BY LISA MASÉ
In This Article
Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabe writer and economist from the White Earth lands (colonized name: Minnesota).
For her, food sovereignty is about the freedom to choose both what foods to eat and how they are grown.
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance, drawing on the 2007 Declaration of Nyéléni, defines food sovereignty as the right of peoples to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound, sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems, putting the needs of those who produce and eat food before the demands of markets and corporations.
Control over land and seeds is an essential part of food sovereignty. The transnational agrarian movement of small-scale, Indigenous farmers known as La Via Campesina first brought the term to global attention in 1996 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, proposing food sovereignty—returning control of land, seeds, water, and natural resources to the people who grow food—as an alternative to top-down “food security” programs.
Food sovereignty has long been an implicit understanding for people living in Indigenous foodsheds that have survived for centuries. In the northern Italian region where my family lives, for example, Austrian and Italian traditions coexist to form a uniquely regional foodshed.
An Alpine Foodshed in Practice
Before World War I, this area was part of the Habsburg Empire. Though it became part of Italy more than a hundred years ago, it remains ethnically majority Austrian even today.
Here, alpine geography offers only small valleys for habitation, so towns are small and centered around churches and farms, with expansive hay barns attached to stone houses warmed by massive masonry stoves.
Most local people have a working relationship with a few of the farmers in their area. A favorite autumnal pilgrimage involves visiting these farmers for a community meal, with everyone seated at long wooden tables adorned with red-and-white checkered tablecloths.
This is such a popular tradition that the name for it, torgelen, has become a verb, meaning “to cook and eat together with neighboring farmers.” All the shared food is as local as possible. The farmers provide most of it, but the guests bring some too.
When neighbors arrive at the farm in the afternoon, it is time to start cooking. They may be set to work over an open fire, stirring cornmeal, salt, and water in a copper pot with a wooden stick until it thickens into polenta. A farmer might ask for help with slicing thick blocks of speck, a salted and smoked sausage, and displaying them for all to enjoy as appetizers.
Some might like to try their hand at rolling out disks of buckwheat-flour dough, filling it with steamed spinach and sauerkraut, and folding it into a half-moon shape to make tirtlen, large dumplings that are fried and served with plenty of freshly churned butter and Fontina cheese.
Children run outside, chasing chickens or collecting fallen walnuts to feed the pigs. Someone in the household hands out aprons, and guests and farmers alike tie one on and get to work, tasting wine, roasted chestnuts, speck, and the trademark schuettelbrot, a hard rye bread seasoned with fennel, fenugreek, and caraway, as the afternoon moves on.
Honoring Land and Ancestors
The spirit of collaboration unites people here beyond class and ethnicity.
Even though those of Austrian descent are sometimes too proud to send their children to a bilingual school and Italians sometimes resist attending the Austrian folkloric dances in the town squares, everyone can agree on their passion for local food and the picturesque land that makes its growth possible.
The tension between these two distinct ethnic groups keeps the region vibrant, reminding all who live here of the paramount importance of caring for the Earth and appreciating its gifts.
Reclaiming control of our food also means reconnecting with the landscape and the people around us, honoring differences and celebrating connection. This is where heritage and place come into focus.
Heritage, Place, and Belonging
Today, much of the world’s food has lost its sacred, place-based nature and become a commodity.
Many foods are available year-round to those with the privilege to purchase them, even though many “local” staples actually originated elsewhere: apples and garlic from Central Asia, beans and melons from Africa, potatoes and tomatoes from the Andes, and citrus and rice from Southeast Asia.
The more we eat in accordance with our heritage, the more we feel balanced. This may involve looking at aspects of our inheritance that are hard to see and offering them forgiveness so we can continue the work of promoting equity. The more we eat foods native to the regions where we live and learn about the foodways of local Indigenous peoples, the better we align with our environment and the more we can appreciate the wisdom of traditional cultures.
In this way, eating becomes an opportunity to re-localize—to honor our ancestors, our environment, and our communities and to achieve well-being while doing so.
Reverence for local foods can be found in many places worldwide. My experience of being raised in the Mediterranean climate is that it allows food traditions to shine through the variety of ingredients available year-round.
Where I live now, on unceded Abenaki land in Vermont, farmers cultivate beautiful vegetables, tend to winter-hardy fruit trees, pasture healthy animals, and grow an impressive variety of grains. But our growing season lasts five months at best, and as our supplies of local foods dwindle during the cold months, so does my desire grow to visit the warmer places where these foods grow year-round.
