> [!info] Auteur : [[Sarah Rotz]] & [[Charles Levkoe]] & [[Martha Stiegman]] & [[Mustafa Koc]] & [[Indra Singh]] & [[Max Ajl]] & [[Yafa Al Masri]] & [[Justin Podur]] [Zotero](zotero://select/library/items/VCZYE297) [attachment](<file:///C:/Users/kevin/zotero/storage/FWIVRIJ8/Rotz%20et%20al.%20-%202024%20-%20From%20Palestine%20to%20Turtle%20Island%20Food%20as%20a%20weapon%20of%20colonialism%20and%20tool%20of%20liberation.pdf>) Source: https://canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cfs/article/view/710 Connexion : # Annotations > [!accord] Page 45 > Food militarization and weaponization (Fakhri, 2024; GRAIN, 2024) are tactics that have been used by other settler colonial states, including Canada, to control and displace Indigenous populations (Burnett et al., 2016; Carter, 1990; Daschuk, 2013; Mosby, 2013; Rotz, 2017).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=3&annotation=FQJH6HYW) > > > --- > #Note/Guerre #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Alimentation > ^FQJH6HYWaFWIVRIJ8p3 > [!accord] Page 45 > This dynamic is evident from Israel/Palestine to Canada/Turtle Island1, with imperialist power rooted in the systematic destruction of Indigenous food systems and strategies of land theft, weaponization of food, and centralization of power.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=3&annotation=II58QUVR) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme > ^II58QUVRaFWIVRIJ8p3 > [!information] Page 46 > The invasion has filled Gaza with pollutants—including an estimated 80,000 tonnes of asbestos (Global Construction Review, 2024), chemicals, debris, and heavy metals—and its destruction of infrastructure and the near entire displacement of the regional population has created a growing sewage and waste crisis with people forced to live alongside makeshift landfills and waste dumps (Limb, 2024). The term “ecocide” has been used to describe the depth and breadth of destruction and disaster taking place (Ahmed et al., 2024).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=4&annotation=UI9BFAJG) > > > --- > #Note/Palestine #Note/Pollution #Note/Écocide > ^UI9BFAJGaFWIVRIJ8p4 > [!accord] Page 46 > While the settler colonial question in Palestine is widely debated across the social sciences and humanities, our goal is to provide a perspective grounded in critical food studies. We aim to contribute to academic and activist discussions with a focus on the historical, political, and cultural significance of food. Food has repeatedly been used as a tool to seize territory, exert power, and control populations across settlercolonial contexts[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=4&annotation=D467XRM6) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Alimentation > ^D467XRM6aFWIVRIJ8p4 > [!accord] Page 46 > Indeed, the land expulsions we see in occupied Palestinian territories today mirror those that took place across Canada in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the results of which have become normalised and invisiblized with time. However, struggles for Indigenous food sovereignty (see, for instance, the ongoing work of La Via Campesina2)—as part of larger movements for self-determination—remain a vital force of resistance and solidarity across both contexts (NAISA 2024; ICA 2024).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=4&annotation=GVTF4GUL) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation > ^GVTF4GULaFWIVRIJ8p4 > [!information] Page 48 > Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that focuses on seizing land for material gain and social reproduction, achieved through the invasion of territories with the intent to dominate and displace Indigenous populations (Ajl, 2023a; Coulthard, 2014; Harris, 2018).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=5F6I93Q9) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme > ^5F6I93Q9aFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!accord] Page 48 > To secure land for settlement and economic expansion, settler colonial projects—like other forms of colonialism—employ a range of strategies, from direct violence and starvation to assimilation, political repression, and cultural erasure. This erasure includes the suppression of Indigenous stories, ways of life, and presence, whether on maps, in symbols, or through place names.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=V9VMCJU4) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme > ^V9VMCJU4aFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!accord] Page 48 > Indigenous food systems in particular are directly targeted by settler-colonial regimes, as they are deeply connected to land, Indigenous nationhood, identity, and cultural continuity—all of which these regimes seek to erase (Morrison, 2011; 2020; Whyte, 2018).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=DU2ZME9X) > > > --- > #Note/Agriculture #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Alimentation > ^DU2ZME9XaFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!accord] Page 48 > However, the destruction of Indigenous food systems is not unique to settler colonialism. It is a hallmark of all forms of colonialism and capitalist expansion, both of which aim to dismantle Indigenous sovereignty and replace it with models that serve global capitalist economies (Ajl, 2023a).