Kina-Gego-Naabadosin (‘everything is connected’): local and Indigenous knowledge systems and food sovereignty in three First Nations’ communities

This paper investigates how local and Indigenous knowledge systems (LIKS) are produced and reproduced through food systems in three Anishinaabe First Nations communities in northern Ontario: Red Rock Indian Band, Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek, and Netmizaaggamig Nishnaabeg. Using Participatory Action Research approach and an embedded mixed-methods design, the study engaged over 180 participants through surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews. Analysis combines autopoiesis, drawn from systems theory, with Indigenous relational systems thinking to show that culture, worldviews, and Land constitute the organizational foundations of LIKS, while kinship, reciprocity, and intergenerational teaching sustain knowledge transmission and community autonomy. By embedding relational values within food systems, Indigenous worldviews, expressed through protocols, practices and beliefs contradict settler colonial food and governance structures. Land shapes food practices, meaning, and cognition, yet is increasingly constrained by climate change, extractive industries, and dependence on external food supply chains. Together, these pressures reproduce a settler colonial governance paradox in which rural, Indigenous communities bear the consequences of land-use decisions while lacking decision-making authority over their own territories. This paper demonstrates that LIKS function as dynamic, relational self-producing systems shaped through reciprocal relationships between people, animals, and Land while documenting vulnerability and resurgence in northern, rural, Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives.