Indigenous & BIPOC Perspectives on Environment, Climate, and Health & Sustainable Food Systems

The below articles emphasize how indigenous communities have been approaching nature-friendly farming practices and the importance of honoring and learning from this experience and wisdom.  Some also address how the reducing cultural connections with food can have adverse health effects.  Other papers emphasize issues of food justice and food sovereignty. You will find articles below on  agroecology, which may also be featured in other pages related to benefits of regenerative agriculture.

Please note: These articles have been updated through January 2026.

 

  • 6 ways indigenous peoples are helping the world achieve #ZeroHunger. FAO. Published September 8, 2017. https://www.fao.org/indigenous-peoples/news-article/en/c/1029002/
    • A third of global forests, crucial for curbing gas emissions, are primarily managed by indigenous peoples, families, smallholders and local communities. Indigenous foods are also particularly nutritious, climate-resilient and well-adapted to their environment, making them a good source of nutrients in climate challenged areas. 
  • Antonelli A. Indigenous knowledge is key to sustainable food systems. Nature News. Published January 10, 2023.
    • Agricultural sciences have for too long ignored traditional and local knowledge about crop plants and how best to grow them. That must change if the world is to ensure future food security.
  • Berberian AG, Gonzalez DJX, Cushing LJ. Racial Disparities in Climate Change-Related Health Effects in the United States. Curr Environ Health Rep. 2022;9(3):451-464. doi:10.1007/s40572-022-00360-w
    • Studies of adults have found evidence of racial disparities related to climatic changes with respect to mortality, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, mental health, and heat-related illness.
    • Children are particularly vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, and infants and children of color have experienced adverse perinatal outcomes, occupational heat stress, and increases in emergency department visits associated with extreme weather.
  • Bereano P. Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African programmes are not charity. Third World Resurgence. Published December 2017. https://twn.my/title2/resurgence/2017/328/eco1.htm
    • “There is an urgent need to scale-up agroecology to achieve a more sustainable food system.”
    • “The IAASTD  (International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development) suggests that ‘agroecological’ methods, not industrial farming models, provide the most viable, proven and reliable means to enhance global food security, especially in light of climate change.”
  • Bloom I. Meet Three of the Women Behind an Indigenous Land Back Effort to Reclaim an SF Peninsula Farm. KQED. Published April 23, 2022.
    • The California Report Magazine’s Sasha Khokha and Izzy Bloom visited a 38-acre farm in San Gregorio, 40 miles west of San José, to follow a new project aimed at returning land to the Ramaytush, the Indigenous people of the San Francisco Peninsula.
    • The project is spearheaded by Deep Medicine Circle, a nonprofit group led by women of color, whose goal, according to its founder Rupa Marya, is to “heal the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, learning and restoration.”
  • Burlingame B, Dernimi S (editors). Sustainable Diets: Linking Nutrition and Food Systems: Chapter 7: Indigenous Food Systems: Sustainable Food Systems and Diets 
    • Sustainable diets for indigenous peoples are derived and maintained from indigenous sustainable food systems. 
    • Indigenous food systems do not differentiate between the environment and the people, perceiving that living beings and territory are interconnected, and embedded with spirituality. This holistic view does not place humankind, nor the production of food itself, at the center of the food system. Instead, maintaining the equilibrium between the environment and the beings inhabiting it is the central focus. The key concept is equilibrium between the different parts that make up the system.
    • Being highly adapted to their environment, indigenous food systems have the capacity to generate food in soils with low fertility, are resistant to stress factors (reduced rainfall, increased temperatures) and have a low demand for inputs. Some indigenous crops are climate resilient, Indigenous peoples’ knowledge emanates from their collective experience in managing 22% of the world’s ecosystem and land mass and preserving the majority of the planet’s biodiversity.
    • Indigenous peoples understand how their local foods are resilient and adapted to their local environments, even when climate challenged.
  • Ceddia MG, Boillat S, Jacobi J. Transforming food systems through agroecology: enhancing farmers’ autonomy for a safe and just transition. The Lancet Planetary Health. 2024;8(11):e958-e965. 