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=FL42Y8DF) > > > --- > #Note/Capitalisme #Note/Colonialisme #Note/AgricultureVivrière > ^FL42Y8DFaFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!accord] Page 48 > The dominant proponents of Zionism eventually focussed their political energies on the colonization of Palestine, believed to be the Jewish homeland according to historical and religious texts (Khalidi, 2020; Massad, 2006; Pappe, 2016), with the national Zionist project constructing the myth that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land” (Muir, 2008, pg. 1).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=NGYEA5H2) > > > --- > #Note/Israël #Note/Palestine #Note/Colonialisme > ^NGYEA5H2aFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!exemple] Page 48 > Canada employed various methods to displace Indigenous peoples, including development of laws and policies designed to legalize their displacement and facilitate settler encroachment and accumulation. Key examples include the Indian Act (passed in 1876), the Homesteading Act (also known as the Dominion Lands Act of 1872), the Pass System (1882-1935) (Barron, 1987; Kelm & Smith, 2018), and, more recently, the parks system (Rose, 2020; Vranich, 2023).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=6&annotation=QVIM5MP6) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Canada > ^QVIM5MP6aFWIVRIJ8p6 > [!information] Page 49 > Much of this land was previously used for agriculture, and its loss has severely impacted Palestinian food sovereignty. In its place, Israeli settlements and more capital-intensive models of agricultural production expanded, with citrus production becoming especially prominent: “investments flowed in for land purchase, primarily through the private sector, which owned most of the Zionist land until World War II, and became the [British] Mandate’s major export sector, and even dominated the Jewish-Zionist sector of production” (Ajl, 2023a, p. 270; also see Karlinsky, 2000).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=7&annotation=87QC4BL6) > > > --- > #Note/Palestine #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Agricultrice > ^87QC4BL6aFWIVRIJ8p7 > [!information] Page 49 > Moreover, similar to Canada’s creation of national parks that displaced Indigenous communities under the guise of conservation, Israel established parks that worked to displace Palestinians from their lands (Desjarlais, 2022). The establishment of these parks not only destroyed Palestinian villages and agricultural systems but also symbolized a broader strategy of dispossession that framed Palestinian presence as incompatible with nature conservation efforts. Such practices reinforce a colonial environmental order, as Desjarlais (2022) and Sasa (2023) describe, whereby tree planting and conservation initiatives in these parks entrench settler presence while erasing Palestinian presence on and connection to the land.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=7&annotation=4U9FTDJB) > >[!cite] Note > Cf Colonialisme Vert > > > --- > #Note/Israël #Note/Palestine #Note/Colonialisme #Note/ColonialismeVert #Note/ParcNational > ^4U9FTDJBaFWIVRIJ8p7 > [!accord] Page 50 > Many of the settler-colonial strategies at work in Palestine, including the creation of a mythical national entitlement to land, the attempted severing of Indigenous nations’ connections with land, and the weaponization of food, are familiar in the Canadian context. These include: the religious justification for the seizure of Indigenous lands via the doctrine of discovery, originating in the fifteenth century, which gave Christians so-called divine rights to claim nonChristian territories and underpinned colonial law in Canada (Barker, 2021; Miller et al, 2010); the destruction of Indigenous food systems such as bison herds, which were replaced with European cattle (Daschuk, 2013); the creation of the Royal Canadian Military Policy to subdue Indigenous people when they were the majority population on the Prairies (Gerster, 2019); settler campaigns for frontier oil and mineral extraction; the replacement of Indigenous food systems with settler state-sponsored programs of agricultural modernization (Carter, 1990, 2016; Yellowhead Institute, 2019); the creation of an apartheid legal system through the Indian Act (Kelm & Smith, 2018); and the restriction of Indigenous movement via the Pass system (Barron, 1987). These settler-colonial, imperial, and supremacist regimes have varied across different contexts and times, but their underlying logics and goals are similar.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=8&annotation=VFZZPHP3) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Canada > ^VFZZPHP3aFWIVRIJ8p8 > [!information] Page 51 > In a recent article, Bilal Nour Al-Deen (2024) describes the Israeli scorched earth policy towards Southern Lebanon, which has caused severe environmental and agricultural devastation to the region. Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged 6,000 hectares of agricultural land, including 60,000 olive trees (some of which were 300 years old) as well as citrus, banana, almond, and other non-fruit trees. Additionally, fields have been destroyed and poisoned and fisher people have been killed.