Just Food Project: Agriculture as a Colonial Project

Introduction

The legacy of the settler-colonial concept of terra nullius, the principle that no one inhabited these lands before European settlers arrived, has shaped historical and contemporary agricultural land use across Turtle Island. Colonial conceptions of land as unowned and underutilized prior to European settlement continues to invisibilize Indigenous peoples’ territories and relational understandings of land.

Map of Indigenous territories in what is predominantly called Canada.

Coast Salish territories encompass areas of what is dominantly named British Columbia and Washington State, and comprise the ancestral territories of many diverse Indigenous nations (see native-land.ca for a better picture of the diverse territories and communities). These lands have been a source of nutritional abundance and sustenance due to their proximity to the ocean and its climate, in the form of traditional foodways such as berries, birds, many types of fish, and other native plants. The moderate temperatures and long growing season also allow for the production of a wide range of food, fibre, and fuel crops. Historical and contemporary settler land use policies have protected and prioritized land for private agricultural production. However, the majority of the Province of British Columbia is composed of unceded Indigenous territories. While farmland is a critical component to local food security, how does this relate to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their territories, contemporary efforts of decolonization and truth and reconciliation, and contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism in agricultural policy?

Key Themes: Agriculture, Settler Colonialism, Land, Self-Governance, Indigenous Foodways, Policy and Planning, Sovereignty, Epistemic justice, Decolonization

Learning Outcomes

1. Characterize settler-colonial agricultural production systems and policies.
2. Compare historical agricultural policies with contemporary examples of settler colonialism in food systems.
3. Identify key areas in which to apply decolonization efforts.

Background

Introduction

Settler colonialism has significantly impacted Indigenous peoples living on Turtle Island, or what has come to be dominantly named “North America”. European settlers subjected Indigenous communities to enduring domination and dispossession, resulting in significant enduring cultural, food insecurity, health and well-being, and multi-generational traumas within and across Indigenous communities. Settler colonialism is best understood as an ongoing structure rather than a historical event—oppressions of settler colonialism such as patterns of engagement with settler authorities continue to permeate the lives of Indigenous people. While the settler state actively works to oppress, silence, and marginalize Indigenous people, examples of resurgence, resistance, and reclamation of Indigenous ways of knowing and being are abundant.

Agricultural Colonialism

European settlers asserted control over land for resource use and settlements through the  creation of racialized agricultural spaces, violent dispossession of land, and the forced assimilation of Indigenous communities. These actions were connected to the idea of terra nullius and the belief that Indigenous people were primitive or “wild”. In reality, Indigenous peoples have been harvesting and cultivating native plants at the landscape level for generations. Historically, Indigenous food systems primarily involved fishing, hunting, gathering, and cultivating culturally important plants and animals. This system directly contradicted the privately owned and fenced fields of reduced ecological diversity associated with European crop farming.

In so-called Canada, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century policy targeting Indigenous peoples was influenced heavily by ‘betterment discourses’ , as European society viewed Indigenous people as ‘savages’ who required civilizing. Missionaries and government officials viewed agriculture as the best means to assimilate Indigenous peoples and create a shift from traditional to settler lifestyles.

Land Dispossession

Colonizers implemented land strategies to divide, conquer and assimilate Indigenous peoples into the colonial economy. In order to reinforce the permanence of colonization, new systems were developed to keep Indigenous people off the land and separated from their pre-colonial ways of living. To break Indigenous People’s relationship with their land, colonial powers enacted laws forbidding Indigenous cultural practices and forms of exchange in combination with forced displacement and resettlement of families on individual plots of land designated for private subsistence farming. Through the forced implementation of private land title, Indigenous peoples’ ability to practice traditional subsistence strategies was significantly decreased.

After land had been originally “awarded” to Indigenous people and communities by colonial authorities, under Canadian law these lands could be legally re-expropriated, but there were no provisions to accommodate increasing growth and resource needs of Indigenous communities. This relegated all Indigenous Peoples, who historically occupied the vast majority of what we today call Canada, to having rights to only 0.2% of the land. Even the land rights that were negotiated and designated for First Nations use were not fully protected. The same year that the Indian Act stopped prohibiting the assembly of Indigenous Peoples, the Allied Tribes of BC approached the Crown on matters related to land title, but a law was passed prohibiting the enlistment of lawyers, and/or raising money to pursue land claims on behalf of Indigenous communities.

