I can share a little bit. It's not an area of research that we work in, in terms of socially, community-based research. It's working with the community to reinvigorate what we might call indigenous law, or traditional systems. It is the reinvigoration of food sources that were once relied upon, and that were intimately connected with the social, economic and often political systems of how communities managed their relationship with one another, their trade, their inter-tribal or international relations with other first nations, as well as within their communities. It was very much food-driven.
What we're finding is that more communities, rather than bringing in some of the solutions that we talk about for the south.... I will say that it varies with each community. We do have communities in the north that are saying, “We want greenhouses. We do want that.” There is that willingness, and that sense that the communities want to employ what we call southern foods. However, most are leaning towards country foods, if you speak to those who are trying to reinvigorate those values and those knowledge systems.
I can say from the Haudenosaunee that we're trying to bring back heirloom seeds that have been saved through the generations between our seedkeepers. We're going to move that. If we want health, we need to go back to those seeds that have been collected and gathered through those ceremonies, and bestowed within the communities with specific responsibilities to protect them.
It's less about bringing in.... It's trying to get back to the other ways, but doing that in a contemporary context. That becomes the real challenge, when we have students and youth disengaged from those practices.