This week, one of the readings I chose to read and discuss is Kyle Whyte’s “Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance,” where food injustices caused by settler states are highlighted as the key problem with indigenous people’s food sovereignty. Despite the treaties that were signed between these two groups, there have been many violations done by the settler states(the U.S and Canada) where they, “…establish their own ways of life,” (4) to gain access and exploit the lands and waters for themselves that was origninally under the ownership of the indigenous peoples. The access to food(via hunting and fishing) is not just essential for good nutrition and survival, but there is a connection between humans and the environment that is considered sacred to the indigenous peoples throughout North America: Salmon habituat [for example] is discussed as entwined with human institutions as a collective capacity supporting indigenous self-determination. (5) Collective self-determination in this context, as Whyte notes, is a group’s capacity to adapt to situational changes (5) and he asserts that the U.S still to this day is trying to diminsh this adaptation so that the U.S themselves can exploit more resources for their own gain and profit.

I believe that the U.S-endosed actions here are not just selish and entitled, but also anti-ecocentric(where there is not focus on the system of values in nature, where there are only human centered values) because there seems to be no concept of conservation when they exploit the resources that belong to the indigenous. For Whyte, he argues that a lot of forest ecosystems benefit from “salmon contributions,” (6) and it is the indigenous people’s traditional role to upkeep this conservation of salmon; they value the environment because they benefit from it, so they keep the fishing to a sustainable level to establish a healthy balance in the environment. (*for more information about how the salmon greatly contributes to forest ecosystems see page 6) The U.S does not conserve the environment in this situation, for there was a collapse of the salmon population due to damming on the lands and waters that is designated indigenous property. (4)

The U.S. also seems to diminish the collective continuance(“a society’s overall adaptive capacity to maintain its members’ cultural integrity, health, economic vitality, and political order into the future”) of the indigenous peoples by violating these treaties, (9) for the indigenous peoples need access to their own resources to survive, and keep the relationship between humans and ecosystem alive through conservation.

From this article by Whyte, I instantly was reminded of a current event that is happening in Nova Scotia: the indigenous group Mi’kmaq’s fishing rights are being disputed by non-indigenous fishermen. From the news article(cited below) we can see that the same violations of treaties about food sovereignty are happening:

“In 1999, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case R. v. Marshall that several treaties signed in the 1760s granting the Mi’kmaq the right to harvest and sell fish were still valid. The over 250-year-old agreement, known as the Peace and Friendship Treaties, specified that the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq had the right to earn a “moderate livelihood…”…Nova Scotia’s non-Indigenous fishers have called for the Sipekne’katik’s First Nation’s fishery to be closed, saying it is illegal and a threat to the environment…Jason Marr, one of the Mi’kmaw fishermen forced to take cover in a fishing pound from an angry mob trying to seize his fishing haul, said that it took the RCMP two hours to arrive despite multiple 911 calls. Marr said that after arriving, the RCMP stood by and watched the mob vandalize his car.” (Lao)

In my opinion, this infuriating case is parallel to the ones mentioned in Whyte’s article, especially the one about salmon. While the Supreme Court of Canada has established some areas on Nova Scotia’s coastline to be the property of the Mi’kmaq, the law did not do much in the way of protecting their rights to their fishing activities; they did not even protect them from the mobs of angry people trying to take their fishing haul. Based on the treaties signed so long ago, I believe that it is also a selfish and entitled act that the law and non-indigenous fishermen did to the Mi’kmaq, not to mention anti-ecocentric as well. Despite the calls that the indigenous groups were fishing to the point of damaging the environment(which was proven false later in the news article), it is not a logical argument to make as these non-indigenous fishermen would also be contributing to the claim of destroying the environment.

Also, when the fact that the Mi’kmaq are making a “moderate livelihood”(Lao) was brought up in the article, I also noticed another parallel aspect to the Whyte article: collective continuance. The treaties allowed indigenous groups to fish on designate property without interference from non-indigneous parties taking away their livelihood, which provides for their community to be collectively stable for the future that can allow them to adapt to different situations(such as a decrease in lobster populations). But with the treaty violated(and if it contiues to be violated), I believe that the collective continuance of the Mi’kmaq would significantly decrease because of the Canadian Government’s lack of protection of indigenous peoples and their rights.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Whyte, Kyle. “Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance.” The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, 2018, pp. 1-15, doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199372263.013.34

Lao, David. “Mobs are attacking Indigenous fisheries in Nova Scotia. Here’s what’s going on.” Global News [Canada], 19 Oct. 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7403001/nova-scotia-lobster-explained/