Indigenous communities in Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada) are working towards community-led visions of growing food that reframe agriculture from a colonial activity to a practice rooted in cultural revitalisation, collectivism, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. To do so, these Nations are embracing holistic agroecological frameworks and adapting them to their values of relationship, reciprocity, and care for the Land and people.
In the Dene Zhatıé language, Dehcho means “Big River” – a name that reflects the preeminent role the river plays in this nearly 195,000-square-kilometre sub-arctic region of Denendeh. Renamed by settlers as the Mackenzie River, the Dehcho and its tributaries that cut through dense boreal forest are the traditional territories of many Dene communities, including Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation (KTFN) and Sambaa K’e First Nation (SKFN), who have hunted, trapped, fished, and gathered from these lands, skies, and waters for millennia. However, rapid social, economic, and environmental changes connected to colonisation, resource extraction, and, more recently, climate change – including record low Dehcho water levels that threaten the entire ecosystem – are significantly impacting Dene foodways and food sovereignty.
Despite these pressures, SKFN and KTFN draw on their Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı (Dene Laws), an enduring source of Dene resilience, to nurture their traditional foodways and reaffirm their relationship with the Land through adopting agroecological gardening as a new practice. Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı are value-based teachings passed down across generations that offer guidance on how to respect and live in balance with the Land, oneself, and others. Today, the Laws are foundational for adapting to environmental changes that threaten to disrupt sacred relationships with the Land, and resisting dependency on expensive, imported, ultra-processed foods.
KTFN and SKFN reframe agriculture from a colonial activity to a practice rooted in cultural revitalisation
Although climate change has limited access to some traditional foods, it has also opened up opportunities for growing food, and SKFN and KTFN are exploring how to do so on their terms. As hunters and fisherfolk return from the Land along riverbanks filled with wild berries, they now wave to gardeners tending to fields and greenhouses filled with vegetables, including potatoes and carrots for a hearty moose stew. Elders from both communities view gardening as significant to the future generations’ food system. As Elder Margaret Jumbo from SKFN explains:
“That’s why I told young people and young kids, I said, you kids need to start training your minds and training yourself to become gardeners because one of these days after we’re gone… it’s going to get to the point where we won’t be going out in the bush and shooting a moose, a healthy moose, making dry meat, and eating the meat because there’s all kinds of things happening up there… If we don’t keep our planet clean, it’s going to happen whether we want it or not.”
KTFN and SKFN are working towards community-led visions of growing food that reframe agriculture from a colonial activity to a practice rooted in cultural revitalisation, collectivism, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. To do so, these Nations are embracing holistic agroecological frameworks and adapting them to be centered around Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı, and the values of relationship, reciprocity, and care for the Land and people.
To develop and realise their food growing visions, KTFN and SKFN partner with Wilfrid Laurier University’s Northern Sustainable Food Systems Research Group (NSFSRG). Together, they advance discussions of how to embed Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı and other Dene values into the practice of growing food and use Participatory Action Research to bring these visions to life.
Foodways based on Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı (Dene Laws)
Following these discussions, both Nations created action plans. KTFN created a food system framework outlining how Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı and community values are woven into the food system. The framework informs KTFN’s Community Food Action Plan, identifying seven food system pillars: Economies, Land and Water Stewardship, Governance, Supportive Infrastructure, Relationships, Traditional Knowledge and Culture, and Skills and Capacities.
They draw on their Dene Laws, an enduring source of resilience, to nurture their traditional foodways and reaffirm their relationship with the Land
KTFN’s Chief Lloyd Chicot explains, “It is important to have a framework that has been created with our community and represents our values and beliefs alongside our vision for what we want our food system to look like in the future.”
KTFN’s action plan helps ensure that food projects – namely, a community-run garden, a proposed food hub/store, fuel break berry transplanting, and composting – all contribute to community self-sufficiency goals and build resilience across each of the framework’s dimensions. Similarly, SKFN created an Agroecology Action Plan, which weaves Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı into community garden practices to maintain respect for the Land. To do so, SKFN members discussed how gardening practices can reflect the protocols they follow to care for the Land when gathering wild foods.
For example, protocols for minimally disturbing the Land involve not expanding the garden beyond what is necessary for the community, protecting the land and river near the garden from contamination risks, and rejecting the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers. Some gathering protocols – such as ensuring future regrowth by not harvesting everything from a single plant – do not always apply to gardening. Yet, the ethos of this protocol still promotes actions that minimise waste and unnecessary harvesting. Working with Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı is not about forcing a fit, but honouring SKFN’s relationships with the Land and one another and applying this worldview to guide new practices.