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=9&annotation=WQRRIRL9) > > > --- > #Note/Agriculture > ^WQRRIRL9aFWIVRIJ8p9 > [!accord] Page 51 > As an expert from Lebanon's Southern Green Association puts it, “there is a clear, deliberate burning of the forest cover, destruction of olive vines and fruit trees and contamination of the soil, which explains the intensive use of white phosphorus” (quoted in Nour Al-Deen, 2024).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=9&annotation=38TA53CM) > > > --- > #Note/Pollution #Note/Écocide > ^38TA53CMaFWIVRIJ8p9 > [!accord] Page 51 > Colonial powers often target the livelihoods of occupied peoples by destroying food sources. During the Gorta Mor or Great Hunger in Ireland from 1844-1852 (misnamed and minimised as the “Potato Famine”), this caused nearly one million deaths and forced another million to flee, while Britain continued to export food from Ireland to the mainland. Similarly, after the British East India Company began taking over parts of the subcontinent in 1757, India experienced periodic famines that persisted until its independence in 1947. In Late Victorian Holocausts, [[Mike Davis]] (2001) estimates that between thirty and sixty million people died in a series of preventable famines in regions including India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and New Caledonia. Davis argues that these deaths were a direct result of the forced integration of local food systems into the global economy controlled by the British Empire—focused on food export and commodification for imperial interests, rather than local sustenance and food sovereignty.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=9&annotation=B9CDHPWK) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Alimentation #Note/Famine > ^B9CDHPWKaFWIVRIJ8p9 > [!accord] Page 51 > Scholar [[Vandana Shiva]] has documented this process in several books, including the recent Oneness vs. the 1% (2020). Countries in the global south were encouraged—often by international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—to borrow and invest in cash crops for export to earn sufficient foreign exchange to service their foreign debt (McMichael, 2013).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=9&annotation=XUXHCUYV) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation #Note/NéoColonialisme > ^XUXHCUYVaFWIVRIJ8p9 > [!accord] Page 52 > Many of these nations now find themselves trapped in debt as they have integrated into volatile international agricultural commodity markets, facing fluctuating prices and rising costs for seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and equipment. This integration undermines local agrifood trade and self-sufficiency. Countries often struggle to repay their loans, leading to economic restructuring and further privatization of national assets, which typically benefits US and allied corporations within the global food system. When local governments resist this erosion of sovereignty and cannot be easily manipulated or overthrown, foreign sanctions are frequently imposed, resulting in widespread hunger and economic instability (Podur, 2020).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=10&annotation=LHNPD4WF) > > > --- > #Note/Agriculture #Note/NéoColonialisme > ^LHNPD4WFaFWIVRIJ8p10 > [!accord] Page 52 > He argues that the history of the Arab region from the eighteenth century to the present has been marked by a series of colonial impositions, the creation of de facto settler colonies, the semiproletarianization of Arab populations, and concentration of land ownership (Ajl, 2021). The eighteenth century saw a period of significant European settlement and colonial expansion, both globally and within the Arab region specifically (Amin, 1977). Direct forms of land grabbing and displacement were employed by European powers (primarily Britain and France) alongside debt development policies, including SAPs, that undermined local and regional economies and the region's cultural and political sovereignty.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=10&annotation=WRIZUGP3) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/Subsistance > ^WRIZUGP3aFWIVRIJ8p10 > [!information] Page 53 > During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria all began producing export crops for the benefit of European colonial powers, creating conditions for forced return to primary production (Lutsky, 1969). During this time, export-oriented commodity production became further entrenched across the Arab region. People became workers on European estates, and all suffered from colonial income deflation and a decrease in cereal consumption per capita. Along with massive land concentration, this semi-proletarianization of the population produced widespread regional slums and bidonvilles and created large reserve armies of labour. These slums and reserve armies became central to some national liberation struggles in the Arab region (Ajl, 2019).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=11&annotation=DY82IM3A) > > > --- > #Note/Colonialisme #Note/AgricultureÉxportation > ^DY82IM3AaFWIVRIJ8p11 > [!accord] Page 53 > The harsh conditions of exploitation imposed by European powers fueled widespread national liberation movements, which can be better understood as peasant uprisings. These movements began in Palestine from 1936 to 1939 and reemerged in 1948, with volunteers coming from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and other regions (Kanafani, 1972). As [[Frantz Fanon]] (1968) emphasized, the struggle for access to land was a central factor driving these armed national liberation movements in the region.