THEY FEED ME GOOD Relational Food Systems in Saskatoon

Abstract

This research study examines the foodways of Saskatoon households, exploring relational food networks as a factor toward fairer health outcomes with a focus on resistance, resilience, and culture. This study uses critical ethnography to glean an accounting for trauma and an accounting for uplifting relational food networks. Data are drawn from interviews, photographs, media (animations), and participant observation. An iterative analysis is informed by intersectional and relational frameworks and follows a hybrid inductive-deductive approach. Findings are presented in representational and creative ways, with participants sharing stories that unveil the problematic of resilience in the face of colonialism and its relationship to food systems and health. The discussion considers socio-cultural factors, systemic racism, and inequality to advance a better understanding of cultural dimensions and political constraints linked to food insecurity. It contributes an accounting of variation in urban households in Saskatoon, their food choices, and their foodways, including models of governance that mitigate system failures to keep families fed. The lives of Saskatoon people in this study come together with separate stories of healing and violence, power and cultural restitutions of health, joy, and food. Participants live in different households but share similar collective histories of colonization and relentless systemic disparity. Their stories are also connected through the negotiation of food related wellbeing in urban spaces that re-dignify connections to culture, restore relational food strategies, and reclaim the land.