Agriculture committee  I might be able to speak a little bit about the access to land. I can speak for the reserve communities in northern Ontario that are the small federal parcels of land. Often, the quality of arable land, on those lands, is very difficult and it poses significant challenges for communities to engage in mainstream or traditional farming practices, if we want to call them that.

Agriculture committee  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.

Agriculture committee  I have a few, and then my colleagues may want to add some as well.

Agriculture committee  One thing that's emerging from the communities is that those policies be place-based policies that reflect local dynamics and also local social, cultural, political and economic realities within those regions, because of great diversity. That would be the number one element. We need to ensure that they are engaged and that they are reflective of those communities.

Agriculture committee  I can answer from some of the experiences I've had in working with communities in terms of forwarding some of their agendas on food sovereignty and security. I've been up in northern Ontario, the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and territory, which represents about 45,000 people in 49 communities, northern and remote.

Agriculture committee  It's important to know that indigenous communities are reframing their food system. Within communities, there are discussions happening and emerging around the creation of solutions, including the need to change local policies and practices. Food sovereignty conversations are taking place from east to west, from the Mi'kmaq in the east to salmon production and salmon protection in the west, and north to south, as far as the Arctic and as far south as, for example, Six Nations, where local food movements are occurring, which Dr.

Agriculture committee  In conclusion, I'd like to say that in both the academy and community practice, we see the incredible power of food as a decolonizing instrument, as a vehicle to health and a means to revitalize indigenous socio-economic systems. Indigenous agriculture is at the core of better food pathways towards indigenous food sovereignty.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, everyone, and good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to be here to contribute to this very important discussion on how to develop more inclusive agriculture and agri-food policies and programs. As mentioned, I am a professor at the University of Guelph in rural planning and development, but I am also a Haudenosaunee Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River territory.