A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast

"In the dense rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Somass River (þcuumaas) brings sockeye salmon (miaat) into the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht. þCuumaas and miaat are central to the sacred food practices that have been a crucial part of the Indigenous community's efforts to enact food sovereignty, decolonize their diet, and preserve their ancestral knowledge. In A Drum in One Hand, a Salmon in the Other, Charlotte Cotâe shares contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth practices of traditional food revitalization in the context of broader efforts to re-Indigenize their diets. Cotâe shares evocative stories of her Tseshaht community's and her own work to revitalize relationships to haum (traditional food) as a way to nurture health and wellness. As Indigenous peoples continue to face food insecurity due to ongoing inequality, environmental degradation and the Westernization of traditional diets, Cotâe foregrounds healing and cultural sustenance via everyday enactments of food sovereignty: berry picking, salmon fishing, and building a community garden on reclaimed residential school grounds. This book is for everyone with concerns about their health and shows how food plays a major role in physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness"--