Supporting food security for Indigenous families through the restoration of Indigenous foodways

Indigenous families are overrepresented among those within Canada who experience food insecurity. Studies have largely focused on northern populations, with less attention paid to southern and urban communities, including the social, cultural, and geographic processes that challenge food security. In this study, we present findings from a decade‐long community‐based study with the Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre (London, Ontario) to examine family perspectives related to the social determinants of food security. These topics were explored through qualitative interviews (n = 25) and focus groups (n = 2) with First Nation mothers with young children from the city of London, and a nearby reserve community. Interviewees from both geographies identified a number of socio‐economic challenges including household income and transportation. However, some interviewees also shed light on barriers to healthy eating unique to these Indigenous contexts including access issues such as a lack of grocery stores on‐reserve; loss of knowledge related to the utilization of traditional foods; and the erosion of community, familial, and social supports. Resolving these unique determinants of food security for urban and reserve‐based First Nation families will require a range of economic and culturally specific interventions, particularly those that support development and uptake of Indigenous foodways.     

Revealing circumstances of epidemiologic transition among Indigenous peoples: The case of the Keg River (Alberta) Métis

Rates of type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders are elevated among Indigenous peoples; however, no research has examined the origins of these diseases among the Métis. This case study documents a transition in lifestyle and health that affected the Keg River Métis of northern Alberta during the middle decades of the 20^th century. This community began to experience previously absent diseases, including obesity, heart disease, gestational and type 2 diabetes, and preeclampsia. This shift in disease burden appears tied to rapid socio‐cultural and economic change driven by a decline of traditional economic activities, access to government transfer payments and wage labour, an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and a growing availability of non‐traditional foods. This study points to earlier emergence of diabetes among Canadian Indigenous populations than commonly credited and presents the case for a rapidly evolving epidemic tied to environmental and cultural change. Underlying this were structural changes that emerged out of colonization.     

The Queen as ‘social mannequin’. Consumerism and expenditure at the Court of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1393–1422

Unjustifiably, but often, dismissed as the driest of sources, medieval accounts can be a mine of historical and social information, and those of Isabeau of Bavaria, queen of Charles VI of France, are particularly fascinating. One of the many consequences of the king's lifelong mental instability was the development of an entirely separate financial administration for his wife and children, and this combination of radical innovation and unprecedented levels of expenditure has meant that scrutiny of Isabeau's accounts — the best preserved and most extensive of any medieval queen of France — has been considered fundamental in almost all biographical works. Although this paper looks at what could be regarded as a frivolous topic in Isabeau's wardrobe, the social concept of the royal lady as decorative fashion-plate has been particularly pertinent in recent years, but also has a long-standing pedigree. The necessity and public display of wealth were always an intrinsic element of medieval queenship, and a number of these wider themes will be explored alongside detailed analysis of two example accounts.     

Stigmatized Spaces: Gender and Mobility under crisis in South Sulawesi,Indonesia

The economic downturn in Indonesia (1997‐99) has changed the context of gendered spatial mobility in South Sulawesi. For low-income migrants in the region, the monetary crisis has not only reorganized the labor market, but it has also brought about an intensification of the stigma placed on young women's independent residence in an export processing zone. Household surveys and in-depth interviews with migrants and members of their origin and destination site neighborhoods, both before and during the economic retrenchment, illustrate that ideas about women's sexual morality are a key part of the context within which migration decisions are gendered. The article situates survey and interview findings within an overview of Indonesia's recent development history, economic crisis, and official state gender ideology. The article argues that migrants and their communities have identified the ‘prostitute’ as a female-gendered metaphor for the crisis, and finds that post-1997 narratives of women's mobility increasingly revolve around normative judgements regarding young women's independent mobility and sexual behavior.     

Qualified Toleration: Bermuda and the English Revolution

Central to both the causes and development of the English revolution was the demand for reformation of the Church of England. The question of what shape this reform should take, however, divided English men and women. Debates over the further reformation of the Church of England were also complicated by the emergence of increasingly vocal and powerfully‐placed calls for freedom of religion, ranging from a limited toleration for a certain few to a broader liberty of conscience for all. This article looks at the debate surrounding liberty of conscience during the English revolution in 1644–5, but from a fresh angle: examining the context and rationale for the parliamentary ordered religious settlement of the English Atlantic colony of Bermuda in October of 1645. Integrating the fortunes of this Atlantic colony into the history of the English revolution reconfigures our understanding and analysis of revolutionary religion and politics.     

Seismologies of emotion: fear and activism during domestic violence

This paper explores the relation of fear to activism in private and constrained circumstances of chronic risk and anxiety. Asking how people contest domestic violence, given the intensity of the fear that it generates, the paper reframes their responses as practices of activism. It draws on qualitative research that charts the nature, experience and effects of fear over time. Using seismology as a metaphor for this process, the analysis describes complex and often hidden shifts in emotions over periods of years, as interviewees describe being simultaneously constrained by fear and actively using fear to manage and contest violence. Their practices of resistance are small scale, largely invisible to others, and have a messy and non-linear relationship with the process of leaving that some eventually undertake. Such action is only necessary in a social and political climate which continues to place more emphasis on individual than social responsibility for domestic violence. I examine what this resistance adds to recent accounts of activism, concluding that isolated actions constitute activism when they anticipate or engender collective social and political change at other scales.     

Reflections on Ethics at Stanford

Mindful of the need to be productive, Ian was caught a bit off-guard by some basic differences of opinion that emerged, specifically concerning WAC’s responsibility to intervene in situations of human rights issues that concern cultural heritage. His own assumptions about the similarity of perspectives on this issue that he expected to find among WAC colleagues were discomforted and challenged by this. Upon reflection, he better understands the historical and contemporary reasons for these differences and took this to be a good lesson in unsettling our assumptions, which is probably what WAC is all about.

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Résumé Conscient de la nécessité d'être productif, Ian s’est senti un peu pris au dépourvu par l’expression de points de vue largement différents, notamment au sujet de la responsabilité du CMA d'intervenir dans des situations touchant à l’héritage culturel et impliquant la question des Droits de l'Homme. L’idée qu’il se faisait d’une probable convergence d’opinion sur ce sujet parmi les collègues du CMA s’est ainsi trouvée largement mise en doute et fragilisée par ces désaccords. A la réflexion, il comprend mieux les fondements historiques et contemporains à l’origine de ces différences et considère qu’il s’agit d’une bonne expérience incitant à déconstruire nos hypothèses, en accord sans doute avec un certain esprit du CMA.

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Resumen Preocupadp por la necesidad de ser productivo, Ian fue tomado por sorpresa por algunas diferencias de opiniones que surgieron, especificamente en relación a la responsabilidad del WAC de intervenir en situaciones de los derechos humanos en el tema del patrimonio cultural. Sus propias suposiciones acerca de la similitud de perspectivas que esperaba encontrar en colegas del CAM en este tema ,fueron incomodadas y cuestionadas por esto. Despues de reflexionar sobre el asunto, él comprende mejor las razones históricas y contemporáneas de esas diferencias y considera que es ésta una buena lección para desestabilizar nuestras suposiciones, algo que probablemente sea de lo que se trata el WAC.