The ways in which any of us create good mental health, and also continue our family, are grounded in many ways by what we eat, how we cook and how we access our foods.
In many cases in the south, you go to a grocery store and then your culture happens in the kitchen. In Inuit society, our culture happens in the act of harvesting, in the act of going on the land, in understanding the land and also in the interaction of living things within it. Our relationship with our food is not just one of dietary interest and nutrition but also of our society and the continuation of who we are as a people.
I will highlight the Qikiqtani Inuit Association and their proposal for Tallurutiup Imanga, which is hopefully going to go through this year as a new protected area.
One of the highlights of their proposal is in relation to Inuit guardians of the space. Those guardians of the environment are also harvesting and providing food to their communities in Nunavut's High Arctic. That is a part of food sovereignty. It's reclaiming our place as keepers of the land—stewards of the land, if you will, in a southern context—but it's also breaking down the cycle of conservation for conservation's sake.
It is not only in the policies we are hoping to work on with the federal government. It's also in accepting that the way we interact with nature, the way that we practice respect for nature, is outside the normal bounds of conservation. It gets into our ability to eat our traditional foods, to have them available and then also for us to be 21st-century Canadians with access to healthy store-bought food as well. Food sovereignty also includes ensuring that the nutrition north program works correctly, and that there are options for us.