Conversation Series: 5 Aspects of Sustainable and Ethical Food Systems
Presented by UW Sustainability and The Whole U What would it look like to make food systems that are truly resilient, sustainable, and equitable? What positive health impacts would be felt on a personal, population, and planetary level? Come together as a UW community and consider these questions at this spring conversation series with sustainable experts from across the University of Washington. Participants will engage in meaningful conversation about the current nature and future of our food systems. Each session will cover a different aspect of food systems with guest experts guiding conversation and offering considerations. Participants will learn from experts in food sovereignty, sustainable farming, food accessibility, and food systems in the wellness industry. Answers to these questions are robust and nuanced. Our collective goal is to create space for critical discussion about how food systems impact our campuses, lives, and greater communities. Session 3: Food Sovereignty with Charlotte Coté, Nuu-chah-nulth from Vancouver Island and UW professor of American Indian Studies We’ve invited Dr. Charlotte Coté, a Nuu-chah-nulth woman from Vancouver Island and Professor of American Indian Studies at the UW, to help us embrace food sovereignty: “a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution.”
Dr. Coté’s areas of research and specialization: Indigenous food traditions, food sovereignty, health/wellness, traditional ecological knowledge, story as theory, environmental/social justice, Indigenous resistance/resurgence, federal Indian law, Indigenous film/media. She is co-founder and chair of the UW’s annual “The Living Breath of wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ” Indigenous Foods Symposium held in May at the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ. She is the author of two books Spirits of Our Whaling Ancestors: Revitalizing Makah and Nuu-chah-nulth Traditions, 2010 which raises issues concerning Indigenous self-determination, eco-colonialism, and food sovereignty; and A Drum in one Hand, A Sockeye in the Other. Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast (2021) which combines Food and Indigenous Studies scholarship with personal memoire, stories, case studies, and Indigenous language and philosophy to show how traditional foods play a major role in physical, emotional, spiritual, and dietary wellness. This session will use facilitated breakout rooms to think creatively about how our campus food systems already meet important needs, and how they could be better designed in the future. All sessions are hosted on Zoom. Each session will have an individual registration. Be sure to stay tuned and register for as many sessions as you can! |