A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty from the Northwest Coast

by Charlotte Coté

In the dense rainforest of the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Somass River (uumaas) brings sockeye salmon (miaat) into the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Tseshaht. uumaas and miaat are central to the sacred food practices that have been a crucial part of the Indigenous community's efforts to enact food sovereignty, decolonize their diet, and preserve their ancestral knowledge.

In A Drum in One Hand, a Sockeye in the Other, Charlotte Coté shares contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth practices of traditional food revitalization in the context of broader efforts to re-Indigenize contemporary diets on the Northwest Coast. Coté offers evocative stories of her Tseshaht community's and her own work to revitalize relationships to haʔum (traditional food) as a way to nurture health and wellness. As Indigenous peoples continue to face food insecurity due to ongoing inequality, environmental degradation, and the Westernization of traditional diets, Coté foregrounds healing and cultural sustenance via everyday enactments of food berry picking, salmon fishing, and building a community garden on reclaimed residential school grounds. This book is for everyone concerned about the major role food plays in physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness.

Genres: Indigenous, Nonfiction, Food, Anthropology

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2022

Reviews

[Mikayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️ 4.8

A Drum in One Hand, a sockeye in the Other: Stories of Indigenous Food Sovereignty is a one of a kind academic work about the emotional, physical, and cultural impact that food sovereignty has on the Native American population. Coté's definition of food sovereignty, laid out in the first chapters, is reliable and as stated "framed within a larger rights discourse." Coté is correct that food is not a commodity but something that drives our connections to our culture and health.

The full inclusion of Nuu-chah-nulth language is craftful and ultimately helped me process the full depth that North America has gone to erase indigenous foods and language. Coté does provide a phonetic key so fear not!

Lastly the mixture of both insightful information and immersive storytelling is the key to any 5 star academic read for me. After reading this book I still find myself thinking about Ninja the bear and the best ńačyuu. Concluding thoughts are that Indigenous food should not only be protected out of a preservation of culture but also for the activism of Indigenous health. I could talk about this book all day.

[Nils Jepson · Rating 3 out of 5]

fine! treading this weird middle ground that is neither empirical/research-based or entirely journalistic. i think there's also this weird unevenness between her examples and theoretical arguments (if you can call them that!) surrounding food sovereignty. a lot of "i'm saying this is true, so it must be true." the last chapter, especially, is an oddly specific example of survivalism and actual detachment from community that never totally blends into Cote's larger points, although she says that it does.

i also wish she tried a bit harder to add something to the literature without just block quoting Kimmerer and others.

best parts are, per usual, her own experiences and part of me just wish she turned the whole thing into a memoir instead of this weird hybrid that is neither theoretically or personally compelling. idk!

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well described and folksy narrative on contemporary life from a Tseshaht cultural framework.