    • Food systems contribute to multiple crises while failing to deliver healthy, nutritious food for all. A substantial amount of research suggests that the root cause of this issue lies in the complete integration of food systems within global capitalism and the consequent subordination of fairness and sustainability to profit accumulation.
    • we illustrate how this subordination erodes the autonomy of food producers, with strong environmental and social consequences for consumers and society at large. Lastly, we discuss how agroecology could transform food systems and enhance producers’ autonomy, while mitigating environmental and social dysfunction.
    • Agroecology can help reorient food systems away from profit accumulation and towards better meeting community needs, in line with the tenets of food sovereignty.
  • Cordera B. Supporting Young Farmers of Color Can Help the US Meet Its Climate Goals. YES! Magazine. Published October 19, 2022.
    • Getting young, climate-conscious farmers on the land “is the best way we can fight climate change,” Polanco said. “But we desperately need climate investments that are part of a safety net for farmers, so they can continue stewarding the land when a disaster strikes.”
  • Davis, Janae, et al. (2019). “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene? A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises.” Geography Compass. Published on April 29, 2019
    • This manifesto critiques dominant environmental narratives by centering race, colonialism, and capitalism. It introduces the concept of the “Plantationocene” to describe enduring systems of land and labor exploitation. As a vital interdisciplinary contribution to environmental justice and decolonial thinking, it sharpens the capstone project’s critical framework by naming the systemic forces that undermine culinary heritage and ecological relationships.
  • Decolonize Your Food. Indigenous Terra Madre Network.
    • The aim of the Decolonize Your Food campaign, run by the Slow Food Indigenous Peoples Network, is to share some of the on-going efforts to protect the foods of indigenous peoples from extinction and help people uncover the perhaps little-known indigenous origins of everyday foods as well as the places where they are still produced by local communities. We also hope it will inspire indigenous people to discover and take pride in their own food heritage.
  • Ferguson R. Losing Ground: Farmland Consolidation and Threats to New Farmers, Black Farmers, and the Future of Farming. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists. Published April 14, 2021.
    • While the proportion of new farmers has declined across the country over the past four decades, we found that in these states it declined 56 percent faster in counties experiencing more rapid consolidation than in those experiencing slower consolidation.
    • Racist discrimination amplified the pressures brought by consolidation, and together these forces drove a 98 percent reduction in the number of Black farmers between 1920 and 2017.
  • Hayes CR, Carbone ET. Food justice: What is it? Where has it been? Where is it going?. Journal of Nutritional Disorders & Therapy. 2015;05(04). doi:10.4172/2161-0509.1000179.
    • Consequently, despite the capacity for such alternative food movements to shorten the links in the food commodity chain, a disconnect can emerge between alternative food activists who support local, sustainable, and community-owned food practices and the reality that these practices often represent the ideals and values of white, middle-class communities at the exclusion of more vulnerable populations.
  • Heim, T. (2020, October 12). The Indigenous Origins of Regenerative Agriculture. National Farmers Union; National Farmers Union.
    • This blog post from the National Farmers Union examines the Indigenous origins of regenerative agriculture and explores the foundational concepts of intercropping, agroforestry and permaculture, along with water management practices that preserve resources through climate-specific adaptations. The recognition of these contributions is relevant to the work of returning to an organic and resilient food system, understanding the value and expertise of Indigenous perspectives and the importance of incorporating this knowledge to advance sustainable agriculture and land stewardship.
  • Hoogeveen D, Atleo CG, Patrick L, et al. On the possibility of decolonizing planetary health: exploring new geographies for collaboration. Lancet Planet Health. 2023;7(2):e179-e183. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00334-5
    • This is a place-based response to planetary health, as British Columbia experiences climate catastrophes that are impacting whole communities, cutting through major transportation systems, disrupting supply chains, and creating a further burden on public health agencies and authorities that are spread thin by COVID-19 response. We argue for a progressive acknowledgment of decolonizing work that is pushing research and practice in planetary health forward.
