Research

We Focus on Northern Sustainable Food Systems

Professor Andrew Spring is a leading researcher in sustainable food systems and climate resilience, dedicated to working with communities to develop locally driven, sustainable solutions to food security challenges. As a faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University, his work spans multiple international and regional partnerships, emphasizing collaboration with Indigenous communities, governments, and academic institutions. His research focuses on integrating traditional knowledge with innovative practices to build resilient, sustainable food systems in northern and remote areas.

Read about our various different projects below, and how we’re making a difference with the research we are doing.

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Group Members

The Future Harvest Partnership is a multi-year collaboration between Wilfrid Laurier University, the Territorial Agrifood Association and the Government of the Northwest Territories Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Supported by an interdisciplinary team of leading academics from across North America, and informed by Indigenous Governments and traditional knowledge, the Partnership engages with food producers and local communities of the Northwest Territories to co-create research and generate useful insights for innovation and policy that can inform the development of a climate-resilient local food system.

Funding Acknowledgement

The Future Harvest Partnership is funded by the NSERC-SSHRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative.

The Food Learning and Growing (FLOW) Partnership aims to advance sustainable food system transformation at the regional scale. The Partnership involves eight regional research teams (NWT, Brazil, Mexico, BC, Ottawa, Montreal, Kenya, and Melbourne) and an international network of researchers, practitioners, and community partners. Each region will track specific practices over time to compare across contexts and understand how social, ecological and economic factors impact regional food system transformation.  

The NWT Team aims to build links and facilitate cooperation across partners, funders, and government in the NWT to advance community agroecology within the agri-food system.  We envision the NWT will be a Circumpolar leader in sustainable food systems through innovation and policy that prioritizes local food production, fosters reconciliation, and is adaptive to climate change. Learn more on the project website: https://flowpartnership.org/

Funding Acknowledgement

FLOW is funded by a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Northern Agriculture Futures (NAF) is a multi-year project led by the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation in partnership with Dr. Andrew Spring. The research team works with communities in the NWT to envision and realize a future for agricultural development that meets the needs of communities without negatively impacting the health of the lands or waters on which traditional food system depend.

The project recognizes that agricultural opportunities in the North cannot be met by transplanting southern approaches. Instead, agricultural development must be community-defined, locally adapted, culturally relevant, and integrated into existing food landscapes.

Research projects span environmental monitoring, developing and piloting agricultural best management practices, policy development and adaptation, community and regional governance, and knowledge sharing across the NWT.

Regions and Key Partners

NAF projects are currently concentrated in the South Slave and Dehcho Regions.

Key Partners:

  • Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation
  • Hamlet of Enterprise
  • Sambaa K’e First Nation
  • Territorial Agri-Food Association
  • Government of Northwest Territories
  • University of Guelph (Department of Integrative Biology)

 

Funding Acknowledgement

This research is supported by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) and Indigenous Services Canada through their Climate Change Preparedness in the North Program.

Voicing Change: Co-Creating Knowledge and Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems is a three-year project announced in 2021 and led by Dr. Andrew Spring. The project connects community partners, researchers, and students from three regions—Northwest Territories; Migori County, Kenya; and Southern Brazil—to create a Community of Practice exploring local, innovative, and sustainable food systems that centre traditional and Indigenous knowledges. Each region will create a collection of community-led podcasts about their food systems and practices that will be shared with the Community of Practice and beyond.

The project aims to:

  • celebrate local food expertise and traditional knowledge that contribute to traditional, equitable, and culturally appropriate community food systems
  • amplify the voices of community members and knowledge holders as they share their technical expertise
  • spark food systems innovations that flow through the Community of Practice and are adapted and piloted in other areas

 

The project’s goal is to build a healthier, more equitable, and socio-ecologically resilient future that is grounded in sustainable local food systems and centres Indigenous and traditional knowledges.

Regions and Key Partners:

 

Funding Acknowledgement

Voicing Change is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Launched in 2020, the Community Capacity for Climate Change and Food Security (C4FS) research project works closely with six NWT communities to identify, develop, and apply community-defined actions that strengthen their capacity to create resilient and secure community food systems in the face of climate change. The project’s four focus areas are: Traditional Knowledge, community governance, youth empowerment, and gender.

Regions and Key Partners:

  • The Research Team at Laurier are working in the:
  • South Slave Region with the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation in Kakisa
  • Sahtú Region with the Délįnę Got’įnę Government in Délįnę
  • North Slave Region with the Tłįcho Government in Wekweètì and Whatì.
  • Inuvialuit Settlement Region in Tuktoyaktuk and Paulatuk

 

The project’s co-principal investigators are Dr. Andrew Spring (Wilfrid Laurier University), Dr. Kelly Skinner (University of Waterloo), and Dr. Sonia Wesche (University of Ottawa)

Funding Acknowledgement

This research is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Northern Water Futures (NWF) is a major multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project that works collaboratively with knowledge producers, mobilizers, and users from communities; regional and territorial governments; non-governmental organizations; and universities to understand and address the challenges that climate change poses for water security in the NWT.

Regions and Key Partners:

The project is led by Dr. Jennifer Baltzer (WLU) with collaborators at several institutions. NWF projects led by the Northern Food Systems Research Group are focused in the Sahtú and South Slave Regions but cover much of the Northwest Territories.

  • Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation
  • Délįnę Got’įnę Government and the Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve

Funding Acknowledgement

The Northern Water Futures projects is funded by the Global Water Futures program.

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The Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation (KTFN) community is taking steps to safeguard its land by actively monitoring its health due to observed changes. This concern prompted the development of the Ka’a’gee Tu Atlas, an innovative web map. The Atlas was created by gathering information on traditional land uses, culturally important sites, environmental data, and resource development areas. The atlas was developed through participatory mapping, using the community’s record locations and traditional names of important natural landmarks on KTFN territory.

Currently, in partnership with the community the project aims to map all safety and cultural infrastructure locations, develop a harvester safety app to document potential dangers on the land, incorporate stories and history into the atlas and continue monitoring the land.

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Sambaa K’e First Nation (SKFN) seeks to better understand and improve food security for their members using data from their community-owned store and the Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge of their community members. As such, NSFSRG and SKFN co-designed an interdisciplinary research project that includes the following components:

  1. Improving on the barriers to receiving the NNC retail subsidy: despite being eligible, the general store run by the Sambaa K’e Development Corporation (SKDC) does not receive the NNC retail subsidy due to the high administrative burden. With NNC representatives, SKDC staff are working towards finding appropriate solutions to meet the reporting requirements.
  2. Point-of-Sale (POS) data analysis: This data helps us understand the purchasing preferences of community members as well as how food purchased from the store relates to cost of living in Sambaa K’e. Special attention was paid to the prevalence of ultra-processed food purchases.
  3. Shop-along interviews: Qualitative interviews with SKFN members as they shopped for groceries in the store. These interviews asked intersectional questions related to their purchases, such as care responsibilities, cultural activities, nutritional knowledge, and perceptions of affordability.
  4. Traditional Knowledge and Dene Yahtie interviews: Qualitative interviews with SKFN members, including Elders, about how Traditional Knowledge and Dene Yahtie (the local language) can inform and improve food security today and for future generations.
  5. Foods from the land youth survey and interviews: Youth aged 10-30 were asked about their favorite foods from the land and garden, the foods they know how to harvest and prepare, and their ideas for spending more time on the land. Additionally, they shared their opinions and aspirations for both the current and future food systems in the community.
  6. Community-based actions: Based on relationships built through this research project, community-based actions are being identified. Two have already begun: cooking circles for learning to prepare more garden-based foods, and a shelf space analysis and rearrangement for the SKDC general store.

 

This research works with the three pillars of SKFN’s food system: 1) traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering; 2) gardening and agriculture; 3) store-bought foods.

This project uses community-based participatory action research (PAR) methodologies to ensure that all research aspects are community-driven and respond to practical, locally identified concerns through active collaboration of researchers and participants in co-learning. The primary data collection for this research took place primarily between June-October 2024, with WLU researchers in community throughout this time.

As climate change increases the size and severity of wildfires in the boreal forests of Alaska, Yukon and Northwest Territories, fuel breaks are becoming necessary infrastructure to protect northern residents and their homes. Fuel breaks are strips of land around a community where trees are cleared or thinned to decrease the chance of wildfire progressing into the community. Fuel breaks also allow firefighters improved access to the wildfire and/or an evacuation route. However, fuel breaks can be a controversial fire management technique because of the large areas of forest that are cleared and the long-term maintenance they require. As an alternative, fuel breaks can be seen as space to meet multiple community needs, such as:

  • Supporting the local food system through agriculture, planting native edible species like berries, and/or trails for hunting and trapping
  • Converting forest stands to less-flammable native species such as birch or aspen, which helps to maintain existing ecosystems
  • Areas for recreation such as hiking, skiing, or even a golf course
  • Areas for community infrastructure such as airports
  • Areas for research and education, such as firefighting training

 

These win-win solutions that provide fire protection and other community benefits require investment in research, advocacy and knowledge sharing to support local capacity and innovation.

As such, two NSFSRG scholars are part of a working group hosted by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) that includes cross-sectoral northern experts from diverse knowledge systems to envision and create tools to support government decision-makers, practitioners and community leaders to make these multiple benefits a reality.

We are also partnering with KTFN to pilot these innovations in practice! In June 2023, nn NSFSRG scholar facilitated a participatory workshop with KTFN members to envision what benefits they would like to see in their fuel break. The community-defined results are an accessible place to pick traditional berries and space for recreation (maybe even a golf course). In June 2024, we worked together to start a pilot “fuel break food forest” that included training for KTFN members to transplant local berry species into their fuel break.

The Economies of Food project works with the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation to develop economic opportunities and to support community health and well-being through food. Through Participatory Action Research KTFN is implementing small-scale food production projects such as the Kakisa food hub, to increase access to local, healthy, fresh foods for Kakisa households with the desire to scale up production of garden foods and support processing and distribution activities for local fishers to make to make these foods commercially available to surrounding communities.  This work supports Noda Enterprises, KTFN’s economic development arm to plan and implement these economic opportunities and ensure the projects are community-driven and provide financial, social, and cultural benefits.

Key Partners:

  • Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation

 

This project is led by the Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation, Dr. Andrew Spring (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Dr. Charlotte Spring (Wilfrid Laurier University).

Funding Acknowledgement

This research is supported by Mitacs Accelerate Program