Miijim: Food as Relations is a series of conversations presenting Indigenous, Black and People of Colour food scholars, growers, artists and advocates who will gather virtually across Canada. The series will discuss the interconnections between art, earthwork, cultivation and harvesting experiences that decenter colonial frameworks, while thinking through labour and power relations related to food justice in urban and rural communities.

UPCOMING: MIIJIM CONVERSATION SERIES WINTER 2021 SCHEDULE

February 2, MIIJIM: Food & Gardens as Remediation

This conversation brings together Indigenous artists who are using seeds, planting and cultivation in their practices. T’uy’t’tanat - Cease Wyss (Skwxwú7mesh / Stó:lō / Hawaiian / Swiss) and Anne Riley (Cree / Dene) will discuss A Constellation of Remediation, a project that includes the planting of Indigenous remediation gardens on vacant and untended lots on the unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəyə̓m (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Cease and Anne will be in conversation with Joce Two Crows Tremblay (Mohawk / Pottawatomi / Francaise / Ashkenazi), an artist, Earthworker and member of the Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle, who will be sharing their work with the Re~Sistering garden on the Niwa’ah Onega’gaih’ih ~ Kobechenonk ~ the Humber River, a project that seeks to re-Indigenize land by creating Three Sisters and medicine earthworks on ancestral urban sites.

February 23 , MIIJIM: Gardens as Art as Relations

This roundtable conversation will focus on how plants have been part of contemporary curatorial and artistic practices. The speakers will further consider care as an intrinsic part of working in relation with flora, plants and gardens.

Moderated by Anishinaabe artist and curator Lisa Myers, this conversation will open with a reflection by her on caring for Mike MacDonald’s Butterfly Garden works, and will follow with interventions by Mi’kmaq artist Ursula Johnson on language and medicines, scholar and curator Andrea Fatona on caring for gardens at times of global crisis, curator Crystal Mowry on curating gardens andThe Perennials, and artist Christina Battle who will expand on her ongoing project seeds are meant to disperse.

March 6, MIIJIM: Carrying Sounds and Oral Histories (TBD)

[Speakers for this conversation are being confirmed. We will upload more information soon]

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PAST: MIIJIM CONVERSATION SERIES WINTER 2021 SCHEDULE

October 6, Indigenous Food Sovereignties

This conversation will bring together Secwepemc artist, curator and co-creator of Bush Gallery Tania Willard in conversation with Dawn Morrison (Secwepemc), Founder and Research Curator of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, and Mi’kmaw professor and Indigenous land and food justice advocate Sherry Pictou, to consider their work in defence of Indigenous sovereignties, and in relation to the reclamation of land, medicines, foods and plants.

Link to the Recorded Conversation: https://youtu.be/rgU9gsTQ6AM

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October 20, Indigenous and Black Food Relations

This conversation opens up the decades of work by Cree scholar Dr. Priscilla Settee in Indigenous Food Sovereignty with Leticia Ama Deawuo’s work at Black Creek Community Farm and her personal research on food history connecting with her grandmother and African Indigenous foods. The speakers will discuss the intersections of climate change and food injustice and its effects on Black and Indigenous people, while sharing the strengths of working in solidarity across communities.

Link to the Recorded Conversation: https://youtu.be/sNyGiWifn2g

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November 10, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Food Systems

Considering that food systems are specific to cultures, nations and territories, this conversation brings together medicine and food scholars Joe Pitawanakwat from Wikwemikong First Nation, William Kingfisher from Rama First Nation and Chandra Maracle from Six Nations of the Grand River, to consider this specificity and to add nuance and complexity to the potentially flattening term “Indigenous food system.”

Link to the Recorded Conversation: https://youtu.be/J4Z1EtA91g0

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November 24, Migrant Workers and Food Justice

This conversation is grounded in artistic practices that raise important considerations of labour and living conditions of those workers who grow the food that fills the grocery stores. We will bring together activist and advocate Evelyn Encalada, and workers rights organizer and community artist Tzazna Maranda to consider their calls to action through art and activism.

Link to the Recorded Conversation: https://youtu.be/oYqud2qmY8c

Watch online the previous MIIJIM conversations!