Palestinian, Black & Indigenous Struggles for Food Sovereignty
How do Indigenous and Black struggles around food sovereignty in the US intersect with those in Palestine, in terms of both the violence and trauma out of which they emerged and the forms of resistance they have generated? This was the topic of a rich discussion via the webinar Eating the Other: Toward Food Sovereignty in Palestine and the U.S., which Grassroots International had the honor of co-sponsoring in partnership with Just World Educational, featuring author-activists Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt, chef-activist Brit Reed and farmer-activist Jonathan Wilson.
Grassroots International’s Chung-Wha Hong opened with an acknowledgment of the timing of the discussion taking place just before the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (November 29) and just after the National Day of Mourning (November 26) organized by Indigenous movements in response to Thanksgiving in the US. This was fitting, she said, because “both have to do with violent histories of colonization, racism, expulsion and genocide and, at the same time, vibrant trajectories of resistance.” Playing a central role in these and other struggles, she emphasized, is food:
“From the mass slaughter of buffalo in the US plains region in an attempt to starve the Indigenous peoples who relied on them, to the deprivation of food as a form of punishment and control under slavery, to the ongoing bulldozing of Palestinian olive groves cultivated over generations, there are countless examples of how food has been – and continues to be – used as a tool of oppression.”
On the flip side, she added, “Food has also been central to emancipatory efforts, from the reclaiming of traditional foods and culinary practices, to the preservation of heirloom seeds, to struggles in defense of territory.” Such efforts are encapsulated by the concept of food sovereignty, defined by global social movements as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
“You control a nation through its food and resources”
The duality of food as control and food as resistance was picked up by Laila El-Hadad, who powerfully wove together the personal and political as she shared what had brought her into these issues. As a Palestinian born into diaspora, Laila had grappled with a feeling of disconnection from her own history, people and land – a disconnect, she added, intentionally forged over time: “At the heart and root of settler colonialism is control – control over land, resources people – and forcibly disconnecting people from their land and resources.” This is exemplified by the case of Gaza, she explained, where Israel retains control of its borders, sea space, economy, and food supply. Farms on Gaza’s borders have been bulldozed time and time again, while fishermen are shot and detained for crossing lines set by Israel in Gaza’s tightly controlled waters.
In seeking to reconnect to her roots in Palestine, and in Gaza in particular, Laila found food to be a powerful means of doing so, “opening up doors to histories, peoples and lands.” A challenge, however, is that much of the most intimate knowledge on food and foodways has not been recorded, but instead is orally transmitted, and “when the Palestinian nation got scattered, that knowledge went in all sorts of places.” A deep desire to uncover, preserve and share some of that knowledge is what led Laila and her co-author Maggie Schmitt on the exploration that eventually resulted in their book, The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey. As Maggie explains, “The best stories happen in the kitchens.” Kitchens, together with farms, she adds, are sites where meaning is constructed “because of the total materiality and the commitment to perpetuating life that you find in those two places.”
For Indigenous chef Brit Reed, a member of the Choctaw Nation currently living on a Coast Salish reservation in Washington State