The overt strategy to displace, disenfranchise, and impoverish Indigenous communities resulted in a series of historical moments, and enduring patterns of subjugation, where peoples were forced off of their traditional land, pushed into economic systems centering the individual, instead of the collective, and violently confined to spaces that did not correspond to their way of life.

Unequal Market Economy

After Indigenous Peoples were forced into participating in a market economy, policy has worked to further entrench settler colonialism. Bednasek and Godlewska, geographers at Queens University, and Tang, of the Western Development Museum and Indian Cultural Centre, outline the following three main agricultural policies that impacted Indigenous people:

1. Severalty Policy: Reserve land was subdivided into small acreage lots that provided little more than subsistence levels of food.
2. Peasant Policy: Indigenous people were restricted to only using simple hand tools and were not allowed to purchase modern farm equipment.
3. Pass and Permit System: These two systems restricted the ability of Indigenous farmers to leave the Reserve and to sell their goods and services to people off-Reserve.

It was also made illegal for Indigenous people to participate in commercial fishing. Already experiencing a reduced access to credit due to institutional racism in the financial sector, Indigenous communities were also barred from cooperatively purchasing and sharing agricultural inputs such as machinery or fertilizer by both private and public institutions. Private property rights were theoretically implemented to sedentarise and “civilise” First Nations people but these policies actively blocked them from effectively participating in settler agricultural practices. In the few cases where Indigenous people were allowed to participate in the market economy that was meant to “civilize” them, they did not have access to the same toolset as settler farmers that operated on a comparable scale.

Wolfe paints a vivid picture of how, across multiple social contexts of settler colonialism, Indigenous communities successfully adapted their way of living to participate in a market economy but were still violently displaced from their resettled land. In these cases, the only way to successfully eke out a living without fear of reprisal from state or private actors was for individuals to distance themselves from their indigeneity or to sell off and abandon their privately held land entirely.

Self-Perpetuating Colonial System

Settler colonialism does not just exist at one point in time, but is an ongoing process that is “a structure and not an event.” Euro-centric understandings of sovereignty are based on land as “property that can be enclosed, owned and controlled.” The hegemony of this Euro-centric understanding of sovereignty, reinforced through market based instruments, is a “soft” tool that continues to further the colonial land strategy of dividing, conquering, and assimilating Indigenous peoples into the colonial economy. Since Indigenous people could not gain the same amount of value from privately farmed land that settlers were able to due to discriminatory market conditions, many of those who were not forced off of their private land sold it below market price to settler farmers. Legal title and market-based instruments have served, and continue to serve to remove from and keep Indigenous Peoples off their land.

Contemporary Manifestations of settler colonialism in the Food System

Settler colonialism as a process functions in contemporary agricultural policy and practice in two main ways. The first is the terra nullius paradigm. Current agriculture, land use, and food systems policies continue to evolve while neglecting to incorporate traditional knowledge and important differences between settler and Indigenous relationships with land. The second and closely related process is accumulation by dispossession. Settler authorities, organisations and individuals continue to accumulate wealth through the further disenfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples.

The terra nullius paradigm continues to influence discourse within legal courts and agricultural land conservation. Take, for example, the treaty process in BC—“The land claims policy of Canada works from the assumption that the title vests in the Crown and that the Indians are making a ‘claim’ for our own lands and territories.“ Although it has been over 90 years since the laws banning lawyers from representing Indigenous nations in land claim suits was lifted, although the Canadian supreme court has repeatedly recognised Indigenous Peoples’ rights to the land in British Columbia, and Indigenous land tenure has been relatively well documented, every community is still consistently challenged to prove their rights to the land in settler courts. Indigenous Peoples, who are themselves nations, are forced to operate in a settler legal terrain to make claims on land they have traditionally occupied and cultivated.

