From Grassroots to Global: Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health and Sustainable Food Systems Online Gathering
Introduction
Paul Hanley, Chair of the Prairie Food System Network, welcomed everyone to the online gathering on behalf of the board. It is really wonderful to have all three editors of Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health and Sustainable Food Systems with us. I’ve been reading the book and really enjoying it—and the Prairie Food System Vision Network actually contributed a chapter, along with Priscilla, about our work (“The Rockefeller Food System Vision Prize: Identifying and Supporting Emergent Solutions for Food Systems Transformation”).
Our presenters are joining us from the Prairies and from Hawaiʻi. Noa Kekuewa Lincoln from Hawaiʻi. He is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Crop and Cropping Systems at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and also an active farmer working on food sovereignty and food security.
We are also joined by Priscilla Settee, from Cumberland House Swampy Cree First Nation and Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan, and Shailesh Shukla, Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Indigenous Studies from the University of Winnipeg.
We are really lucky to have all three of you here.
Paul started the discussion with a question:
“Six years ago I moved from the Prairies where Priscilla and Shailesh live to Hawaii, where Noa lives, and specifically Molokai which Noa is quite familiar with, and found that—despite major differences in climate and other factors—the issues that people are facing are remarkably similar: food security and sovereignty, sustainability, climate change, loss of biodiversity, Indigenous rights and sovereignty, cultural erosion. It seems these are key issues everywhere. How can “Indigenous insights for planetary health and sustainable food systems” help to solve these problems?
Paul invited Shailesh to start us off.
Shaileshkumar Shukla
Shailesh thanked Paul and his co-editors. He also recognized that that some of the chapter contributors had joined the gathering, which is really nice.
I’m speaking from Treaty 1 territory—the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. I want to acknowledge that and also recognize the sacrifices of the first peoples of this territory, and the knowledge and wisdom we continue to learn from.
I’ve also been given a traditional name, Waveshamyakas, by Elders Audrey Bone and Stella Blackbird, so I want to acknowledge them as well.
Paul’s question is a really important one. He talked about common challenges, but I think it’s just as important to talk about common insights—because that is where Indigenous knowledge really comes in.
I recently came back from India, where I visited a number of communities, and what really stood out is how similar the challenges are—food security, food sovereignty, and the impacts of market-driven, agrocentric models of development.
These pressures are everywhere.
At the same time, Indigenous communities have continued to ensure that people are fed, that ecosystems are cared for, and that water is protected. They have been stewards of these systems all along—often carrying a disproportionate burden.
These challenges are not new. They may look different today, but they’ve been around for a long time.
One concept that really speaks to this is Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—the idea that the whole world is one family. That includes plants, animals, insects, microorganisms—everything.
When we think about food in that way, as something living and relational, it changes how we approach it. Our relationship with food becomes a sacred one, and with that comes responsibility.
Across the case studies in the book—from Hawaii, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mexico, India, Japan—you see similar worldviews. They are rooted in generations of observation, experimentation, and spiritual connection to place.
Another thing that comes through strongly is governance. Indigenous governance systems are very structured, and they guide how food and resources are shared.
For example, in many communities, when food is brought in, it’s the elders, knowledge keepers, and those who can’t provide for themselves who are prioritized. That’s built into the system.
There’s also a strong emphasis on natural laws—on maintaining balance. Food production isn’t just about output; it’s about sustaining biodiversity and ecological relationships.
We see this in practices like polyculture, seed saving, and community-based agriculture—often without reliance on external inputs.
Language, women’s leadership, and the idea of food as medicine are also central. Food is not something you turn to only when you’re sick—it’s part of how you stay well.
And finally, something that stood out across many examples is the importance of creating spaces where people feel included, where different perspectives are valued.
These kinds of collaborative, community-based approaches are what can really transform food governance—moving us away from purely market-driven systems toward something more equitable and sustainable.
Paul thanked Shailesh for providing an excellent over and invited Priscilla to contribute.
