Meet Our Speakers - Abra Brynne

Name: Abra Brynne

Title: PhD Candidate at Dalhousie University

Q: Tell us a bit about your work: what is your focus right now, and how does it relate to food systems?

I just began the comprehensive exam portion of my PhD on Indigenous food sovereignty. I am particularly focused on two underlying themes, including what food sovereignty entails, and how decolonizing research methodologies can and should play a role in the study of Indigenous food sovereignty. As a non-Indigenous thinker and learner, my work pulls from Indigenous scholars as well as looking at how non-Indigenous scholars are integrating decolonizing methodologies in their food sovereignty studies.

Within these main themes, my doctoral work applies a policy lens. People don’t tend to think about policy until they ‘stub their toe on it’, and there is a domino effect of ever-increasing roadblocks for food systems actors trying to navigate complex, intersecting, and sometimes contradictory policy systems. I approach my exploration of Indigenous food sovereignty through a policy lens by asking: how does colonial policy impact Indigenous food sovereignty? How can the question of Indigenous land sovereignty be understood within food sovereignty conversations? And how can policy-based conversations about place, land, and agency, be reshaped through decolonizing methodologies?  

Q: What is an ongoing and/or emerging food systems issue that sparks your passions right now? 

Through my PhD explorations, I have been thinking deeply about questions of land sovereignty in relation to property law, and I am exploring how settlers are participating in movements towards justice. For example, landowners in Saskatchewan are collaborating in formal and informal agreements with proximate Indigenous communities to share access to land that, despite the colonial notion of “ownership”, remains Indigenous territory. I hope to continue learning about how this and other examples are pulling apart colonial notions of property, how these examples can work in relation to treaty rights, and how they might meaningfully respond to issues of land justice and food sovereignty.

Q: What were some turning points in your life that led your work into food systems? What does your work in food systems mean for you personally?

I grew up as 1 of 11 children on an 8-acre farm, to parents whose families had lost their farms and livelihoods to the Great Depression. My parents lived experience with hunger instilled in me a deep and personal understanding of household food security.

Growing up, we raised cattle for beef and tended a commercial fruit tree orchard, as well as a huge household garden. My grandparents raised chickens and shared their eggs. I grew up knowing what a strawberry warmed from the sun smelled like and what it felt like to wipe the dirt from freshly plucked carrots onto my pant leg. I grew up knowing what it meant to have a relationship with the cows my family processed. I also knew, from my earliest days, what good food tasted like, and I was intimately bound to these standards into adulthood. After I left the farm as a young adult, I couldn’t eat apples for 10 years because they simply didn’t taste like apples to me.

In the mid 1990’s, while working at a food co-op, I had a lifechanging interaction with a customer. This woman had just heard a radio show about genetically engineered canola, and asked me if it was safe to eat. Although thinking at first that this woman was paranoid, I kept my promise to look into it, and discovered a world of food systems beyond the 8-acres of my childhood farm. As I delved deeper into the question, I found more questions than answers, and this led me to launch educational and political campaigns, including a self-funded speaking tour. 

I credit my upbringing, and that one customer’s poignant question for my career path today.

Q: What are you looking forward to sharing in your CAFLP conference presentation?

In delightful contiguity with my ‘pre-PhD policy nerdiness,’ my presentation will discuss scale appropriate regulations in food policy. I will detail how issues of scale are often not written into policy or law, and how this can lead to a mismatch between the policy so prescribed and an actual practical solution for small-scale businesses. Using small-scale aquaculture and other sectors in Nova Scotia as case studies, I will detail how a lack of scale-specific policies can disservice place-based food systems, and explore examples of where the problem of scale actually resides, and how it may be resolved.