The Land Provides: Sustaining Access to Traditional Foods

A trip into a local grocery store tends to be an exercise in alienation from the source of my food. Although I can see that there are local apples and pears, most of the other food in the store has rather murky origins. Where did this meat come from? And what about this margarine - where did the olives grow, or the canola? Sometimes I want to whip out the microphone and interview my food to see if it can enlighten me about its past. I don't, though, since I want to be able to return to my local supermarket again.

My work as an outdoor educator stands in contrast to this grocery store experience. This time of year, the rain pours, and there is no fluorescent light anywhere. The food is also different out in the forest. Here on Canada's West Coast, I can eat Western Hemlock needles as I walk along. If I'm lucky, I'll find a root of a licorice fern - this tastes like black licorice. In the fall, I can eat wild mushrooms, while in the spring I can harvest the new shoots of the salmonberry plant.

At a workshop a few weeks ago, we discussed sustainable food. At one of the tables there was a discussion group about aboriginal access to food. The discussion participants made the point that access to and the ability to gather traditional sources of food was very limited, yet it is critical to the social and cultural sustainability of aboriginal people, and most of all, to their way of life.

All around the world, as development covers forests and people become more urban, knowledge about traditional food and medicines begins to dwindle. Partially, this is a matter of shifting cultures: we urban folks tend to do the majority of our shopping in supermarkets instead of farming, hunting, or gathering our food. But it's also a matter of access. In our local urban parks, there's a "no touch" policy. We are asked not to harvest the berries or the shoots. People do, of course. Usually the harvest is minimal, a small taste of the wild berries and leaves along the path.

In Canada, there has long been a debate about hunting and fishing regulations for indigenous people. There are regulations which strive and sometimes fail to ensure access to animals that have traditionally been hunted for food. But what about plants? Food plants are vitally important for subsistence, and in most cases plants form the basis of the traditional diet. As we move into an era when local food is regaining its importance, we are challenged to understand the place of gathering traditional and native plants and reframing this in the context of our urban and suburban communities.