BEYOND INDIGENOUS INGREDIENTS AND CUISINES: MEANING, COMMUNITY AND SOVEREIGNTY
Nancy Qian
Email: nancyqian2023@u.northwestern.edu
BIO
Juntang Qian ‘23 is a freshman majoring in Journalism and Psychology and minoring in Art Theory and Practice. She is from Shanghai, China. During her spare time, she loves to paint, take photographs, dance, and write. Her dream is to become a journalist and author who writes and draws illustrations for her books. Juntang currently sees herself going into the journalism industry when she graduates, but this goal is subject to change. A fun fact about her is that she has an interest in collecting tickets and has been doing that for 15 years.
Q&A
The research topic is centered around the indigenous food sovereignty movement in Canada. More specifically, I researched how Vancouver indigenous food businesses and culinary leaders are part of this movement, and how they are impacted by this movement.
I decided on this research topic before the pandemic started. By then, I wanted to interview Vancouver indigenous food business owners on their experiences owning indigenous food businesses in Vancouver and how they see themselves as part of the larger food sovereignty movement.
However, the pandemic limited my ability to conduct in-person interviews with the food business owners. After conducting Zoom interviews with several business owners, I got connected to outstanding indigenous culinary leaders in Canada, who were leading the Canadian indigenous food sovereignty movement and creating impacts in their communities.
Therefore, this is one of the episodes that I produced for my research project in which the culinary leaders shared their experiences, perspectives, and insights.
During the research, I learned that the Canadian indigenous food sovereignty movement made huge progress in recent years. These days, indigenous chefs who are leading the Indigenous Culinary of Associated Nation (ICAN) are collaborating with National Health inspectors to center indigenous chefs’ voices in the Canadian culinary community. They are also starting programs to mentor the next generation of indigenous chefs in Canada. In my opinion, these are meaningful stories that should be covered by journalists.
Undecided.
