Earth to Tables Legacies: Multimedia Food Conversations across Generations and Cultures

Climate crises, a global pandemic, farmer protests, diet-related diseases—all of these are telling us that the industrial food system threatens our health and the health of the planet and deepens systemic inequities, racism, and poverty. Using food as an entry to key issues—such as Indigenous-settler relations and anti-racism in the food movement— Earth to Tables Legacies: Multimedia Food Conversations across Generations and Cultures tells the stories of food activists from the Americas—young and old, rural and urban, Indigenous and settler—who share a vision for food justice and food sovereignty, from earth to tables. This visually stunning, full-color multimedia book generates rich conversations about food sovereignty through eleven photo essays and links to ten videos. Commentaries on each essay broaden the conversations with the experiences and perspectives of eighteen scholars and activists—both Indigenous and settler—from Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Facilitator’s guides offer creative ways to engage students and activists in critical discussions about these issues with links to other resources—text-based and visual, print and online. Visit the Earth to Tables website here.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Introduction Naming the Moment The Moment Exposes an Unsustainable and Unjust Food System The Moment Offers a Portal to Food Justice The Moment for Online Multimedia Education Naming the Project: Earth to Tables Legacies Naming Our Process: Cocreating with All Our Relations Naming the Chapters: An Overview and Synthesis PART I: Greetings and Gratitude Chapter 1: The Thanksgiving Address: Greetings and Thanks Introduction to Thanksgiving Address Continuing the Conversation with Molly Anderson PART II: Setting the Table Chapter 2: Navigating Dynamic Tensions on Common Waters: The Broader Context of Our Legacies Conversations Knowledge Tensions: Eurocentric versus Indigenous Knowledges Earth or Food Tensions: Corporate Food Regime versus Food Sovereignty Movement Justice or Equity Tensions: Intersectional Identities and Power Political Tensions: Capitalism, Colonization, and Reconciliation Chapter 3: Pollinating Relationships: Our Collaborative Methodology Chapter 4: Digging In: Facilitating Dialogue and Action Walking the Talk: Introduction to Facilitator Guides PART III: Storytellers Chapter 5: Stories of the Storytellers Meet the Storytellers Meet the Production Team Our Food Icons Our Migration Stories PART IV: Conversations Chapter 6: Ways of Knowing Photo Essay: Haudenosaunee Gifts: Contributions to Our Past and Common Future Photo Essay: Language and Food: A Worldview in Verbs Continuing the Conversation with Dr. Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams Photo Essay: Medicinal Plants in the P’urépecha Cosmovision Continuing the Conversation with Amber Adams Photo Essay: Mutual Nurturing: Reweaving Community with Our Elders Continuing the Conversation with Monique Mojica Chapter 7: Earth Photo Essay: Mother’s Milk: The Original Food Continuing the Conversation with Penny Van Esterik Continuing the Conversation with Laura Solis Video: The Soil Is Alive Continuing the Conversation with Gilberto Aboites Video: The Alchemy of Agroecology Continuing the Conversation with Harriet Friedmann Photo Essay: The Animal Food Cycle: We Feed Them, and They Feed Us Continuing the Conversation with Fred Metallic Chapter 8: Justice Photo Essay: Promoting Organic Agriculture in Mexico: From Urban Gardens to Multinational Companies Continuing the Conversation with Samantha Trumbull Video: Why Farmers Markets? Continuing the Conversation with María Blas, Fulvio Gioanetto, Valiana Aguilar, and Ángel Kú Continuing the Conversation with Anan Lololi and Selam Teclu Photo Essay: Food Justice and Urban Agriculture in Action Video: Black Creek Community Farm: Healing the Community Continuing the Conversation with Karen Washington Video: Who Will Feed Us? The Farm Labour Crisis Meets the Climate Crisis Continuing the Conversation with Gilberto Aboites Chapter 9: Tables Photo Essay: From the Mush Hole to the Everlasting Tree School: Colonial Food Legacies among the Haudenosaunee Continuing the Conversation with Lorraine Johnson Continuing the Conversation with Fulvio Gioanetto Photo Essay: La Comida: The Core of Food Sovereignty Continuing the Conversation with Claudia Serrato Haudenosaunee Primer: 3 videos Video: Getting to Know Us Continuing the Conversation with Patty Loew Video: Living with Your Mother Continuing the Conversation with Tim LeDuc Video: Life in the Longhouse Continuing the Conversation with Kiera (Kaia’tanó:ron) Brant-Birioukov Photo Essay: Cooking and Eating Together: From the Kitchen Table to the Community Meal Continuing the Conversation with Joshna Maharaj Acknowledgments: Greetings and Gratitude Bibliography

