This week, Minister MacAuley, travelled to Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, to meet with key agri-food stakeholders and U.S. officials, with the goal of strengthening Canada’s relationships in the U.S. Midwest and advancing shared priorities. Among the many organizations he met with was the North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) program and their Indigenous Food Lab.
The Indigenous Food Lab offers high-quality Indigenous foods and products to our community. We work to broaden access to Native-made goods and allow people to experience contemporary Indigenous offerings while empowering entrepreneurs to expand their markets.
Canada is the top agriculture and agri-food export market for Minnesota, and Iowa’s second biggest market. In 2023, bilateral agricultural trade between Canada and the two U.S. states were $3.6 billion (CAD) and $3 billion (CAD), respectively.
“Each and every day, farmers right across North America are working hard to feed their communities, their country, and the entire world,” said Minister MacAulay. “After spending the last few days in Iowa and Minnesota, I’ve seen just how strong our partnership with the United States really is, and it’s vitally important that we continue to work together, as nations and as dear friends, to strengthen our supply chains, address food security challenges, and put more money in the pockets of producers on both sides of the border.”
Last week, students and researchers from Canada and the US presented during the 2024 Arctic Congress in Bodø, Norway. We hope to connect with NATIFS next semester and learn more about the incredible work they are doing. We’ve been exploring concepts around living labs, food labs and entrepreneurship incubators for a few years now, and the work NATIFS has been doing is a model we all should be looking at.
Our program, supported by the Creative Entrepreneurship and Master of Arts in Creative Leadership programs at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design have been exploring how different programs work across our regions. NATIFS and their highly-successful Indigenous Food Lab are one of the model programs we have been looking at for our community-based, participatory food sector entrepreneurship and organizational capacity building projects. Northern Canadian youth have been collaborating with MCAD since 2019 and there’s great interest, particularly from the youth, in enhancing these cross-border Canada-United States activities.
About our summer programming
Youth, Arts and Media Team summer activities are supported with funding and support from a number of partners and collaborators, including: Global Dignity Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the University of Minnesota Duluth, Manitoba Agriculture and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership., University of the Arctic Thematic Network on Local Scale Planning, Climate Change and Resilience and the University of Victoria. We also thank the OpenAI Researcher Access Program, Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada and the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Skills Program. Thank you for supporting the Youth, Arts and Media Team.