Mi’kmaw Food and Knowledge Initiative

The Mi’kmaw Food and Knowledge initiative is to further educate our staff about Mi’kmaw culture by facilitating food-focused workshops that promote sharing knowledge pertaining to traditional Mi’kmaw foods, their nutritional value, how to
harvest the ingredients, and how to prepare for consumption.

ln 2007, the Government of Canada released an updated version of the Canada Food Guide titled ‘Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide – First Nations, Inuit and Metis’ (see attached). The guide lists various traditional foods that the Mi’kmaq have been harvesting for thousands of years, and bow to incorporate those foods with typical western diets. Some traditional foods we will be using in the workshops include pkwimao, nme’juey, tapatat, and tiam (tentative menu attached). The project will demonstrate how adding traditional foods to our diets embraces the Mi’kmaw concepts of netukulimk and etuaptmumk by using traditional harvesting methods that promote sustainability, food security, and food sovereignty.