Importantly, the philosophy of terra nullius continues to be seen in the “one size fits all” land management style employed by settler authorities. It is widely accepted that settler land use and resource extraction practices are not “sustainable,” and land management authorities are trying to protect the land from further degradation. Yet Indigenous conservation schemes, often shown to be best practices in conserving and fostering thriving ecosystems, are not considered and Indigenous voices are not included in policy discussion. Current settler conservation policy, in many cases,  is now also being used as a justification for continuing to keep Indigenous people off of the land. In some cases environmental and resource conservation is used by settler authorities to re-expropriate treaty land from Indigenous communities. Musqueam Chief Ernie Campbell puts it bluntly when referring to the case of BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR):

We didn’t put it in the Agricultural Land Reserve, they put it there without any consultation with us, the same thing they do with creating parks—when they create parks in our traditional territories, and they say because of the parks we have no access to them.

Awareness is emerging that environmental conservation done through a colonial lens is a tool for the Crown to continue accumulating territory and benefits from the land through the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples.

Accumulation by dispossession, the violent seizure and hoarding of resources by the powerful from the more vulnerable, is still an ongoing process in settler-Indigenous relations. It is legal, according to Canadian law, for the Crown to reclaim treaty land for their own purposes. Federal and Provincial governments continue to approve resource extraction projects on Indigenous territories even after Indigenous groups express their discontent or outright disapproval of the plans (citation needed). Dissent expressed by Indigenous groups in these cases is often violently silenced by settler communities and authorities (citation needed). The land is then taken over by the Crown, in many cases on behalf of private actors, and converted to a form of land use that further degrades the territory and surrounding environment (citation needed). Simultaneously, settler authorities are also expropriating land from Indigenous communities in the name of environmental stewardship to remedy damage done to the land by past settler activities. Given the Crown’s relatively unlimited resources and weak protection of Indigenous land, Indigenous territories are being treated as a land bank by settler authorities, and are being drawn from without consequence whether the land is to be used in the name of economic progress or environmental conservation.

Within the food system, the limitation of the size of, or access to, traditional territories and the availability of culturally appropriate, healthy foods have led to disproportionately negative impacts on health outcomes for Indigenous people. Food insecurity rates for Indigenous Peoples in Canada are much higher than the national average. A ten-year study of eight regions found that food insecurity rates in Indigenous communities was, on average, 48% between 2008 and 2018, whereas the highest national average of household food insecurity in Canada during that time period was 12.7%. As argued by de Leeuw et al., poor health can only be amended if “understood as geographically and historically determined, linked to colonial practices, and associated with dominant systems of social power”; failure to acknowledge this may lead to perpetuation of the same historic inequities.

Food security is an important dimension of health but conceptualizations of food insecurity in Canada, and the proposed solutions, often fail to reflect Indigenous food practices and perspectives. In order for health interventions to be effective, Indigenous communities must have the right to self-determination so that community-driven and culturally appropriate strategies can be prioritised. Many contemporary solutions for food insecurity in the public health system have focused on community food security, emphasizing the access, availability, and utilization dimensions but neglect concrete action on the protection and promotion of culturally significant foodways. For example, a summary report on policy responses to food insecurity in Canada in 2017 highlighted that there were no attempts to sensitize programs to the needs of Indigenous communities. Without integrating food sovereignty into public health policy, programs will continue to fail to deliver on public health goals.

Decolonizing Agriculture

Decolonization is the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic, and psychological divesting of colonial power—aiming to restore Indigenous world views, cultures, traditions, and knowledges. To engage in this process, the asymmetrical relationship that exists between Western/Eurocentric and Indigenous ways of being must be interrupted. Acknowledging and standing in belief with these differing worldviews is a complex process that requires deep self-reflection at both an individual and societal level. Decolonization is not a “metaphor” and in order to truly decolonize agriculture, institutions, relationships with land, and relationships between individuals must all be addressed.57

There are efforts being made to recognise the ongoing injustices of settler colonialism and to implement systemic change. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose findings are now maintained and amplified by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, documented the stories and ongoing impact of Canada's residential school system. Following the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, the government of British Columbia adopted legislation to begin implementing it. This action was supported by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a step forward towards reconciliation.

