Food security and climate change impacts in remote and Indigenous communities in British Columbia

Introduction

The BC Centre for Disease Control – Prevention and Health Promotion’s Food Security team recently released the findings of the project, Food Costs and Climate Change Impact Stories from Remote BC Communities (Stories Project). This project was started in 2022 to supplement the Food Costing in BC: Assessing the Affordability of Healthy Eating initiative to better understand and contextualize peoples’ experience of food access and affordability in remote Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in the province.  This Stories Project was qualitative, collecting and sharing stories from people living in eight different communities and regions across the province, allowing for unique knowledge to be shared.

Through the stories and experiences that were shared we have gained a better understanding of the complex issues surrounding food security for those living in remote BC while recognizing that each community has diverse challenges. The project has gained invaluable insights and knowledge from a small number of communities. Further work to engage more people and communities will bring additional perspectives and voices.

A notable outcome of this project is that the stories and “what we heard” are being shared through both a report, and a website with longer stories from six of the communities engaged in the project.  The stories emphasize culture and connection to food and lands, with challenges related to the impacts of climate change including access to traditional and market foods.  We recently presented a webinar, focusing on what we heard from communities in this project: Food costs and climate change impact stories from remote BC communities | National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health | NCCEH - CCSNE. 

The project process was intentional and built through collaborative engagement. In this post we share more on the process, key takeaways, and lessons learned that we hope will assist other public health professionals to engage in similar project work.

Project guiding principles

Early on in this project, our project team, consisting of BCCDC staff and hired consultants (led by IDEA Diabetes), engaged a project advisory committee consisting of Indigenous Knowledge Keepers from communities across the province, and representatives from Métis Nation BC, the First Nation Health Authority, and each of the regional health authorities.  The advisory committee along with the project team developed a process that would be community-centred and guided by six principles: collaboration, equity and inclusion, wellbeing, respect, confidentiality and validation. The project would prioritize First Nations principles of ownership, control, access and possession (OCAP®) to confirm a commitment and responsibility to data sovereignty of communities.

1. Collaboration

The diversity of partners engaged from the start of the project brought different perspectives and insights that guided the work of the project team.  It was important to involved partners that could bridge systems and bring their knowledge of challenges faced by remote Indigenous communities. This work was relational and developing and holding those relationships was paramount to this project’s success.
 

2. Equity and Inclusion

The communities were engaged through an expression of interest to make it an equitable process with the advisory committee being involved throughout this process. This included communities from different regions and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. The communities decided how to share their stories and everyone was given equal opportunity to contribute and share their knowledge.  Some communities invited the project team to engage with community members directly, whereas in other communities a community member was sub-contracted to collect the information from their fellow community members and share it back to the project team.  We remained open to meeting the self-determined needs of the communities.
 

3. Wellbeing

Food security and wellbeing cannot be separated, and wellbeing needs to be further understood in the context of peoples’ relationships to one another, community, food, and land. The wellbeing of project team members, advisory members, and community members was of upmost importance throughout the project.
 

4. Respect

We deeply respect the knowledge held by communities and members of the project advisory committee and understand the importance of not being extractive and taking information without giving back in some way.  We provided honoraria to communities and to project advisory members in an act of reciprocity.  We recognized the need to be accountable in amplifying community voices and carrying the findings forward to influence action in response to what was shared with us by community.  Moreover, we remained true to the process and all of the principles even when there was pressure to produce results in a more timely way. 
 

5. Confidentiality

Continuous communication between the project team and community contacts was vital for the OCAP principles to be followed. In line with these principles, the communities were the first and last to review their stories before anything was shared outside of the project team.  This was important to promote data sovereignty and self-determination of the individuals and communities participating in the story-focused project.  Each person from community who shared their knowledge determined how they wanted to be acknowledged in the report and website (eg., whether to remain anonymous or to allow for their names to be included).
 

6. Validation

Safe spaces were created to have dialogue in a way in which everyone felt heard and that their knowledge and insights were validated.  In some communities, community members were interviewed individually and in others, larger group gatherings were held to allow for deep listening for greater understanding.

Key takeaways

1. Commit to intentionally building meaningful and respectful relationship between health partners and Indigenous peoples in BC. We engaged with eight B.C. communities in this project, four of which are First Nation communities and one of which is a Métis chartered community. It enabled a continuation on a path of reconciliation to learn the truth through deep listening and following through with action.  This is what we are called to do in BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (BC’s DRIPA Action Plan) Action Plan (Government of BC, 2022).
2. Set out guiding principles at the start of the project to ensure work continues in a good way. The project team’s attention was kept focused on having integrity throughout the project process.
3. Listen to community concerns and needs and be prepared to not share findings if the community does not provide permission to do so. During the final review of the report and website by the communities, the community contacts requested a number of edits be made to their stories. Out of respect, and in line with the guiding principles, we edited the website and report to ensure that we were not sharing a community story without permission from the community. We will continue to respond to any changes that are requested by the communities.
4. Ensure adequate time is built into the project to allow for inclusion of community voices and feedback. While there were some extensions to the original project timeline, these delays were acceptable and justified to ensure tasks were conducted appropriately and giving adequate time to receive feedback from communities. We can incorporate the learnings from this project into planning timelines for future projects.
5. Engage with knowledge translation specialists, if possible, to help disseminate knowledge using innovative methods and channels. Our knowledge translation team at the BCCDC worked with us to create the stories website with images developed by an Indigenous illustrator. We recognize that there may not always be the internal capacity in public health to develop these tools, but we would encourage placing greater emphasis on disseminating knowledge through innovative methods.
6. Consider a greater focus in future projects on the impacts of climate change on food access and how it is changing ways of living for people especially for remote Indigenous communities.

In conclusion, this BC-based project was innovative in its methods and in the production of a dynamic, engaging and interactive stories-based website.  Others in Canada could consider applications from the findings of this work and the learnings as we have shared.  We will continue to engage and amplify the voices of different populations to better understand how they experience food security challenges with the broader aim of influencing policy and practice.  We hope that centering community voices in our work and sharing stories will be a more common method used in public health to inform policy and practice.

Authors

Janelle Hatch is a white settler of mixed European ancestry who lives and works on unceded, ancestral and stolen homelands of Ləkʷəŋən peoples of Songhees (Ləkʷəŋən) and Esquimalt (Xwepsum) Nations, colonially known as Victoria, British Columbia.  She is a Registered Dietitian and Public Health Professional for more than 20 years.  She works as Lead for Food Security at the BC Centre for Disease Control, a part of the Provincial Health Services Authority.  The Food Security team works alongside partners in the BC regional health authorities, First Nations Health Authority, Provincial Government Ministries, non-profit organizations and academics to realize strengthened food security, reduce food insecurity and support Indigenous food sovereignty.  The team centres relational work, focusing equity and justice.

Raihan Hassen: Raihan is a registered dietitian and food lover humbled to be living and working on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. Raihan has had experience working in long term-care, school food research, and food security. She works as Food Security Coordinator at the BC Centre for Disease Control where she works on collecting and distributing evidence on food security across BC in close partnership with communities, health professionals, and government. Raihan has a passion for health equity, food systems, and public health.