    • we explore research in planetary health across holistic worldviews and western scientific approaches.  Our perspective encompasses an asset-based examination, which focuses on the Indigenous scholarship in planetary health that is already underway and considers how rigorous engagement with epistemic and geographical diversity can strengthen and advance planetary health. 
  • I tried to prove that small family farms are the future. I couldn’t do it. The Counter. Published October 19, 2021. 
    • This opinion piece in The Counter, a nonprofit news site acquired by nonprofit media organization Grist, explores the history of small family farms, the symbolism of American family farming, and its viability in terms of cohesive stability, resilient food supply, and economic prosperity. It examines alternative food systems through the experiences of BIPOC communities and the transition of environmental stewardship through stolen land, and argues that “People of color throughout North American history have proven that alternative farming systems are viable even when they’re not favored.” It stresses the need to reconsider the disproven family farm ideal and shift into a community/team model operating under fundamentally different principles that are “not measured by their rugged individualism and radical independence, but by how well they provide good food, good jobs, and good environmental outcomes.”
  • Indigenous peoples are agents of change to reach sustainable development. Cultural Survival. Published August 7, 2018. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/indigenous-peoples-are-agents-change-reach-sustainable-development
    • The impact of industrial farming and climate change disproportionately affect Indigenous communities, people of color, those with low income and developing nations.
  • Kennedy G, Wang Z, Maundu P, Hunter D. The role of traditional knowledge and food biodiversity to transform modern food systems. Trends in Food Science and Technology. 2022;130:32-41. doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2022.09.011
    • Some approaches were initiated by government and others at community level; they all demonstrate ways to achieve greater integration of food biodiversity into food systems. This collection of case studies illustrates a fraction of what is currently being done to support biodiverse food production and consumption. 
    • The evidence base for how to bring greater food biodiversity back into our food systems should be improved and should not be an isolated occurrence, but rather a continuous process
  • Maduekeh, V. (2024, February 8). How to ensure meaningful representation from frontline food and farming experts in global gatherings like COP. Global Alliance for the Future of Food . 
    • Bringing together frontline experts across sectors and issues gives us a more accurate sense of what’s at stake and the solutions that will actually work on the ground. These individuals must have a seat at the table to determine what issues are discussed, what solutions are prioritized, and how financing should flow to support climate change mitigation and adaptation.

  • Murray S, Gale F, Adams D, Dalton L. A scoping review of the conceptualizations of food justice. Public Health Nutrition. 2023;26(4):725-737. doi:10.1017/S1368980023000101

    • The emerging concept of ‘food justice’ describes a social movement and a set of principles. It aligns with the goals of social justice, demanding recognition of human rights, equal opportunity, fair treatment and is participatory and community specific.
    • They emphasize health, sustainable and equitable food as a human right and acknowledge the need to address structural barriers to that right. Community participation and agency in food justice decision-making is critical for transformative change towards a healthy, sustainable, and more just food system.
  • Nelson, K. (2024, February 6). Listen to Plants, Says Indigenous Forager and Activist Linda Black Elk. Civil Eats. https://civileats.com/2024/02/06/listen-to-plants-says-indigenous-forager-and-activist-linda-black-elk/
    • Traditional ecological knowledge is different from Western ecological knowledge in that it includes and understands the importance of culture and spirituality.
    • Industrial agriculture is hugely destructive to the environment. In order for us to move away from that, we have to get back to foods that love growing here, foods that we have a long-term relationship with.
    • We’re trying to grow crops that would love tons of precipitation that we just don’t have. We’ve also destroyed our topsoil, so we now have to put minerals and other nutrients back into the soil. It’s just hugely destructive and contributes to climate change. So if we get back to traditional foods through traditional ecological knowledge, we won’t have the full-scale destruction brought on by industrial agriculture.
    • Everyone talks about decolonizing, but what does that even mean? In terms of food sovereignty, we’re talking about getting back to the foods of our ancestors. Unfortunately, our entire food system is determined by colonization, and our palates have also been colonized, largely by salt and sugar—so we believe that everything we eat needs to be salty or sweet. Our palates have forgotten how wonderful and healthful flavors like pungent and bitter can be.
