Assistant Professor The University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Indigenous food systems are often overlooked in terms of their contributions to biodiversity. Colonial perspectives perpetuated by modern ecological understanding and the conservation movement disregard the legacy of human relationship which shaped the lands we see and steward today. As we better recognize and locate Indigenous food systems within our forests, and study them applying both Western and Indigenous scientific lenses, it is becoming clear that these systems, even in their current residual states, promote biodiversity and resiliency. This evidence, coupled with the desire of many Indigenous communities to reclaim and adapt these food systems and the traditional land stewardship practices that go with them, provide an opportunity to consider how the reclamation of residual food forest gardens and building new ones, could provide a path to promote biodiversity and build resiliency into forest ecosystems in a changing climate.