Leadership Team Series: What themes does your work embody?
How do you describe your community? What change are you working towards in your community? How have you collaborated with the Metro Food Justice Network to create change in the food system?
These are a handful of questions that members of the MFJN Leadership Team reflected on in the Leadership Team Series that we launched this summer. Throughout the interviews, Lachelle Cunningham, Derek Nicholas, Princess Titus, and Olivia Mancia Chavez generously shared their wisdom, stories, journeys, and experience within the food justice space.
In each interview, it is apparent the enthusiasm and commitment that these individuals have for the work that they do. And what’s more, is the connections they foster on a multitude of levels–
HEALING CONNECTIONS between humans and more-than-human relatives through the medium of food,
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS of collaboration and creatively realizing different futures through resilience and relationships,
CULTURAL CONNECTIONS that honor the ways in which food is medicine and identity, and
LIBERATORY CONNECTIONS that reflect on how we can work together, in our stewardship of food, honoring of the relatives who nourish us, and listening to the elders and ancestors who guide us, to build a bridge from our present to a transformed food system and liberated future.
Through the conversations shared by Lachelle Cunningham, Derek Nicholas, Princess Titus, and Olivia Mancia Chavez, it became obvious that the wisdom they shared aloud, came from their heart in a time-transcendent way that explores their personal connection with food and the work they’ve devoted themselves to throughout their lives, as well as the larger cultural and societal contexts which emphasize the ways our food systems needs healing and how we can guide and be guided to a future where decolonization and racial equity are prioritized, and where food is accessible as medicine, nourishment, and community.
So, here is an invitation to learn from Lachelle Cunningham, Derek Nicholas, Princess Titus, and Olivia Mancia Chavez and reflect on the themes of “Food as Decolonization,” “Food as Community,” “Food as Liberation,” and “Food as Healing.” It takes all of us to transform our food system and we look forward to collaborating with you!
To access the series, click on the headings and you will be redirected to our YouTube Channel.
Introduction
Food as Decolonization with Derek Nicholas
“I really became passionate in college when I started working in the Native American garden, growing our very ancient seeds and watching those seeds grow into plants and having to use that produce in a respectful manner. My passion continues to develop. I really get to understand how eating those Indigenous foods has affected me, whether it was physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. And it’s been life changing.”
Invitation: Learn the Dakota or Anishinaabe name for your favorite food indigenous to Minnesota.
Food as Community with Princess Titus
“The role that Appetite for Change plays in community food access is we have programs that we offer that were actually the ideas of the community that we engage with. Using trauma-informed nutrition as a model to cook and eat and talk with the community that had to be resilient in this food desert or what they would call a food swamp. We use those ideas, and we allow them to shape our programming, continuing to cook and eat and talk with community.
Invitation: Reflect on your favorite memory of growing, preparing, or enjoying food in community, and share it in the comments!
Food as Liberation with Lachelle Cunningham
“The kitchen is my underground railroad, you know what I mean? I’m looking to bring people through to freedom and it’s freedom on a bunch of different planes. It’s freedom of expression and creativity. It’s freedom of being able to grow our own food and have food sovereignty. And then there’s the economic empowerment through entrepreneurship. All of it has aspects of, in my mind, healing and liberation.”
Invitation: Recall an experience with cooking, gardening, or eating where you felt freedom.
In what ways do you practice decolonization and liberatory work in your daily life?
Food as Healing with Olivia Mancia Chavez
“Growing up, I wouldn’t eat the foods that everyone else is eating…so it was so healing to be able to show people how to make pupusas. It was just so much fun to see everyone enjoying making them, the process of it, learning about them, and then also having the food together.”
Invitation: What food tastes like home to you? How can we collaborate to get more culturally relevant foods in schools and dining halls?
Collaboration, Connection, & Synergy
We’re all about building a web, being in COMMUNITY with one another, and changing our food system through collective action to work towards DECOLONIZATION, LIBERATION, and HEALING.
So, how can we collaborate? What resources and knowledge can we share with each other in mutual partnerships to make our work go farther?
How to Get Involved!
“If you eat food, there will be something for you
in the Metro Food Justice Network!”
-Olivia Mancia Chavez
Check out our Action Teams and fill out the Interest Form to collaborate.
Miigwech!
Ho pidamayado/Hau pidamayaye!