Open events

Paralleling the CAFS conference theme of "Reckonings, Reimaginings, and Reconciliations, Within and Through Food Systems," we are presenting a three-day arc of plenary events that is intended to ground these complex ideas in specific food systems realities. Our aim is to move from thinking to doing, and from doing to transformation. We anticipate these events will be both challenging and inspiring, occasions to reflect on where we are and to identify ways to respond purposefully to inequity and oppression within and through food.

Our Day 1 plenary, focused on Reckoning, is open to all Congress attendees. It will include a screening of the documentary, “Lake Superior Our Helper: Stories from Batchewanaung Anishinabek Fisheries,” followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and participants. The film follows Chief Dean Sayers through a series of conversations to reveal the cultural, political, and ecological relationships surrounding the community’s fisheries, sharing the messages of Elders, youth, fishers, community leaders, and their visions for the future. It also documents how fishing has changed over time, conflicts with the state around management and regulation, principles of Indigenous law, and the culture and ceremony that are deeply embedded within fishing practices. The film and discussion will bring us face to face with the contemporary and past tensions around traditional fisheries, including the seemingly irreconcilable disconnects between Indigenous foodways and settler colonial governance. Members of the Batchewana First Nation, filmmaker Sarah Furlotte, and producers Kristen Lowitt and Charles Levkoe will take part in the plenary.