Assistant Professor Lisa Myers' Finding Flowers project presents the inaugural Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) Seminar Series Seminar Series, "Miijim: Food as Relations."
Miijim is a fall and winter conversation series presenting renowned Indigenous, Black and People of Colour food scholars, growers, artists and advocates who will gather virtually from across Canada. Discussions will cover the interconnections between art, earthwork, planting, cultivation and harvesting experiences that decenter colonial frameworks, while thinking through labour and power relations related to food justice in urban and rural communities.
The fall segment of this series features conversations on Indigenous food sovereignty; Black and Indigenous food relations; Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee food systems; learning from Manoomin; and art and migrant worker justice. Conversations will continue into the winter semester turning to art related themes including animal-plant-human relations; food and gardens as remediation; gardens as art as relations; and community food stories.
The series will continue on Nov. 10 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. with a conversation on "Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe 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.”
The conversation will be held on Zoom and live-streamed through Facebook. Register on Eventbrite for the Zoom link: https://miijimfoodasrelations.eventbrite.com.
The final fall 2020 event in this series include will take place on Nov. 24 with a conversation on migrant workers and food justice. The series will resume with additional events in 2021.
For any questions contact Finding Flowers research associate Dana Prieto at prietoda@yorku.ca.
The Finding Flowers project is part of Lisa Myers’ EUC graduate class “Food, Land and Culture.”