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=11&annotation=7HF2PY3W) > > > --- > #Note/Lutte > ^7HF2PY3WaFWIVRIJ8p11 > [!information] Page 53 > Notable examples include agrarian reforms in Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s, the Ba'ath Party's agrarian reforms from 1963 to 1970, cooperative and farmer-led movements in South Yemen and Algeria, and the Dhofar Revolution in Oman, which resulted in changes to land tenure and credit allocation. These reforms improved food availability and supported import substitution, industrialization, and widespread nationalization, with peasants and land playing central roles in Arab republicanism. Amidst this context, the ideals of Maoist China offered an alternative development model centered on a workerpeasant alliance. China's approach to sovereign industrialization, agrarian reform, and indigenous technological development provided a different perspective on development, influencing thinking in the region (Ajl, 2023b).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=11&annotation=TARHY32I) > > > --- > #Note/Agriculture > ^TARHY32IaFWIVRIJ8p11 > [!information] Page 54 > In response to this double exclusion, Palestinian refugees embrace food and food-making practices as a means of resistance and cultural preservation. Networks of sisterhoods in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon bring together women to safeguard and pass on culinary traditions from their villages of origin through cooking, food preparation, and sharing. These networks and practices not only help preserve cultural memory and identity but also counter food insecurity and establish an alternative humanitarian care network. Food sharing serves as a form of resistance against injustices related to food and land and is intricately linked to the broader struggle for the Palestinian right of return.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=12&annotation=QPHEN8M5) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation > ^QPHEN8M5aFWIVRIJ8p12 > [!accord] Page 55 > Geographies of refugee and colonized food access are shaped by host community policies and settler colonialism. Informal food networks play a crucial role in addressing unequal food access by allowing refugees and colonized peoples to preserve their cultural identities through shared food practices and memories. These networks can serve as a vital tool in exile or against land and food injustices, making food a central element in radical movements advocating for the right of return (El Masri, 2024). While food insufficiency is often framed as an issue of poverty and underdevelopment, food also fosters a sense of belonging and connection to the land. Food underpins the right to the land, and food reveals how we know ourselves and our ancestral lands and culture.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=13&annotation=DF5SEYHZ) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation > ^DF5SEYHZaFWIVRIJ8p13 > [!accord] Page 56 > In both Canada and Palestine, the destruction of Indigenous land and food systems is central to the settler-colonial project. Although the Israeli and Canadian contexts differ in terms of historical realities, they share many stories of land, food, and cultural dispossession. In Canada, the Indian Act restricted Indigenous hunting and fishing on lands seized by the government. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, persistent land seizures and efforts at cultural assimilation aimed to dismantle Indigenous food systems and replace them with settler farming and food production. Today, the Indian Act continues to limit the ability of First Nations peoples to make decisions, take control of their own food systems, and attain food sovereignty (Grey & Patel, 2014).[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=14&annotation=7K7DS7W7) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation > ^7K7DS7W7aFWIVRIJ8p14 > [!accord] Page 57 > Food can also be used as a powerful tool of resistance by enabling communities to take back power and control of their food systems, maintain their cultural identities, reduce economic dependence on oppressive regimes, and sustain their population during crisis. In the Palestinian context, food sovereignty initiatives like victory gardens during the First Intifada demonstrated how local food production supported political resistance and community subsistence (Nimer, 2024). In the Canadian context, Indigenous peoples have used food as a tool for resurgence and resistance through reconnecting to land-based food and governance systems, revitalizing ecological knowledge, and rekindling relationships with the human and morethan-human worlds (Coté, 2016; Robin, 2019). By reclaiming control over food systems, Indigenous peoples challenge the deliberate de-development policies imposed by settler-colonial regimes, resist forced dependency, and strengthen their capacity for steadfastness in the face of ongoing oppression and violence.[](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/FWIVRIJ8?page=15&annotation=TQVIX99U) > > > --- > #Note/Alimentation #Note/Subsistance > ^TQVIX99UaFWIVRIJ8p15