Priscilla Settee
Priscilla thanked Paul, welcomed everyone and thanked colleagues for organizing this gathering.
I come from Treaty 3 territory in northern Saskatchewan. My parents were hunters, fishers, and gatherers, and that shapes my perspective. I will speak about a recent global event that reflects many of the points Shailesh raised and demonstrates that there is hope in what is sometimes a very stormy world.
In February this year the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development was convened in Colombia. Thousands of participants gathered to call for transformative agrarian reform grounded in food sovereignty. They had met 20 years ago, acknowledging at that time that the land, water, forests and oceans were increasingly becoming concentrated in the hands of corporations and financial actors. This transformation was driving dispossession, inequality, and ecological collapse. Small-scale food producers, Indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fishers, rural women, youth, workers continue to be excluded from their territories and decision-making processes. We only need to look around at the regions where Shailesh and Noa and myself come from, to see there is proof of this dispossession.
Several key priorities emerged:
they recognize, as Shailesh has done earlier, the really important role of governance. We are nothing without addressing the issues of governance in our homelands. They asked for governments to move beyond voluntary commitments and adopt binding, measurable actions to ensure redistributive land reform, instead of the land grabs that are happening now resulting in more concentration of power base within our own lands.
equitable access to natural resources. We do see access to natural resources to date, but often it is not within the duty to consult framework, so huge tracts of land globally, and increasingly so, are being usurped, taken over, and damaged by the dominant form of development and governance.
democratic governance. One of the central features of the struggle for food sovereignty is the rebirth of democracy. Indigenous communities have long practiced democratic governance structures, where women, youth and families were put to the center and the forefront of decision making. Revitalizing these systems is essential.
a new vision for agrarian reform and rural development building on historical struggles while responding to what we call contemporary crisis. The reform envisions a public policy that supports a process of collective reorganization of social, economic and ecological relations between people and Mother Earth. The new vision goes beyond the protection and redistribution of land, grazing territories, fisheries, forests, and water. It seeks to transform power structures, dismantle colonial legacies, prevent new forms of colonial control, and rebuild territories as spaces of autonomy, care, peace, and solidarity.
Noa Kekuewa Lincoln
One of the most important themes that emerged again and again in my work is the question of who were growing food for and who you were engaging in those practices. People defined Indigenous agriculture, at least in Hawaii, around the notion of community engagement and development not by what is being grown. This is what makes it Indigenous. As I really started to think about it and look around, the biggest success stories that we see in the Pacific really taking this notion to heart.
One example from the book is Mā‘o Organic Farms. It is now the largest organic vegetable producer in Hawai’i, a substantial agricultural entity in a modern socioeconomic perspective. They are a big player. But their number one mission is actually not about growing food, their mission and focus is around engaging youth with the land and culture. Agriculture is the vehicle to achieve their mission.
I think Mā‘o Organic Farms is a really powerful example. We often talk about all the values associated with food, there are all sorts of movements today, around food as a human right. In the past, food and agriculture and Indigenous culture was not an industry. It was an economy, right. It powered our societies, our people.
At the same time, food was often times our church. Agriculture was the embodiment of our gods, and t was our spiritual relation to the world. Agriculture was our education. It's where we took our kids to teach lessons that were embedded into stories around the crops. Agriculture was like our social club. It is where we went to hula and dance. Chants are incorporated into certain agricultural practices. This makes the work of growing food fun. Agriculture had multiple outcomes and benefits to our society. Today, we often separate these roles.
A great story I heard recently from Kokua Kalihi Valley, a community health organization. There were these, Micronesian Aunties, older Micronesian women, who started coming and partaking in the services provided by Kokua Kalihi Valley. The Micronesian women had extremely high hypertension and blood pressure and these kinds of non-communicable lifestyle diseases. So, the community health organization connected them with a doctor, and the doctor's advice was to exercise. The women were “okay, okay, okay”. Several months passed, and they have a follow-up check-in and, nothing had changed. The doctor asked if they had started exercising, emphasising they needed to exercise if they wanted to feel better. Same response – ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ and they go off. Later, one caseworker was talking to the women, and she discovered that in their culture, they didn't have a word for exercise because everybody did agriculture to some extent. And anyone who does agriculture knows it's a physical activity. You're squatting, you're pulling, you're lifting, you're digging, you're, you know, you're doing these things, and that how they maintain their physical health.
