The Earth to Tables Legacies exchange grapples with the tensions, struggles, and legacies of broken treaties and western imperialism. We have identified four interrelated dynamic tensions that represent the broader political, ecological and cultural context within which we live and work. They shape our relationships and the conversations that you will find within our videos and photo essays. These tensions represent the ongoing struggle between the Indigenous Peoples and settlers, the canoe and the ship. Our colonial histories are complicated by the fact that there are also deep differences among the so-called settlers, as the ships were controlled by wealthy white Europeans who brutally stuffed African slaves into the galleys as part of the Atlantic Slave Trade, compounding a legacy a white supremacy. And these African settlers had deep roots in Indigenous cultures, as did racialized immigrants and exiles from other colonized continents.
We identify these interrelated tensions around the notions of knowledge, food, politics and equity. They correspond with the way we have framed the videos and photo essays in the Conversations section: as ways of knowing, earth, justice, and tables. The photographs that open each section are drawn from the climate justice strike in Toronto in 2019, revealing how activists are naming these tensions in the streets.