Huckleberries, Food Sovereignty, Cumulative Impact and Community Health: Reflections from Northern British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

"For many communities around the world, ability to access healthy and culturally valued foods is compromised by cumulative impacts of a wide range of activities on the local or regional land base which impact the landscape ability to provide these foods. Our paper reviews the intersection of traditional Gitxsan/Gitanyow food resources and their management and allocation systems with a series of challenges presented by commercial forestry and impacts of other forms of development (e.g. pipeline or power transmission corridors) on the land base traditionally managed by the communities of Gitwangak and Gitanyow (British Columbia, Canada), with particular attention on black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum, Sim Maa’y) availability and management. We argue that these impacts affect social, cultural and ecological health and are issues of food sovereignty. Effectively, the land base itself is treated as a commons where traditional rules of management, responsibility and access to resources have been disrupted and overlaid by a series of historical and contemporary changes mediated by colonial, provincial and federal governments and global industries. In recent developments, commercial harvest of black huckleberry further threatens local access to this most significant traditional plant food, whose Gitxsan name means ‘real or true berry’."