OPT IDC Lecture: Janelle Marie Baker, "Eating in the Oil Sands"

The Oxford-Penn-Toronto IDC in Environmental Humanities is delighted to announce the next event of our season, on 28 February 2022, 12:00EST/17:00GMT. Janelle Marie Baker, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Athabasca University, will deliver a lecture entitled “Eating in the Oil Sands: How Boreal Forest Foods Speak to Us.” 

Prof. Baker’s collaborative and community-based research is focused on sakâwiyiniwak (Northern Bush Cree) experiences with wild food contamination in Treaty No. 8 territory, an area of heavy bitumen and forest extraction. The Boreal Forest in what is now known as subarctic Canada is often overlooked as an abundant food source by settlers, but it continues to be a celebrated source of food and identity for sakâwiyiniwak communities. This tension is exacerbated by a rapid influx of oil and gas and logging activities in sakâwiyiniwak territories. Baker’s ethnographic research in partnership with Bigstone Cree Nation considers how various food plants and animals are symbols of larger cultural and environmental actions on the land. From the view of the most valued food species, her talk will tell the story of sakâwiyiniwak stewardship, reciprocity, environmental monitoring, and sovereignty.

This event is co-hosted by the Northrop Frye Centre, and is free and open to the public: please register to join us, and feel free to share the poster and registration link.

Register here.