Alaskan-Inuit Food Sovereignty Initiative
The AIFSI is a branch/program of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and entails a three year project. This project’s base skeletal structure is three meetings and a summit, which illustrate the importance of community communication, sharing of knowledge and experiences in food sovereignty work. The end goal of the three meetings and summit is the development of an Alaskan Inuit Food Sovereignty Management Action Plan. The initiative hopes this plan and project will “empower our people to seek reform and justice and is propelled by self-determination and Indigenous rights to collectively work towards securing access and management rights over our traditional food resources, to create long-term systematic and policy change that will benefit Inuit communities throughout the North Slope, Northwest, Bering Strait, and Yukon-Kuskokwim regions of Alaska.”
On Inuit lands, movements for food sovereignty cannot just be the creation of farms, because farming is not the most sustainable foodway nor is it a central tenet of Inuit food traditions. Rather, food sovereignty in the Arctic must center the rights of Inuit to access game lands and waters, as well as the rights of the local wildlife to not be overfished, overhunted, or killed by human-accelerated climate change. The AIFSI specifically centers the demand for the right of Inuit to manage the wildlife residing on their traditional lands to be respected by colonial powers.