COLONIAL IMPEDIMENTS TO INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND FOOD SECURITY IN ATLANTIC CANADA

The four pillars of food security identified by the World Summit on Food Security in Rome 2009, as availability, access, utilization and stability, are helpful guides to examining the experiences of Indigenous peoples food security and food sovereignty and the consequences of European and settler colonialism in Canada. As Orford notes, The first European colonial settlers came from societies which were constantly on the edge of famine and demographic collapse, and the liberal theories that justified their appropriation of the waste lands occupied by hunter-gathers were an attempt to save the lives of Europeans. Nicolas Denys, a French explorer and merchant, accompanied Issac de Razilly who was commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in 16327 to be the lieutenant-general of Acadia, a colony of New France in northeastern North America. Their mission was to establish colonies for France in the territories of the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Abenaki and Passamaquoddy Denys' writings depict the time of early, but sustained, European incursions and settlement into long occupied Indigenous territories.