Exploring culturally meaningful definitions of justice and resilience through the lens of sovereign Indigenous foodways

Abstract

In this thesis I explore frameworks of environmental justice, food justice, and community resilience that center Indigenous communities and their perspectives. First, I conducted an integrative literature review on environmental injustice that uniquely impacts Indigenous communities, specifically as it relates to water resources. I propose five major pathways through which environmental justice occurs: the physical manipulation of waterways, chemical contamination, the introduction of species, the exploitation of culturally significant species, and global climate change. The supplementary material for chapter one is an expanded list of all literature reviewed. In the second chapter, I present a framework for understanding food justice that integrates pre-existing theories of food justice, food sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty. In the third and final chapter, I have defined a theory of cultural-ecological resilience that builds from existing theories of social-ecological resilience to incorporate the non-tangible, cultural relationships between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional lands and waters. Using my framework for food justice from chapter two, I explore the ways justice within Indigenous food systems cultivates cultural-ecological resilience.