Deconstructing ‘Canadian Cuisine’: Towards decolonial food futurities on Turtle Island

Abstract

As scholars and community activists, to secure a just food system, we must first acknowledge our complicity in hierarchal power structures that shape structural inequities by questioning the underlying socio-political currents and interrogating the dominant relationships within our food system. In this commentary, the authors reflect upon their intersectional lived experiences interacting with food systems in the settler nation of Canada. They explore the complex interplay of systemic racism, settler colonialism and neoliberalism within the Canadian food system by deconstructing the indefinable essence of “Canadian cuisine” and mapping these situated insights onto the process of gastronomic multiculturalism. The authors provide their perspective that an entry point along the ongoing process of securing decolonial food futurities on Turtle Island requires a conscious commitment to building interrelational solidarity across differences, reckoning with colonial land politics and supporting food sovereignty for both racialized communities and Indigenous Peoples.