Those ideas already exist in many communities.
We submitted a bunch of different examples, with links to those examples. We have to think about agriculture being different at large scale, medium scale and small scale. We have to think about it as the support of communities. Also, it's a way for communities to get a hold of their own financial futures.
These things exist. For example, in northern Quebec, in Eeyou Istchee, a person by the name of Irene Neeposh is starting a Labrador tea company. There is a tea company in existence that harvests up in Nunavik in northern Quebec and sends their stuff to southern Quebec. These are examples of agriculture, but they're not what we think of as typical agricultural activities. Then you look at the Quapaw Nation in Oklahoma, which operates a large-scale bison ranch as a vertically integrated operation.
We need to find a way to tell the stories in a broader range. We have to empower communities with a tool kit that they can go to and say, “This is the type of soil that I have; these are the types of resources that exist in nature.” It happens in Aroland in northern Ontario. These are things that happen on small and medium scale, but they need to be told in a very broad range and encapsulated in a tool kit. Communities don't rely on this in the south. They can rely on having a tool kit to work with, which gives them information that is meaningful to them.
They have to see themselves in agriculture. I say “they”, but we have to see ourselves in agriculture as well. That is the first step to forming indigenous food sovereignty. This is so critical, the agriculture and agri-food commission, with regard to establishing indigenous food sovereignty. Without indigenous agriculture, there will be no indigenous food sovereignty. We need to recognize it in a different way, taking our minds and putting them in a different way, and empowering those communities.