ABSTRACT
Indigenous health research has tended to centre problems, such as diabetes, with interventions aiming to shape Indigenous women’s nutritional knowledge. Such practices frame food as an issue of individual choice, reinforce settler claims to food expertise, and normalize commercial food production industries that drove the occupation of Indigenous territories. In this regard, settler-funded interventions can extend colonial practices that limit and control Indigenous bodies. Some Indigenous people urge a return to traditional diets, with stories of health, cultural, and spiritual benefits. This move may decolonize how people eat and may alter the values food practices instil and reinforce. However, reports about Indigenized eating may also uncritically mimic narratives of success used in the settler diet industry and fail to acknowledge settler suppression of Indigenous food economies. In this chapter, Dr Robinson, a Two-spirit health scholar, considers how food is intertwined with colonialism and how the solidarity art of Meegan Lim challenges settler amnesia regarding the destruction of Indigenous food economies.
