Coastal Foodways: Fostering Food Resiliency on the Central Coast

“Our ancestors have known for tens of thousands of years how to be in a relationship with this place and our food systems so that we can thrive. These food systems have helped us through all kinds of immense difficulties. Increasingly, we’re seeing a huge interest amongst community members to tap into that deep ancestral wisdom of thriving with the systems that are here.”

Jess H̓áust̓i (​’Cúagilákv), Coastal Foodways, Project Lead

Living in the geographically remote communities that speckle the islands and fjords of what is known as British Columbia’s Central Coast, it is easy to feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world.  

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when quarantine measures and social distancing were in effect, the feeling of isolation became even more real when the supply chains that service these remote communities shattered.

With the fragility of supply chains illuminated, many community members turned to home gardening to gain a sense of connectivity and peace. At the same time, community gardens and local fishing programs increased the local food supply. Seeing the effects of the pandemic combined with a rapidly changing climate and economic insecurity that impacts people’s ability to access healthful foods, the moment felt right for Jess H̓áust̓i, ​’Cúagilákv, to explore bold solutions.

Over the last ten years, food security has been a central part of H̓áust̓i’s work in Haíɫzaqv territory, which encompasses 16,658 square kilometres of land and extensive nearshore and offshore waters along BC’s Central Coast.

“I grew up in a family where food security was intrinsic to everything that we did as a multigenerational family. I was encouraged to process fish in the backyard with my grandparents, pick, and gather medicines growing in the garden. That was a normal part of my upbringing,” said H̓áust̓i.

Photo: Jess H̓áust̓i, Coastal Foodways

H̓áust̓i is the founder of Coastal Foodways, a support hub for Central Coast community champions who are building food systems resiliency in the places where they live and thrive.

“We believe our communities deserve abundance, and we are here to support you to grow, forage, harvest, jig, pick, and trade your way to nourishing and plentiful food systems.”

Coastal Foodways

H̓áust̓i highlights that because of the compounding impacts of the pandemic, a changing climate and economic insecurity, communities across the Central Coast are experiencing more food insecurity where they live and are acutely observant of how it impacts them and their loved ones. H̓áust̓i also points out that the food insecurity they are experiencing is deeply rooted in the impacts of colonization.

“There’s been so much that’s been done since contact to regulate people away from their territory, away from their food resources, to make it illegal to practice their culture, which includes many cultural practices around sharing of food. Food was seen as a source of strength for Indigenous people and was deliberately taken to make us more susceptible to assimilation,” said H̓áust̓i.

Colonization has fractured family relationships and long-held systems of intergenerational and land-based learning. These relationships and learning models have been deeply diminished, but they have not been completely taken away.  

“They are still here and still present,” said H̓áust̓i.

H̓áust̓i explains that there are a number of community champions who have their eyes on solutions that will foster stability and wellness for themselves, their families, their communities, and the region at large — solutions rooted in ancestral and local knowledge, emerging from the region and for the region.

“Being in a geographically remote community, in a small community, it is easy to feel isolated. You feel far from the urban centres, resources, funding, and ability to walk into a garden store or a big grocery store. It is not as immediate here,” said H̓áust̓i. “The more that we can build relationships with each other around food and the more we can understand food systems as a valued and recognized component of our communities functioning together, the more that people will start to take seriously creating sustainable industries around food production and deep sustained acts of community care around food production, food processing, and sharing of food.”

Coastal Foodways was established in the fall of 2022 with the goal of breaking down the systemic barriers to food security. In its first year, the organization focused on building relationships with champions from Central Coast communities, understanding what their communities’ priorities are, what’s unique about where they are and how they work, and how they want to be supported to do their work well.

“We’re not here to reinvent the wheel or to impose ourselves on our communities and region. We’re here to provide support to the folks already doing that incredible work and to provide more interconnectedness across our communities,” said H̓áust̓i.

In the next year and the years to come, Coastal Foodways will continue to build out these relationships while providing other offerings to communities, like the creation of a seedbank. Communities in the region have expressed a need for local seeds that are adapted to the unique climate and growing conditions of the Central Coast. Coastal Foodways is hoping to provide opportunities to grow skills around the saving and preservation of seeds. The hope is to create a centralized seedbank that Coastal communities can access during each growing season.

Photos: Jess H̓áust̓i, Coastal Foodways

Coastal Foodways is also working to pilot a safe transportation option to rebuild cross-community trade relationships which go back hundreds of generations. Transportation between the Central Coast communities by ferry or plane is often precarious and very weather dependent. This is an area where Coastal Foodways hopes to support by providing logistics and facilitating the movement of ancestral food trades and other food supports between communities in the region. Coastal Foodways also aims to research ancestral practices around garden islands, including pest management, soil remediation, and cultivating thriving food plant communities to extract key lessons that will support modern food production.

Through these initial offerings, Coastal Foodways hopes to build momentum around food security so that best practices, key resources, and tangible supports are being fairly distributed and exchanged.

“We’re not going anywhere. We’re here as communities. We’re here as nations. We’re here as multiple nations in the Central Coast area. And we need to feed ourselves and each other. There is an opportunity here to think about large-scale food production and food processing and cross-community work,” said H̓áust̓i.

H̓áust̓i sees Coastal Foodways as a space where communities can dream together about what food sovereignty looks like to them and create opportunities for training and skill building to achieve their goals.

“I would love to see a Central Coast someday where we all have the option to be intimate with our food systems in ways that are deeply nourished by what is around us and sustainable, as well as localizing our food economy in ways that really deepens our sense of kinship within our communities and across our communities.”

H̓áust̓i doesn’t know exactly what this would look like, but they are hopeful in witnessing elements of this vision showing up in their work and the communities they have engaged with.

“I think it’s so beautiful and I’m really excited by the possibility of what could emerge if we really value food as something that we’re thinking about.”

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Coastal Foodways is an Indigenous-led organization that upholds food systems and community champions of the Central Coast. Coastal Foodways is supported by REFBC’s Indigenous Grants Stream. To learn more and connect with the team visit www.coastalfoodways.ca.