Indigenous communities lose access to traditional food after SOAHAC pilot project ends

A pilot project run by the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre (SOAHAC) that served traditional foods to Indigenous communities for over a year is now looking for alternative funds to keep the program running.

Minomode-zewin nunge-gehwin — which translates to "healthy ways of eating" — launched in late 2022 to help Indigenous communities reconnect with their culture through culturally important foods.

"We haven't secured anything yet," said Jocelyn Zubrigg, a dietitian at SOAHAC who has been helping to run the pilot project. "We do still have standing funding with the United Way, but unfortunately…United Way hasn't received as many donations this year. So a lot of our funding was cut."

The pilot project received a $135,000 grant from the London Community Foundation in 2022 and was able to serve approximately 400 individuals, with the demand growing near the end of the pilot project in December last year.

Through the food program, people were able to eat foods sourced from Indigenous farmers, hunters and gatherers such as wild rice, dried berries, white corn and fish, among other foods, that was grown all across the country.

The program wasn't intended to run as a food bank. Instead, the traditional foods helped Indigenous communities reconnect with their roots.

"Indigenous women have faced all sorts of barriers to accessing traditional food that relate back to processes of colonialism." said Chantelle Richmond, associate professor and the Canada research chair in Indigenous Health and the Environment at Western University. "If a native woman had married a non-Indian man, she lost her ability to live in the community."

Now that the program is out of funds, people who relied on SOAHAC have no alternative ways to access those traditional foods, Richmond added.

"People love it and they want more," said Richmond.

Since December, members of SOAHAC have been meeting with donors to secure new funding but nothing has been decided.

"I think the next step of the traditional food program is to find good ways to build local First Nations knowledge about where these foods come from, why they matter so much," said Richmond. "So that when people take these foods home, they're not just feeding themselves and feeling good about eating traditional foods, but they're also feeding their spirits."