    • When you have a relationship with plants and animals, you’re a lot less likely to use and abuse these gifts. Instead, you’re going to make sure they’re well taken care of for future generations. 
  • Pramanik P. Heritage diets have important health benefits and policy implications, review finds. News-Medical. 2024.
    • The study suggests that eating traditional Latin American, Asian, and African foods is an excellent avenue for achieving sustainable diets and that returning to culturally relevant foods correlates with improved health markers
    • Traditional diets have been replaced by ultra-processed foods, having detrimental health side effects for black, brown, and POC communities specifically.
  • Prescott SL, Logan AC, D’Adamo CR, Holton KF, Lowry CA, Marks J, Moodie R, Poland B. Nutritional Criminology: Why the Emerging Research on Ultra-Processed Food Matters to Health and Justice. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2024; 21(2):120. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21020120
    • Since public health practitioners, allied mental health professionals, and policymakers play key roles throughout criminal justice systems, a holistic perspective on both historical and emergent research is critical. While there are many questions to be resolved, the available evidence suggests that nutrition might be an underappreciated factor in prevention and treatment along the criminal justice spectrum. The intersection of nutrition and biopsychosocial health requires transdisciplinary discussions of power structures, industry influence, and marketing issues associated with widespread food and social inequalities.
  • Redvers N, Celidwen Y, Schultz C, et al. The determinants of planetary health: an Indigenous consensus perspective. Lancet Planet Health. 2022;6(2):e156-e163. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00354-5.
    • Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty has been strained by the increasing effects of global environmental change within their territories, including climate change and pollution, and by threats and impositions against their land and water rights.
    • A group of Indigenous scholars, practitioners, land and water defenders, respected Elders, and knowledge-holders came together to define the determinants of planetary health from an Indigenous perspective. Three overarching levels of interconnected determinants, in addition to ten individual-level determinants, were identified as being integral to the health and sustainability of the planet, Mother Earth.
  • Sarkar D, Walker-Swaney J, Shetty K. Food Diversity and Indigenous Food Systems to Combat Diet-Linked Chronic Diseases. Curr Dev Nutr. 2019;4(Suppl 1):3-11. Published 2019 Sep 2. doi:10.1093/cdn/nzz099.
    • There is a direct link between noncommunicable chronic diseases and the loss of diverse plant-based foods among the indigenous communities worldwide. Cardiovascular diseases and type-2 diabetes are the cause of consuming too much ultra-processed foods.
    • NAFSA is reengaging all indigenous communities in North America by sharing resources and providing solidarity among the tribal seed sovereignty projects.
  • Schapiro M. After Centuries of Exploitation, Will Indigenous Communities in Biodiversity Hotspots Finally Get Their Due? Civil Eats. Published March 7, 2023.
    • In one of the most significant developments at December’s global Convention on Biological Diversity  96 countries agreed to create a new Access and Benefit Sharing Fund to ensure that moving forward, those who develop commercial products derived from genetic resources will be compelled to ensure a fair and equitable sharing of “monetary and non-monetary benefits from the utilization of genetic resources. (the Earth’s plants, animals, and micro-organisms)
    • Thirty-four percent of the lands with the highest rates of biodiversity on Earth are on Indigenous territory
    • One of the U.N.’s motives is to slow the rate of extinction of these wild relative species and thousands of other species in what the U.N. and others have called a biodiversity crisis on par with the climate crisis.
    • The history of colonialism can be told from the history of plant extractions that became food or flavors for rich countries in the Global North—from vanilla (Madagascar) to nutmeg (Indonesia), potatoes (Peru), corn (Mexico), and chili peppers (Jamaica), the list goes on. For centuries, this process played out in colonial patterns of extraction. No one bothered asking for permission to explore, “discover,” dig, or leave with satchels of plant samples.
    • Indigenous communities are often far more effective at preserving biodiversity, using traditional stewardship on lands they’ve lived in for centuries, than more top-down laws and policing have been.
