usually don't consider about our "100-mile diets" is the labour of growing and harvesting these local foods. The reality often is that the people who work on the farms and in factories where our food is processed are migrant labourers. And, as we have seen in the Canadian case, even though many of these workers arrive through legal channels, they often lack the kinds of labour and human rights we expect in Canada.

In this piece from CBC Radio, you can hear a discussion about the problems with Canadian labour programs like the temporary and seasonal farm worker programs. In this discussion, social justice activist Chris Ramsaroop (Justice for Migrant Workers) discusses how these programs are actually part of broader processes of systemic racism, and global economic inequalities between the Global North and Global South.

Quick links and further reading:

• Local food lovers, pay attention to migrant worker rights (CBC Radio, 2016) - running time: 11.08 minutes.
• Desmond Cole writes about The shame of our disposable workers (Toronto Star, 2016), with reference to Jamaican farm worker Sheldon McKenzie who died in September 2015 due to a workplace injury after participating in circular labour migration for the past 13 years.
• The Metcalf Foundation's report Made in Canada: How the Law Constructs Migrant Workers’ Insecurity (2012) provides a comprehensive overview of migrant labour in Canada

Tracing the erased histories & diaspora traditions in Southern cooking

Michael Twitty is an independent researcher and teacher whose work explores the impact of the African roots and traditions of American Southern cooking -- which have been largely erased from history. He has a background in African American studies and anthropology from Howard University. Twitty is the founder of The Cooking Gene project, and blogs about "Culinary Traditions of Africa, African America and the African Diaspora" on Afroculinaria.com.

The Washington Post's Michaele Weissman wrote about Twitty and his work here: "His Paula Deen takedown went viral. But this food scholar isn’t done yet." (16 February 2016)