In “Environmental Food and Justice Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems”, Teresa Mares and Devon Pena build a narrative of what it means to be food conscious. The piece opens with a vegan activist whose insists that she is “not guilty of inflicting pain on others including animals or the people who go hungry because so many of us still eat dead animal protein” (Mares 197). This altruism is cut short as the author points out the predominantly white community in northern Washington that she lives in and the fact that they may own the land due to historical privilege but are not native to the land nor tend to the land through traditional practices.
The question being raised is one of food sovereignty. Mares goes on to say, “ we believe that the food justice movement should adopt an organizing frame of sovereignty – including the notion that food is not just about nutrition, it is also about culture” (Mares 202). This idea not only provides a voice for the land and how it is managed but also provides credibility to the sovereign peoples who have cared for the land. In looking at a historical timeline, “white” stewardship of the land is relatively new, however, it currently dominates the mainstream voice and therefore excludes the sovereign interests of native Stewarts who have an extensive historical relationship to these lands. What is often left out of the white narrative is “an analysis of structural violence, its relationship with state power, and the practices and technologies of governmentality” (Mares 199).
With the concept of food security being raised, “Pena’s vision of indigenous autonomous food systems moves the EJ movement beyond an narrow definition of food security, which treats food as a nutritional commodity, and towards a broad ideal of food sovereignty that encompasses the deeper social and cultural meanings indigenous communities assign to food” (Mares 203). This then begs the local question, where do we stand as local community?
So here we are, “living locally” (Eugene, Oregon), on stolen Kalapuya land, in a “progressive” community of bike riding, granola-eating people. There is a sense of communal pride for the “progress” of our environmentally aware community. Nonetheless, not many people know where we have come from or who really makes up our community. Dominated by an 80% white demographic, we rarely give structural power to the minority voices in our community and I cannot help but draw parallels to the vegan activists “ethical code”.
As a community, we take for granted names like Umpqua bank and Tillamook cheese without every paying back to the native voices that those names represent. Just as we have changed the landscape, we have also changed the ways in which we refer to these peoples. It is as if they are part of our past even though they still participate within the 20%.
We are still divided geographically with most minority families living in West Eugene alongside most industrial factories. It is not by chance but by relocation through red zoning that our African American communities are not clustered in downtown but pushed to the outskirts. The pot only thickens when we look at the 57 companies in Eugene that have to report to the EPA for toxic air pollutants and find that 54 of them are located in the same low income neighborhoods of west Eugene.
I am not bashing the awareness we have to support organic, environmentally aware businesses downtown and in the south hills. Nor am I presenting this argument as a cynic. These are just a couple of the socially unjust “coincidences” that we take for granted on a daily basis, and they so simply call to question the “local” picture at large.
It is important to take in to consideration the holistic views necessary for incorporating environmental justice and social justice in to our predominantly white narrative and this starts with a critical eye on the marginalization within our own community. Our community has the voices necessary to create a much richer culture if we only choose to empower them. It takes a majority to convert the mainstream doctrine and for us, that means it will take white voices to shake up the white narrative.
Works Cited
Mares, Teresa M., and Devon G. Peña. “Environmental and food justice.” Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability (2011): 197.
Awesome post, I definitely agree with what you are saying. When I used to live in Albuquerque I saw a lot of this as well. Its especially infuriating when Native American culture becomes a fashion statement… One question I have is what sort of steps could we take as a community in order to achieve a more fair and balanced system in terms of Native American recognition? Any sort of policy you would implement to boost awareness?
I’ve read a few articles now that comment on Mares-Pena and I wanted to comment on one rhetorical tendency that I think both the authors of the original article are guilty of. I think that people are making a lot of non-qualified appeals to the notion of “tradition,” which I view as a very dangerous term that risks essentializing peoples. This is especially true considering our class hasn’t had a ton of input as of yet from living indigenous peoples or people who live on reservations.
Quite a few authors on post-colonialism discuss the concept of the psychic split along which colonized subjects are forced to identify. The idea is that an ethnic and temporal rift is created and people are forced by conventional modes of racial categorization to either identify with ‘traditional’ lifestyles (which were/are often demonized) or the ‘modern’ colonial body. That is to say, choosing to identify with ones own population is often imagined to be stuck out of time. We come to view colonized subjects as timeless and non-evolving, which creates an identity trap so that post-colonial subjects ability to navigate identity, to adapt to best practices, in the world of colonization is limited.
I know that this isn’t necessarily what is meant by people when they say these, but I think words like “tradition” in the context of natives often trigger associations that are pre-linguistic and that we should be careful with what kinds of connotations we inadvertently attach to underrepresented populations.
Great job applying readings to our own seemingly-more-relevant lives! I am not from Eugene, and this blog is particularly informative to someone like me who has mostly only experienced the campus area and Saturday markets of Eugene. The final statement – “it will take white voice to shake up the white narrative” – echoes our reading discussions of the necessity for ethnic people to become involved with the gardens being installed in their minority neighborhoods. However, I’m sure we can also agree, in this instance, there must also be Native input to effect the “predominately white narrative” to awaken awareness before more whites are inspired to “shake” others. Great writing and post!