Through 2024 and 2025, South Island Reciprocity Trust funds supported local food sovereignty efforts at T’Sou-ke First Nation, strengthening food security practices that contribute to long-term community wellbeing. Members were provided with grocery store gift cards each year, enhancing their access to healthy, store-bought foods. The provision of gift cards is just one small but meaningful part of T’Sou-ke’s broader food security program.
“Times continue to be challenging for many of our members, and these dollars helped strengthen our community food bag program by supplementing fresh, healthy food for families. Your contribution directly supported wellness and access to nutritious food, and we are very grateful. Please extend my appreciation on behalf of the Nation.” Michelle Thut, CAO, T’Sou-ke Nation.
T’Sou-ke Nation is widely celebrated for their successful solar and wind energy initiatives, but perhaps lesser-known are their impressive food sovereignty efforts. Indigenous food sovereignty restores relationships and cultural responsibilities to ancestral lands and waters by revitalizing Indigenous food and ecological knowledge systems. Set against modern-day capital-driven industrial agriculture, it embodies the right of all people to have access to healthy and culturally appropriate food, and their right to define their own food systems (Cote, 2016).
The sea is churned turquoise as it washes into the Sooke Basin, once a thriving harvesting area. As an oceanside community, the loss of safe shellfish and salmon harvesting due to sewage outfall, climate change, impacts from extreme weather events, abandoned ships, mining waste and vessel traffic has delivered a dramatic hit on traditional food practices and food security for many T’Sou-ke households over the years.
“That was our abundance of food there for many years and many generations. Our family used to harvest the food and bring it back, from the land to the table, and they used to live off that. It holds significantly to our Elders, and now that we can’t do that, we have to live off of different kinds of food. We just want to bring that back to our Nation” – T’Sou-ke Nation member
In the face of these challenges, T’Sou-ke Nation has established a web of food sovereignty and related stewardship initiatives to restore and adapt to changes within their territory. For example, the Ladybug Garden and Greenhouse was started in 2008 to grow fresh produce and herbs that are shared out to the community at luncheons, culture nights, feasts and through Elder food box programs and meals-on-wheels. The greenhouse also takes care to gather and steward native plants – staples of a traditional diet and essential components of thriving ecosystems for millennia. They work consistently to engage youth in traditional plant identification and harvesting practices on the territory and to centre SENĆOŦEN language revitalization in everything they do – even creating SENĆOŦEN plant identification booklets for children.
“You only took enough of what you needed to feed your people… you took care of that resource, and that resource took care of you. We, as Coast Salish, have a responsibility to ensure that in a hundred years’ time, that the environment is better than it is today. It’s not too late. We need to get back to mother earth and understand where that water comes from and how we ensure that it’ll be there tomorrow.” – T’Sou-ke Nation former Chief, Gordon Planes
Dollars contributed to the South Island Reciprocity Trust to date have helped support T’Sou-ke Nation’s efforts to keep every member of their community fed, and we are honoured to continue supporting the Nation and the priorities they determine to be the best fit for these funds.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umjvkliXgf4
https://fnp-ppn.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/fnp/Main/Search/FNRegPopulation.aspx?BAND_NUMBER=657&lang=eng
Coté, C. (2016). “Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States. Humanities, 5(3), 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030057
