12:10 - 12:40 pm EST

Syilx-led reintroduction of sockeye salmon into the Okanagan River Basin 

Rosanne Blanchet, PhD, RD - University of Alberta - CLICK for bio

Suzanne Johnson, MSc, RD - Okanagan Salmon and Our Health - CLICK for bio

Description:

Traditional Indigenous foods harvested from local food systems are important to ensure good nutrition, food security, and cultural connectedness for First Nations people. Colonization, the dispossession from Indigenous lands, and oppressive policies and practices along with urbanization and habitat degradation have resulted in the decline of many traditional Indigenous food species. For Syilx in the interior of British Columbia one important food species threatened with extinction was the n’titxw (Salmon). The Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) took a leadership role in ecosystem rehabilitation to restore the Okanagan sockeye salmon into the Okanagan River Basin through a multi-level food sovereignty initiative integrating Traditional Syilx knowledge and Western science.  A community-university partnership was formed to evaluate the nutrition, health and health equity outcomes of this transformative strengths-based Syilx-led intervention. This presentation will describe the process used to develop a respectful community-university partnership that honoured community-based participatory research and ethical research principles. It will provide results that demonstrate that the Sylix food sovereignty initiative has resulted in better diet quality for Syilx who once again can eat Okanagan sockeye salmon that inhabit the region. It will provide examples of integrative knowledge translation activities used to inform community members of research findings, such as infographics and plain language summaries.