Practicing Food Sovereignty at Home
For many of us, reclaiming some measure of food sovereignty starts close to home. It might mean getting to know local farmers and producers, joining or expanding a garden, setting up a seasonal food swap with friends and neighbors, or learning about the traditional crops and recipes of the place where we live.
In daily life, one of the most practical steps is to cook more and rely less on prepared foods. Cooking becomes a creative process when we treat recipes as guides rather than strict rules, substituting ingredients as we learn about their origins, nutrient content, and seasonal availability.
The more we understand how ingredients relate to one another, the more our meals can fit both our needs and the realities of our local climate and economy.
Cooking creatively with what is available locally helps us listen to the body’s requests and adapt dishes to the season and our budget. Over time, this kind of flexible, intuitive cooking allows us to weave different ingredients into meals that reflect who we are, where we live, and the kind of food system we want to support.
Seeds of Renewal
When Fred Wiseman bit into a ground cherry he had just purchased at a farm stand in Hardwick, his taste buds suddenly sparked memories of his grandmother’s cooking. “She made ground cherry sauce and served it over fish,” he told me, remembering that as a child he disliked it because “there were too many seeds.”
Recollections like this, shared by many Abenaki people in the region, helped shape the tribe’s struggle for recognition and the revival of Indigenous agricultural, culinary, and ceremonial practices.
An ethnobotanist, Native rights advocate, and Abenaki tribal member, Wiseman launched the Seeds of Renewal project in 2012 to support a sovereign Abenaki food system—from seed saving and farming to creating a cookbook and a seed bank by and for tribal members—advancing the tribe’s commitment to food sovereignty.
He has worked to track down and reintroduce original crops and cultivation methods to Abenaki gardeners and farmers. For Indigenous people, he mused, “identity is a negotiation between who I say I am and who society says I am,” and this project not only returns traditional seeds and foods to Native people but also helps others see the Abenaki for who they are—a living expression of food sovereignty.
As Peggy Fullerton explains, the Sagakwa garden and additional plots on Koasek land and in tribal members’ personal gardens ensure that seeds are grown in multiple locations, so there is enough stock to feed tribal members, elders, and local communities even if one crop fails.
Food sovereignty, in this context, honors the right of people to define their own food systems from the ground up and to recognize all who participate in them. Cheryl O’Neil, an Abenaki tribal member and gardener at the Abenaki Heritage Garden at the Intervale Center in Burlington, Vermont, told me it is essential to educate others about traditional seeds and to honor the Native people who have grown and saved them, emphasizing the importance of simple, wholesome, local food. Thanks to the Seeds of Renewal project, her hope of tasting her own Native corn and sharing it with others is becoming a reality.
Through these ongoing efforts, Abenaki people can maintain their Indigenous agricultural, spiritual, and culinary traditions even as further research continues on the genetics and nutritional value of these crops. The recipes that follow offer a small taste of a much larger compendium of foods being revived through this work.
Food has always been one of the clearest ways we remember who we are and where we come from—from my family’s alpine tables in the Dolomites to the Abenaki gardens now reclaiming long-held seeds in Vermont, reflecting a broader movement toward food sovereignty and cultural renewal.
When we choose to cook with regional grains, hardy vegetables, and heirloom nuts and legumes, we are not only nourishing ourselves through the cold months but also quietly strengthening the web of farmers, seed keepers, and traditions that make real food possible.
The recipes that follow—simple winter dishes meant to be shared at a full table—offer a few practical ways to bring this kind of grounded, place-based nourishment into your own kitchen.
______________________________________
Lisa Masé is a board-certified holistic nutritionist (BCHN), Certified Dietary Supplement Professional (CDSP), and registered health and nutrition coach (RHNC) who weaves European herbalism, Ayurveda, Chinese Five Element Theory, and mindful/intuitive eating into her work. A professional member of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals and the Health Coach Alliance, she is also certified in Sustainable Food Systems through the University of Vermont.
Lisa is the founder of Harmonized Living on unceded Abenaki land in Montpelier, Vermont, where she helps individuals and families use whole, local, seasonal foods as a foundation for healing and prevention.
Well Being Journal adapted this excerpt from The Culinary Pharmacy: Intuitive Eating, Ancestral Healing, and Food Sovereignty by Lisa Masé. Copyright © 2023 by Lisa Masé, reprinted with permission from Healing Arts Press, a division of Inner Traditions International.
