A History of Food and Nutrition in Indigenous Communities in Canada, 1962-1985 By Krista Walters A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba Copyright @ 2020 by Krista Walters ABSTRACT This thesis explores the history of food and nutrition in Indigenous communities in mid- to late- twentieth century Canada. It does so through tracing changes in state policies and procedures, as well as Indigenous approaches to foodways, health, and healing from the 1960s into the 1980s. It looks at how the shifting discourses of nutrition and food science impacted educational materials and programs for Indigenous peoples, often aimed at mothers and children in Indigenous communities, and highlights a moment of possibility in the early 1980s when Indigenous peoples were increasingly being consulted on and leading state programs tailored to their communities and their cultures. It aims to privilege the experiences of Indigenous peoples through the choice of sources and attention to Indigenous methodologies. It therefore includes discussion of Indigenous activism and its impact on health and healing, food production and preparation, land use and agriculture, and data collection used for food and nutrition surveys. Central to this dissertation is the concern that Indigenous peoples have been studied, pathologized, and racialized as part of a long history of settler-colonialism in Canada. Many of the state nutrition projects that informed policies and programs during the period were organized and carried out by non-Indigenous experts and their cadres, with a very top-down approach. These mirror colonial initiatives dating back a century in the most heavily studied regions, singling out Indigenous peoples as a unique category of subjects to be studied separately from the rest of the population. Accordingly, it focuses heavily on Manitoba and the Northwest Territories throughout, as these regions generated a wealth of archival materials on the subject and were also often the focus of federal Medical Services Branch studies and published documents. In studying the history of ‘Aboriginal nutrition’ as a growing field of expertise during the period, this dissertation challenges narratives of decline, dispossession, and displacement of Indigenous peoples that have dominated Canadian history. It contributes to the growing literature that works instead to centre Indigenous peoples and their experiences of modernity, in this case their foodways and nutritional knowledge. It does so by exploring this subject as part of a transnational history of empire, which considers gender, food, and emotions as categories of historical analysis helpful in peeling back the layered relationships between Indigenous peoples and representatives of the state. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I wish to acknowledge that much of my research and writing was done on Treaty One land, the original lands of the Anishinaabeg and Dakota peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. I have given careful attention here to Indigenous research methods, voices, and experiences, and hope that this project makes clear that the unequal health experiences of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada were neither biological nor inevitable, but a consequence of historical events that created persistent inequalities. I have been fortunate to have so many amazing women scholars support this dissertation. Thank you to my committee, Esyllt Jones, Janis Thiessen, Jocelyn Thorpe, and Franca Iacovetta for making time to engage with this project. My supervisor, Mary Jane Logan McCallum at the University of Winnipeg, has been a prudent mentor, as she was when we met as graduate students. I am grateful to Adele Perry, my MA supervisor, for encouraging me to take food and nutrition seriously as categories of historical inquiry. The invaluable advice Franca Iacovetta provided in my brief time at University of Toronto helped shape how I researched and wrote this thesis. Kristin Burnett at Lakehead provided support and feedback early in my writing, and I am grateful both for her work and for her interest in mine. Fellow students who shared this journey made it all the better. Thanks especially to Erin Millions, who made raising two babies while doing a PhD seem totally reasonable. At times, my life revolved around the U of M, and with my partner working and studying there and my daughter in campus daycare, it was my second home for many years. Time spent talking and laughing with faculty and staff there made the early years of this project a pleasure, especially conversations with Barry Ferguson, Natalie Johnson, Len Kuffert, Jorge Nállim, and David Watt. Archivist David Cuthbert found exactly what I hoped for when I reached out to him for help on a couple of missing pieces. Thank you also to the U of M Libraries staff, especially the Neil John Maclean Health Sciences Library for sharing their Indigenous Health Collection, which has opened up and made accessible a huge archive of materials. This project would not have been possible without financial and collegial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of Toronto, the University of Winnipeg (Indigenous History of Tuberculosis in Manitoba 1930-1970 Doctoral Research Fellowship), the University of Manitoba (UMGF; Institute for the Humanities Affiliateship; Aboriginal Issues Press Scholarship; MB History Internship; Dr. James Burns Award in History), the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies, the Newberry Library, and St. John’s College. Support from my family kept this project alive. My parents, Bonnie and Gerry, never really understood what I was working on, but always asked how it was going. My sister Kerri, the only high school and first university graduate in our family, made getting a PhD seem attainable. Rosalie and Linden have forever changed my perspective on motherhood, making this thesis richer from all of the joy and love they bring into my life. So much gratitude to Carl Klassen. I cannot count the hours of reading, advising, and listening you’ve put into this. You’ve been beside me through all of it and then some, and thankfully remain my best friend and partner. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Table of Contents iii List of Tables iv List of Figures iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE “It is up to the mothers”: consolidating postwar approaches to colonizing food and nutrition under the MSB 49 CHAPTER TWO Colonizing nutrition: establishing nutrition discourse, food surveys, and the field of ‘Aboriginal Nutrition’ 74 CHAPTER THREE Finding alternatives: the gendered experience of addressing food insecurity in Indigenous communities 112 CHAPTER FOUR Nutrition Canada: the separate treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada’s first national nutrition survey 149 CHAPTER FIVE ‘Amused Natives’, ‘Happy Inuit’, and ‘(Dis)satisfied Researchers’: emotional encounters and experiences of food and nutrition 188 CHAPTER SIX “Extreme dissatisfaction will be organized and demonstrated”: Indigenous organizing for health and nutrition in the 1970s 220 CHAPTER SEVEN ‘New Perspectives’: shifting the dialogue from individualist to structuralist approaches to nutrition 247 CHAPTER EIGHT Centering Indigenous Foodways: the new Indian Health Policy and Indigenous approaches to nutrition, feeding, and teaching 266 CONCLUSION 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY 324 iii LIST OF TABLES Table I: Sample of Food Prices at Koostatak General Store, Koostatak Manitoba, 1968 106 Table II: Sample of Food Prices at Two Cross Lake Grocery Stores, Cross Lake Manitoba, 1971 108 Table III: Sample of Comparative Food Costs in Manitoba Communities, 1971 111 Table IV: Sampling of Imported Food Availability and Cost, Fort Smith Region (Winter 1978-79) 301 Table V: Sampling of Imported Food Availability and Cost, Baffin Region (Winter 1978-79) 302 Table VI: Sampling of Imported Food Availability and Cost, Keewatin Region (Winter 1978-79) 303 LIST OF FIGURES Figure I: Comparative Percentages of Country Food in Diet (N.W.T. Households, Indigenous and non-Indigenous: 1982 and 1985) 304 iv INTRODUCTION In the 1960s, the Canadian government undertook a spate of studies on the nutritional status of ‘Indian’ and ‘Eskimo’ children, youth, and adults across the country as part of a larger project to understand how to better educate Aboriginal peoples on nutritional improvement.1 Many of these projects, such as the Nutrition Canada Survey, were organized and carried out with a very top-down approach, mirroring colonial initiatives dating back a century in the most heavily studied regions (the western and northern provinces and territories).2 By the 1970s, some First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people in Canada were actively fighting against these interventions and forming organizations to challenge further colonization of their bodies, communities, and approaches to healthcare. Others, of course, were simply living their lives, in spite of decades of colonial programs that impacted geography, relationships, resources, and foodways. In this period, a movement towards Indigenous-run healthcare and healing services was underway, which was recognized by the Canadian state with some transfer of control over health services to First Nations and Inuit communities in the 1980s. While nutrition has been only part of the larger approach to healthcare, food – its production, purchase, preparation, and