Cultural Identity, Continuity, and Wellbeing: Exploring the Sociocultural Significance of Traditional Foods for Northern Indigenous Food Security
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Food insecurity is one of the most pressing and challenging issues facing northern Indigenous populations in Canada. Widespread lack of adequate, affordable, and accessible food is, in part, attributed to the displacement of land-based traditional foods which represent a key component of Indigenous diets and nutrition. Unlike store-bought market foods, traditional foods are intimately connected to place, while practices associated with their use reflect, reinforce, and reproduce Indigenous knowledge and cultural values, (re)asserting Indigenous food sovereignty. However, participation in harvesting and consumption of traditional foods is in decline, with negative implications for individual and community health and wellbeing. In this thesis, I explore the role and contribution of traditional foods in supporting northern Indigenous food security and food sovereignty, focusing in particular on sociocultural elements embedded within traditional food systems. The first manuscript presents the results of a scoping review of literature located at the intersection of traditional foods and northern Indigenous food security, with a focus on studies that address the sociocultural dimensions of food. A total of 22 articles were selected for review, coded thematically, and analyzed to identify trends, emphases, and gaps in this body of literature. The second manuscript emerged from a community-based partnered research project with Waskaganish Cree First Nation, where local fishing practices have been disrupted due to hydroelectric projects diverting key waterways, and socioeconomic and cultural lifestyle changes. I conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with 23 elders and knowledge holders to better understand the significance of fish for Waskaganish Crees, and how community members have adapted to continue accessing fish in the context of change. Collectively, this thesis establishes the need to support Indigenous-centered approaches for sustainable access to traditional foods in order to address northern Indigenous food crises and uphold Indigenous food sovereignty.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".