Indigenous nations are sovereign nations with their own forms of governance, laws, and social dynamics that are separate from the colonial states that their territories are occupied by. Regardless of what adjustments are made to colonial legal processes, Indigenous Peoples and their land use are still governed by, or they are required to seek redress through, a settler legal system that is not their own. Fighting the ongoing delegitimization of Indigenous law is a major area of decolonization efforts.

The lack of clear property rights for Indigenous communities in Canada has led to constantly shifting borders and levels of legal autonomy on their own land. In order to reestablish broken foodways, Indigenous Peoples must get the land back. This includes the reclamation of more than just the ever changing 0.2% of Canada that was arbitrarily assigned to Indigenous communities by Crown authorities.

Institutional reforms are important, but in order for decolonization to take place, efforts must also take place at an individual level. Settlers need to understand their personal positionality inside of the colonial structure, how they benefit from it, and how their thoughts and actions may perpetuate it.

Going Forward

Settler Colonialism is not just a historical moment, but an ongoing process. Settler policies, programs and philosophies have served to displace and impoverish Indigenous Peoples, separating them from their traditional foodways in the process. The unequal capitalist, colonial system Indigenous Peoples were forced into continues to have very real economic, social, health-related, and cultural impacts on Indigenous communities today. Despite some positive signs of settler authorities beginning to acknowledge the need to decolonize governance practices, most actions still lack substance. Given the diversity of Indigenous Peoples, the implications of dismantling agriculture as a colonial project will involve many inconsistencies and will be different from community to community. One thing will be consistent across all contexts: Indigenous Nations must have clearly defined and legally enshrined sovereignty over the land.

Key Terms

This is a selection of terms that are important for learners to be able to define. It may be helpful to collectively discuss what these words mean, rather than assuming pre-knowledge. Definitions are provided, but we encourage facilitators to collectively define key terms with the group as a way to build foundational knowledge for delving deeper. The glossary is a starting point. It should not be considered complete as the definitions offered are subject to change as language is always evolving and these definitions should not be presumed to be universal. We invite you to apply and adapt these definitions in your own specific context.

• Accumulation By Dispossession: “the policies followed by capitalism under neoliberal governments aiming at transferring public wealth into an increasingly concentrated private sector… the concept of accumulation by dispossession highlights the fact that primitive accumulation is an ongoing process, and that ‘predatory practices’ are a major feature of current capitalism.” This is often done through coercive and violent means.
• Colonialism: A form of invasion, dispossession and subjugation of a group of people. Colonization can manifest as a geographical intrusion (such as military, agricultural, urban or industrial encroachments) that dispossesses vast amounts of land from the original inhabitants. Colonization often leads to institutionalized inequality as the colonizer benefits at the expense of the colonized.
• Decolonialism: The bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial power—aiming to restore Indigenous world views, cultures, traditions, knowledge, and land.
• Epistemic Justice: Working toward epistemic justice involves contentions over different ways of knowing, understanding, and communicating, as well as different systems of thought. Epistemic justice is achieved by addressing injustices that arise from privileging certain ways of knowing and silencing or downplaying non-dominant ways of knowing.
• Food Sovereignty: "The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems."
• Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Understandings and specificities of Indigenous Food Sovereignty differ between Indigenous groups. According to the Indigenous Food Systems Network in British Columbia, “Indigenous food sovereignty is a specific policy approach to addressing the underlying issues impacting Indigenous peoples and our ability to respond to our own needs for healthy, culturally adapted Indigenous foods.” Please refer to the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Movement (IFSM) portion in the Background section for more information.
• Ontology: The study and understanding of the nature of reality—such as what exists or what there is. Understandings of reality constrain and support theories of knowledge (epistemology) and how knowledge is learned and taught (pedagogy).
• Settler Colonialism: The specific formation of colonialism in which people come to a land inhabited by Indigenous people and declare that land to be their new home. Settler colonialism is about the pursuit of land, not just labor or resources. Settler colonialism is a persistent societal structure, not just a historical event or origin story for a nation-state. Settler colonialism has meant genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the reconfiguring of Indigenous land into settler property. In the United States and other slave states, it has also meant the theft of people from their homelands in Africa to become the property of settlers for labour on stolen land.
• Terra Nullius: A Latin expression meaning "lands of no one." The concept of terra nullius is part of the historical dispossession and erasure of Indigenous peoples; it has been invoked in colonial law to justify the acquisition and occupation of Indigenous lands by European powers. The concept played an integral role in rendering Indigenous people as non‐human, justifying their domination, subjugation, and dispossession at the hands of European settlers.  
• Unceded: Land appropriated by settlers from Indigenous peoples without being officially ceded through a treaty or other means.

