ABSTRACT
As awareness of Indigenous peoples’ history and experiences continues to rise, the need to protect knowledge and traditional ways of life, including food systems, is increasingly being recognized as a vital component of improving the complex circumstances of Indigenous populations in Canada. To date, government policies and programs have yielded little benefit in helping Indigenous communities. This chapter will explore the potential of a market strategy, specifically geographical indications (GIs) as a way of protecting and strengthening Indigenous communities. GIs provide intellectual property protection and give permission to producers to use a registered product name tied to a geographical location. The usual arguments in favor of GIs include the financial benefits to producers, the viability of rural economies and the transparency of the products and their production. Others, however, point to the protection of local and traditional knowledge required to produce cultural foods. Conversely, in some contexts, GI implementation reproduces uneven relations and power differential in the food value chain. This chapter will examine whether the known and still-unknown benefits of GI can be relevant or valuable to Indigenous communities in Canada. The chapter will outline the various actors and processes that would be required to implement GIs in Indigenous communities in Canada. Finally, the chapter concludes by recognizing the unique challenges the GI scheme would face in this context but nonetheless acknowledges that GIs have a potential role to play in supporting Indigenous communities in Canada.