T’ahsíi gots’ȩh ełeghaets’dendih (Share what you have)
Since 2015, KTFN’s garden has grown to include two greenhouses, a 0.25-acre garden, a berry orchard, and raised beds. Seasonally, weekly food boxes are shared with all households, filled with vegetables and traditional foods such as berries and dried fish. Following the Dene Law, t’ahsíi gots’ȩh ełeghaets’dendih, all garden and traditional foods are shared amongst families. Ruby Simba, KTFN’s manager, explains that: “Sharing is a big part of our lives because it is part of our Dene culture or Dene principles and values.”
Prioritising these values in the garden’s operations helps community members connect with the new practice of growing food, as their culture and identity are reflected in daily activities. This increases engagement across all aspects of the garden, from decision making to harvesting.
In Sambaa K’e, conversations about t’ahsíi gots’ȩh ełeghaets’dendih revealed tension with the capitalist concept of food as a commodity. SKFN members are clear: they prefer not to sell produce from the garden within the community but instead share it freely so everyone benefits. Some believe it’s acceptable to sell produce outside the community, but only to cover operating costs—never for profit—and only until renewable and self-sufficient practices, like seed saving, are achieved.
Both Nations believe food security is essential for Indigenous self-determination, so selling outside the community can also help demonstrate to others in the region that it is possible to grow food in northern Indigenous contexts. However, these values are not well reflected in mainstream agricultural funding models. The Government of the Northwest Territories’ programs for agriculture, for example, require business plans for intermediate levels of funding, which necessitate some level of commercialisation.
These conversations highlight the pressures of the capitalist food system and the importance of decolonising agricultural economics at the policy level, ensuring that First Nations can maintain their cultural autonomy and food sovereignty. Moving forward, KTFN and SKFN will explore more alternative economies that honour Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı.
Climate resilience through agroecology with Dene Laws
For KTFN and SKFN, agroecology offers a pathway into growing food that increases resilience to climate change and colonial pressures while maintaining the Dene Laws that have always sustained them. As an example, the gardens played an essential role in both Nations’ efforts to adapt and sustain resilience during a crisis. In 2023, wildfires engulfed the region. In June, SKFN members were evacuated for a month. However, the SKFN Garden coordinator chose to remain in the community as the garden was considered an essential service to ensure the availability of fresh food upon community members’ return.
This highlights the pressures of the capitalist food system and the importance of decolonising agricultural economics
For several weeks in August, KTFN members were required to shelter in place. Without a store in town, they were cut off from much of their food supply. Community members accessed traditional foods such as fish, berries, and moose meat, and supplemented traditional diets with garden foods. In July 2025, KTFN hosted a community gardening gathering for other communities in the region to learn new gardening and composting skills and discuss how agroecology and Mek’éé Dene Ts’ı̨lı can guide each community’s vision for a sustainable food future. During the event, community gardeners painted garden signs in Dene Zhatıé, the ancestral language of Dene communities in the Dehcho region.
In the spirit of the Dene Law of T’ahsıı ots’edı ́ hshǫ ̨ gogháts’ıɂáh (pass on the teachings), Elders and youth worked together and swapped stories as Dene Zhatıé speakers shared translations for paintings of nehsheh (potatoes), tthah (carrots), sa (the sun), and more. Elders discussed possible ways of describing English words, such as “compost”, for which there is currently no Dene Zhatıé equivalent, while relating the importance of consulting their communities on such decisions to protect the vitality of their language.
These conversations serve as a valuable reminder that lasting solutions grow from the ground up and are shaped by those who hold and honour cultural knowledge and carry it forward. As climate change impacts the Land, the First Nations are introducing new foods and practices through agroecology to weather these changes, all while working to protect their sovereignty and the Dene Laws that have enabled their resilience for millennia.
Authors: Jennifer Temmer, Carla Johnston and Megan Cooper are researchers at the Northern Sustainable Food Systems Research Group (NSFSRG), affiliated with the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Contributions and insights for this article were made by Dr. Andrew Spring (NSFSRG), Julian Russell (Sambaa K’e First Nation), and Chief Lloyd Chicot (K’a’agee Tu First Nation). Contact: mecooper@wlu.ca
Source
- Price, M. J., Latta, A., Spring, A., Temmer, J., Johnston, C., Chicot, L., Jumbo, R., and Leishman, M. (2022). Agroecology in the North: Centering Indigenous food sovereignty and land stewardship in agriculture “frontiers.” Agriculture and Human Values 39. doi: 10.1007/s10460-022-10312-7
Download pdf (slightly shortened version)
This article is part of Issue 3-2025: Weaving Resilience and Resistance