And then you fast forward to today, where people pay money to run on a treadmill in a gym, and yet, refuse to go volunteer at a farm and dig a hole. It shows how disconnected modern value systems have become from traditional ways of living.
Mā‘o Organic Farms demonstrates how reconnecting people to land, food and culture can restore those relationships. Most of their story is about what Priscilla was talking about, the pressures on their community from land developers, and how they had to self-organize and fight to prevent these lands from being developed into a golf course, and how they had to lobby and work for over 20 years before they were ever allowed to start the actual work of farming and community engagement.
It is a beautiful story of recognizing needs in its community, recognizing the threats, coming together to overcome those threats, and then follow through and build something extremely impactful and enduring.
One of my mentors, Uncle Jerry Konanui was a big, big influence on a lot of young Hawaiians in my generation. He had all these insights, we call them Kononuisms. When I started talking about the kind of adaptations islanders had to make to live within their means, I thought abou him and how he exuded that in a way. He made it sound not scary and hard.
Here is an example. There's been this revival of interest in the 300 varieties of kalo (taro) and Uncle Jerry was considered an expert in the different kalo varieties. He would always have a story. He would be asked, Uncle, what's the best color variety? And he would tell them, it's very easy, the very best kalo variety of all, it's the one that's on your plate, you know.
Uncle Jerry just had all these sayings that allowed us to see and embody how small shifts of the way we think about ourselves in the world, to think about our needs, have really big impacts and outcomes.
I genuinely feel that a lot of the problems that we see in the modern world are from a deep-seated unhappiness in people in our modern society. We have been disconnected from place, we have been disconnected from relationship. We have ultimately disconnected from each other.
We've broken apart large extended family groups. It is not only the norm, but the aspiration to go off and live by yourself, own your own home. And we are so isolated and lonely, and we satiate that feeling with things like consumption.
An Indigenous insight - what do we really want as people? I think vast majority of people on the planet would answer similarly that we want to live, like, a healthy, happy life. I don't think we have enough discussions or even begin to think about teaching our children what is it that genuinely makes you happy. Uncle Jerry was tremendously important for helping me realize how much of happiness is just, how we perceive the world. It's not about getting the next new toy or anything that we can win by. It is about helping us to understand our place in our communities and to reconnect with relationships.
Discussion - Q & A
Paul Hanley moderated the discussion – Q & A session after the final speaker, noting how the presentations moved from universal principles (Shukla) to global movements (Settee) to the specific joy of inhabiting a place (Lincoln).
The online gathering concluded with several points of discussion:
Practical Engagement: Priscilla Settee responded to a question about student engagement, noting that the Indigenous Food Sovereignty course she taught at the University of Saskatchewan, required students to perform service-learning at community-based food centers, such as gardens or locally controlled grocery stores.
Cross-Cultural Collaboration: The presenters touched on the importance of multi-stakeholder collaborations, such as the Prairie Food System Solution Hub, to advance transformative food governance.
Closing Thoughts: Paul Hanley ended the session by thanking the editors for bringing these diverse global insights together into a cohesive resource for addressing planetary health.
To download a PDF of this document click here.
*note - the online gathering took place on March 31, 2026. Unfortunately there was a technical glitch and the session did not record.
Resources
Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health and Sustainable Food Systems Learning from International Case Studies (2025) By Shailesh Shukla, Priscilla Settee, Noa Kekuewa Lincoln
Indigenous Food Systems Concepts, Cases, and Conversations (2020) By Priscilla Settee, Shailesh Shukla