Local partner: Slow Food Sápmi
Country: Sweden (Sampi)
Background and objective
Global awareness in indigenous food, medicine, and well-being is both a threat and opportunity when the attitudes of indigenous peoples and commercial interests differ. Industrialized food production and the increasingly unhealthy way we now eat needs to be supplemented with the Sámi model. Work for alternative methods is slowly underway. Sámi enterprises are fighting against mining giants and state politics, and there are not enough resources for industrial organization for Sámi food.
Through the project, the idea is to lay the foundation for grassroots mapping of ways to develop while retaining and strengthening indigenous traditions and industries. The plan is to spread the knowledge of the results internally in the community and to the outside world, as well as to conduct a supplementary surveys and SWOT analyses. Slow Food Sápmi has previously carried out project activities, including documentation and experimental workshops, where young people gained traditional knowledge transferred from the elderly and external support to develop food products that suit modern consumers, but the next step is to spread the outcomes internally in Sámi society and to the outside world.
The initiative has considered nine areas: raw materials, food sovereignty, health, women, traditional knowledge, gender equality, climate change, quality work and development potential. We have put this in the context of sparse settlement, biodiversity and women’s opportunities. Based on the initiative plan, we have listed opportunities, threats and quality systems.
Local partner information
Slow Food Sápmi is a non-profit organization formed in 2009 for Sámi food, that includes Sápmi in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. Its members are linked to Slow Food International, collaborating with Slow Food in Sweden, the Slow Food Nordic region, and in a natural partnership with other indigenous peoples through the Indigenous Terra Madre. In 2011 Slow Food Sápmi initiated and organized the first indigenous peoples conference in Jokkmokk, Sweden, that had the participation of 520 indigenous delegates and observers from 37 countries.
