Gulf Islands Food Co-op

Nov, 2025 NEWSLETTER, Indigenous Teachings, Seed Saving Events

Greetings, here’s the latest 2025 Gulf Islands Food Co-op Newsletter.  The Oct 3-4 CRISP Festival on S’Dayes (Pender Island) was a great success, and included our sponsored Speakers panel on “Food, Land and Relationships”.  Adam Olsen (Tsartlip Nation) described the impacts of government policy over the last couple of hundred years, dispossessing Indigenous peoples from land and food sources, and how our foreshores could become healthy food sources again.  David Fierro (Okanagan Nation) described his years of working for the Squamish Nation and others as a rights and title reviewer, particularly the process of government-led exploitation and extraction, and the difficulty of regenerating those lands to bring back salmon and other food sources.

Now David and his partner Suhsheela Kundargi’s Healing Place project on Mayne Island offer workshops in drum-making, deer hunting, processing and cooking, to bring back traditional ways to connect to the land.  This includes an upcoming November 30 Fallow Deer Processing & Cooking workshop (see image below above newsletter for more info).  Meanwhile the Gulf Islands Foods Co-op thanks the Saturna Community Library for hosting us in October, for a 30-person workshop using our new Seed Cleaning Equipment (see below).  Mayne and Pender folks also enjoyed the equipment provided by FarmFolkCityFolk.  We were so inspired and encouraged to keep up the good work of saving seeds for our communities!