Activity Outline

Facilitator note: These are provided as guidance for instructors and facilitators to mix and match as they seek to fulfil learning outcomes. Times given are purely an estimate and facilitators should use their best judgement of when to move things along and when to tease out certain topics based on their learning goals.

Learning Outcomes

1. Characterize settler-colonial agricultural production systems and policies.
2. Compare historical agricultural policies with contemporary examples of settler colonialism in food systems.
3. Identify key areas to apply decolonization efforts.

Activity	Estimated Time	Associated Learning Outcomes	Activity Notes
Pre-Activity: Group Guidelines	30 min		Define your role as facilitator and clarify the group’s expectations of you and each other, as well as foster a safe, respectful, and effective learning environment for participants.
Activity 1: Reading Discussion	45 min	1. Identify the origins of the local food movement and the institutions that continue to drive the movement. 2. Critically evaluate one’s own role and privilege as potential participants in the local food movement in relation to barriers that may prevent others from participating. 3. Compare and contrast the LFM with at least one other movement (Indigenous Food Sovereignty, sustainability, labour movements) based on each movement’s drivers, goals, strategies, and tactics.	This activity provides background reading and sample discussion activity to go through the readings. Choose one reading for each learning outcome. Assign the readings before class and offer prompts to encourage in-class discussions. Conduct an in-class discussion to debrief the reading and background material.
Activity 2: Ethnography: Farmers Market Visit	1h outside of class time 30 min in-class discussion	2. Critically evaluate one’s own role and privilege as potential participant in the local food movement in relation to barriers that may prevent others from participating.	Encourage participants to engage with their local food system, encouraging them to visit a farmers’ market and analyze it with a critical eye. Note: This activity is to be completed outside of class by having participants visit a farmers market; in-class discussion and debrief follows.
Activity 3: Farmers Market or the Food Bank?	20-30 min	2. Critically evaluate one’s own role and privilege as potential participant in the local food movement in relation to barriers that may prevent others from participating.	Examine and analyze how consumer-based movements operate under the influence of many factors affecting consumer food choices. This activity is best conducted in person using tokens to represent income.
Activity 4: Map the Food Movement on Campus	45-70 min	1. Identify the origins of the local food movement and the institutions that continue to drive the movement. 2. Critically evaluate one’s own role and privilege as potential participant in the local food movement in relation to barriers that may prevent others from participating.	Building off of existing resources, explore what the food system on campus looks like and how it contributes to the food movement. Map the key players (institutions, services, clubs, etc.) of the campus food system and identify how they contribute to the growing food movement. Note: This activity can also be modified for contexts outside of academic institutions.
Activity 5: Compare and Contrast	45 min	2. Critically evaluate one’s own role and privilege as potential participant in the local food movement in relation to barriers that may prevent others from participating. 3. Compare and contrast the LFM with at least one other movement (Indigenous Food Sovereignty, sustainability, labour movements) based on each movement’s drivers, goals, strategies, and tactics.	Compare and contrast the local food movement with another social movement that deals with issues regarding food security and food sovereignty. This activity will delve into these questions: How do these movements differ in their composition, goals and tactics? What opportunities are there for synergies and working together?
Activity 6: Food Policy Brief	30 min	1. Identify the origins of the local food movement and the institutions that continue to drive the movement.	Develop advocacy skills needed to write a policy brief on a topic connected to local food.