Book Review: Earth to Tables Legacies: Multimedia Food Conversations Across Generations and Cultures Deborah Barndt,Lauren E. Baker and Alexandra Gelis

As communities in settler-colonial contexts like the USA and Canada work to address climate change and biodiversity loss in ways that align with the spirit of decolonization, inspirational stories are key. This compendium from the Earth to Tables Legacies (ETTL) project—a beautiful book tied to a rich array of online resources found at earthtotables.org—is chock full of such stories. This is the product of a deep collective process of learning and unlearning about colonialism and food sovereignty in the face of the many challenges of our times. It is rooted in conversations among 17 diverse individuals, including youth and elders, rural and urban food activists, Indigenous and settler, people of Color and White, Canadians, and Mexicans. This volume, and the collaborative spirit that underpins it, lights the way toward more just and sustainable futures by giving us new ways to think about our past and present, as well as important tools for engaging others in food system decolonization processes moving forward.

The Earth is this book’s central protagonist. The rest of the cast are the many people, communities, and movements that work with her to sow, gather, prepare, and share the foods she provides. Fortunately, the Earth offers many forms of sustenance. Healthy food provides for physical needs. It can also nourish us culturally and spiritually. This book rekindles the sacred dimension. Food as the embodiment of a relationship between ourselves and the more-than-human figures centrally in many of this volume’s accounts. This volume is also politically charged. It actively grapples with the “tensions, struggles, and legacies of broken treaties, systemic racism and western imperialism” (p. 7). This includes tensions between Eurocentric and Indigenous knowledge, crises associated with capitalist models of industrial agriculture, and the place of intersectional power dynamics in all our relationships. Settler-colonialism and neoliberal capitalism retain a heavy grip on the land and food systems of North America and remain ongoing flashpoints for struggles by Indigenous peoples and their allies to assert Indigenous self-determination. This book brings to the reader’s attention the forces that are damaging life, while emphasizing the healing forces that work with the Earth rather than against it.

There is no central story line or argument to this volume. Instead, we get an array of stories, perspectives, and opportunities for exploration and engagement, both in the book and in accompanying online resources. Drawing on Indigenous methodologies, storytelling—in text, videos, and images—figures centrally. Topics covered include rethinking food through the Mohawk (an Indigenous Nation, Ontario and Québec, Canada, and New York State, USA) language, the spiritual dimensions of plants, strengthening food justice through urban agriculture, and the role of foods in healing. The book itself is rich with information, which is further supported by recommended material to watch and explore on the website, material which is itself accompanied by carefully crafted Facilitator Guides. The net result is a wealth of resources, especially appropriate for secondary and post-secondary students and educators seeking to hear and share the stories of colonialism and decolonization through the voices of those who know these stories best.

Strengths of this volume include the diversity of voices it brings to the fore and the collaborative, reciprocal research methodology that shines through every piece. The ETTL project started in 2015, primarily as an intergenerational and intercultural partnership between diverse food activists in Canada and Mexico. Its goal was to promote dialogue and learning across differences while foregrounding the voices of those who have been most marginalized by settler-colonialism. Indigenous perspectives presented in first voice are those of members of the Haudenosaunee (a confederacy of Indigenous people that includes the Mohwak Nation, southern Ontario and southern Québec, Canada, and upper New York State, USA), the Maya (an Indigenous people, Belize, Guatemala, and the Yucatán region, Mexico), and the P’urépecha (an autonomous Indigenous community, Michoacán State, Mexico). The group of contributors was diverse but small. This allowed for intimate exploration of the topics at the core of this project, but also left gaps in representation, which the authors readily acknowledge.

Recently retired from York University in Toronto after decades of activist-scholarship, this book can be seen as the product of a life’s work for Deborah Barndt. Barndt is a non-Indigenous artist, academic, and community organizer who hails from Ohio but has lived in Canada for many years. She started developing connections in Central America and Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s, leading to provocative accounts of the women—both Indigenous and non—in the transnational tomato trade (Barndt, 1999, 2008). Clearly inspired by Pablo Frier’s models of popular education, and Antonio Gramsci’s political analysis, Barndt has been a central figure in the development of creative, empowering, and collaborative approaches to the study of food systems in North America. While this latest book should be celebrated as a lifetime achievement of Barndt, it is not her story. In this project, Barndt is just one instigator and convener alongside Lauren Baker and Alexandra Gelis. These three women bring many others together to explore the book’s core themes, including commentators from outside Canada and Mexico.

One limitation to this volume comes from its rather sharp dichotomization between the “corporate food regime” (p. 31) and the aspirations of food sovereignty. While there are important differences between these two approaches to food, what gets missed when we stress this dichotomy is the way that these two poles are also in dialogue with one another. By focusing on food sovereignty and agroecology as alternatives, it becomes easy to miss the ways that alternative movements impact the mainstream. One exception found herein is the interview with Fernando Garcia, a Mexican agronomist who learned about organic farming practices in Canada, started an organic urban agriculture company in his home city of Guadalajara, and now brings organic agriculture expertise to a multinational company. Fernando’s story illustrates both the possibilities and tensions at the intersection of agroecology and capitalism. Paying more attention to this intersection could be an interesting next step for projects that wish to build on the ETTL’s foundation.

Given the deep challenges of our time, the stories gathered here are important to share and build upon. ETTL began with 17 individuals but has since expanded into a global network of like-minded individuals, communities, and organizations who rally beyond an expansive vision of food justice and food sovereignty. Given that “decolonization is a lifelong commitment” (p. 7), may the relationships that underpin ETTL only continue to grow and multiply.