ENHANCING NIRIQATIGINNGA
Training and Curriculum Development for Food Preservation and Cultural Entrepreneurship
In December 2023, this component of Niriqatiginnga was approved for funding from the Sustainable Canadian Agriculture Program – Indigenous Agriculture and Food Systems program with Manitoba Agriculture. The project was completed in March 2024.
Building on its first pilot project, this set of activities included curriculum enhancement and expanded training opportunities. Participants learned to create, market and sell a food product, while exploring opportunities for cultural, climate and food sector entrepreneurship. It addressed sustainable food systems through traditional knowledge exchange for cultural preservation, food literacy and economic reconciliation and explored options for replicability and northern community delivery.
About the Project
Indigenous communities and stakeholders identified a need to preserve traditional food systems, promote cultural heritage, and to enable inclusive economic opportunities.
Building on a Fall 2023 – Spring 2024 pilot, this project helped enhance traditional food systems through training in canning, preservation, as well as transferable skills and career development. This second series of activities resulted in internships and mentorship opportunities for highly-engaged, emerging artists and entrepreneurs interested in agri-food, food production, and related fields.
Learners explored canning, preservation, and creating, marketing, showcasing and selling new food products. This project also equipped them with essential skills to explore the food sector. Through hands-on group workshops, food literacy, oral history, and community building through traditional knowledge sharing activities, participants experienced canning and preservation in traditional and modern contexts.
The project team plans to enhance the basic curriculum and knowledge transfer materials developed during the pilot to improve its quality and facilitate scaling up the program with future iterations. Facilitated by expert food industry mentors, workshops provided tools like canning jars, utensils, canners, and labels for hands-on learning.
Engaging with mentors and experts fostered an iterative learning process, promoting a basic, introductory understanding of canning and supported the exchange of new and innovative ideas. Relationship building and interactions continue beyond this pilot program, forming a network that will contribute to long-term sustainability, individual and community resilience. Continuous feedback and Key Performance Indicators were conceptualized to drive ongoing improvements, and modular, replicable curriculum models for future delivery.
Training and Skills Development
The project expanded and enhanced the pilot program tested in Fall 2023 -Winter 2024 by scaling up into a comprehensive three-month training and mentorship initiative with Biosystems students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The project also went beyond food preservation, encompassing transferable skills for cultural and climate entrepreneurship, and the agri-food, food processing, and product development sectors.
Training was designed based on prior research that tells us Indigenous youth are stronger and healthier and more able to carve out successful futures when they are connected to their history, culture and community. A small workshop size of 6-10 attendees, promoted effective peer-to-peer learning, facilitated personalized attention, active engagement, and collaborative learning. It fostered open discussions, relationship building and encouraged participants to interact and learn from each other.
Building on, and scaling up from the pilot, the project team will co-construct a foundational curriculum post pilot to more effectively underpin a train-the-trainer strategy. Future materials will form a toolkit which program participants will be able to apply towards sharing their learning with other northern or home communities. As well, the involvement of emerging Indigenous youth will be integral to future iterations, as they capture the learning process through storytelling, short interviews and developing their own media platforms to communicate and showcase their activities and outcomes.
Anticipated Impacts and Outcomes
This project project aimed for impacts across key agriculture and agri-food sectors, particularly local food production, food processing, value-added production and new product creation. It worked to build relationships with harvesters, food processors, producers, and distributors for sectoral inclusion. Cross-cultural and traditional knowledge exchange, similar to a ‘train the trainer’ approach was intended to support advancing economic reconciliation through food-sector skills development, entrepreneurial capacity building, early career exposure and opportunities for growth within these sectors.
Enhancing Skills for Northern and Traditional Food Systems
The project supported preserving and revitalizing traditional food systems through training in canning, preservation, and transferable skills development. This outcome empowered participants with knowledge and techniques to preserve cultural heritage, traditional practices, support self-determination and food sector employment skills.
Establishing and Sustaining a Supportive Network
Through workshops, community building, and group interaction with peers and mentors, the project created a supportive network extending beyond the program. This outcome will nurture this new network, able to facilitate ongoing relationship building, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. This outcome contributes to the sustainability and replicability of the program. This network will also support future training and collaborations.
Empowering Indigenous Food Sector Entrepreneurship
Providing internships and mentorship to emerging food sector entrepreneurs, the project equipped learners with essential introduction to agri-food production, and related fields.
Inclusion
Elements of this program were piloted and tested over three years, supported by the US National Science Foundation, the ArcticNet Network Centre of Excellence, Canada Council for the Arts Digital Greenhouse, Chocolatier Constance Popp, and Manitoba Arts Council Indigenous 360 Program. The project team acknowledges support from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Arts Entrepreneurship Program, and Labovitz School of Business and Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth.
With a strong focus on inclusive, intergenerational, co-designed and co-created partnerships fusing traditional knowledge and modern approaches, these approaches aim to foster economic reconciliation while reinforcing social connectedness, community cohesion and resilience.