About the Author :
Deborah Barndt is professor emerita in the faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto. A social justice activist, artist, and popular educator, her photographs have been published and exhibited widely, and her books include Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail and edited volumes VIVA! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas, Wild Fire: Art as Activism, and Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain (deborahbarndt.com). Lauren E. Bakerhas more than twenty years of experience working on food systems issues with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Toronto Food Policy Council, Sustain Ontario, and the People’s Food Institute. With a PhD on maize social movements in Mexico, she has taught at the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University. Her books include Balancing the Scales: True Cost Accounting for Food and Corn Meets Maize (laurenbaker.ca). Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan-Canadian artist based in Toronto who works collaboratively with communities around the globe. Her widely exhibited installations are featured in a recent book, Alexandra Gelis: Seeds. She is completing her PhD at York University on the relationship between people, plants, and power in the context of colonization and globalization, culminating in a major multimedia exhibit: Living-With : Migrant Relations (https://www.alexandragelis.com/).

Review :
Folklorists interested in any cultural form, not just foodways, will find much to learn from and to contemplate in this volume. The stories themselves illustrate the wealth of knowledge and wisdom held by Indigenous peoples—and the obstacles posed by traditional Eurocentric mind-sets—that can help to rebuild healthier relationships with others and with the Earth through our food. Earth to Tables Legacies pushes back against food systems approaches that have been dominated by neoliberalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and settler-colonialism. The authors speak to some of the most important relationships at the core of the food systems transformation—Indigenous and settler; human and nonhuman; youth and elders; farmers, harvesters, and eaters, to name only a few. The book brings together different ways of knowing and shares a range of insights about the challenges, opportunities, and tensions at the heart of food sovereignty from a diverse range of scholars, activists, practitioners, and artists. The conversations, photos, stories, art, and accompanying online multimedia resources celebrate communities and social movements while providing the tools and inspiration for building sustainable food systems embedded in decolonization and social and environmental justice. Earth to Tables Legacies is needed now more than ever, to nourish our bodies, our minds, and our souls. Earth to Tables Legacies offers an inspired, and inspiring, compendium for recovering and co-producing food sovereignty practices. It is a well-timed and fitting testimony to the mushrooming consciousness around consolidating just and healthy agri-food relations. By seizing this world-historical moment with its multiple threads, knowledges, and intersectional dialogue, it elevates possibilities for enriching earth-centered learning and collective activism. This is a wonderful book packed with amazing stories of peoples’ food sovereignty struggles throughout North America. It is a must read for anyone who is looking for vision, inspiration, and hope. The multi-media approach is brilliant! Starting from traditional foods, well-worn kitchen tables, rich soil, and deep personal relationships, Earth to Tables Legacies uses text, photo essays, and online videos to consider solutions to our most pressing challenges. Through intense and reflective conversations focused on food sovereignty, youth and elders, rural and urban dwellers, Indigenous/settler, BIPOC/white, Canadian and Mexican folk, the Earth to Tables Legacies collaborators urge us to look backward to find a way forward. This project is invaluable for teachers as well as anyone interested in the transformative power of food for achieving social justice and the well-being of people and the planet.