  • Sena K. Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ land interests is critical for people and nature. World Wildlife Fund. Published October 22, 2020. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/recognizing-indigenous-peoples-land-interests-is-critical-for-people-and-nature
    • “Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ land rights, and consequently 80% of global biodiversity, should be placed at the center of present and future global challenges.”
  • Shaikh, Y., Jeelani, M., Gibbons, M.C. et al. Centering and collaborating with community knowledge systems: piloting a novel participatory modeling approach. Int J Equity Health 22, 45 (2023).
    • There are elders, leaders, and researchers who are seen as bearers of historic knowledge and can contextualize and interpret contemporary research using knowledge systems of the community. There is a need for a systematic methodology to collaborate with community Knowledge Bearers and Knowledge Interpreters.
    • This methodology showed that a community Knowledge Bearer can function as communicators and interpreters of their community’s knowledge base, can develop coherent narratives of lived experiences within which research and knowledge is contextualized, and can collaboratively construct conceptual mappings necessary for simulation modeling.
  • Shand H, Wetter KJ, Chowdhry K, ETC Group collective. Food Barons 2022: Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power. ETC Group; 2022.
    • It is important to remind ourselves who feeds the majority of the world: peasants. The Peasant Food Web feeds the equivalent of 70% of the world’s people using less than 30% of the world’s land, water and agricultural resources. Proposals from the grassroots – such as the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty’s Nyéléni Process – aim to put farmers, growers, fishers, hunters and consumers back at the heart of the food system and undo the power being usurped by industrial agriculture.
    • The analysis in this report is based on understanding the relationship between racial justice and climate change and how extractive agriculture disproportionately impacts people of colour and Indigenous communities.
  • Snipstal B. Towards a “Peoples” agroecology – WhyHunger. WhyHunger. Published September 13, 2019. https://whyhunger.org/towards-a-peoples-agroecology/blog/
    • This narrative of “Towards a Peoples’ Agroecology” is an initiative aimed at uplifting and amplifying those who are at the center of various forms of transformation within the food system, and are using the banners of agroecology and food sovereignty to carry their visions forward in a variety of ways.
  • Suárez-Torres J, Suárez-López JR, López-Paredes D, Morocho H, Cachiguango-Cachiguango LE, Dellai W. Agroecology and Health: Lessons from Indigenous Populations. Curr Environ Health Rep. 2017;4(2):244-251. doi:10.1007/s40572-017-0146-z.
    • Agroecology and ancestral knowledge are being adopted by a growing number of organizations, indigenous peoples, and social groups in various parts of the world, as development alternatives that respond to local needs and worldviews.
    • Pesticides have generated important agricultural benefits. Unfortunately, they have shown to be toxic to different species and have generated public health problems, mainly in developing countries.
    • Adverse effects of pesticides on human health include damages to the nervous system (e.g., Parkinson’s disease), as well as pulmonary, reproductive, endocrine, and immune system damage. Chronic toxicity results from the cumulative effects associated with the development of chronic diseases such as: leukemia, lymphomas, sarcomas, other cancers, diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, congenital malformations, renal disease, and autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
  • Vernon, R.V. A Native Perspective: Food Is More Than Consumption. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. 2015;5(4):137–142. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2015.054.024.
    • Food systems research and outreach that focuses narrowly on consumption and access risk oversimplifying Native communities’ relationship to food as well as their movement toward food sovereignty.
    • Effectively engaging in food work with and among Native American people toward food sovereignty requires cultural competency, historical knowledge, and a more complex understanding of how food informs community well-being
    • Solutions that do not account for the cultural and historical realities of Native people are not real solutions to the problems confronting them. We must make room, therefore, in the food justice movement to envision alternative solutions that better reflect Native realities, cultures, and lives.
    • The severe disruption of Native communities and lives extends to the altering of their relation-ship to food, and is deeply tied to racism, colonial-ism, and the loss of autonomy and power. Strip-ping Native communities of their food sovereignty and traditional diets increased nutritional deficien-cies and starvation for Native people and contrib-ute to current health disparities in obesity, heart disease, and diabetes