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This special issue draws attention to the roles and responsibili¬ties of knowledge producers, knowledge keepers, and food systems actors in managing and enhancing access to culturally appropriate food pro-duced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods in Indigenous communities in North America. Our sponsor for this issue is the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. With Executive Director Dr. Kathleen Merrigan (former U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy secretary and chief operating officer), the Swette Center has a global mission to create and disseminate knowledge about food systems that drives economic productivity and social progress.
In our call for papers, we sought empirical, theoretical, or pedagogical contributions from academics and practitioners that inform Indigenous food sovereignty policy and practice. We encouraged manuscripts documenting interagency and/or nation-to-nation collaboration, as well as collaboration among public, nonprofit, and private enterprises, and scholar/practitioner co-partners. We hoped for submissions that closely examined processes as well as those that interrogated failed or struggling programs or policies.
In the end, our call yielded 13 peer-reviewed papers, four in-depth commentaries, and three Voices From the Grassroots essays, covering a range of themes from ongoing struggles with vestiges of North America’s colonial history to powerful stories of reclaiming food sovereignty through reinvigorating or rediscovering traditional and sacred foods and foodways. We’re pleased to share this range of projects and perspectives with you, our readers. Along the way, we are not only introduced to remarkable people and projects, but also to a variety of Indigenous research methodologies borne out of collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, activists, and university staff. . . .
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