By Our Spl Correspondent
SHILLONG: Slow Food is a global, grassroots organisation with over 100,000 supporters in 160 countries around the world who believe that good food is not fast food. They believe also in preserving their community and the environment.
Slow Food started as an idea that has gradually become a way of life for its supporters. It is also a platform where farmers, consumers, thinkers, young people, restaurant and rock cafe owners, cooks and chefs work together to defend their local food systems and their agricultural heritage against the destructive tide of unsustainable and unhealthy consumerism.
At the request of the Indigenous Peoples of Sweden (the Sami people) and supported by the Government of Sweden, IFAD and The Indigenous Partnership headed by Bah Phrang Roy, Slow Food organised their first Indigenous Terra Madre meeting in Jokkmokk, a small town of northern Sweden which also falls within the Artic Circle, earlier this month.
The event was a convergence of global indigenous food communities to exchange experiences and inspire each other to raise a collective voice on how traditional knowledge and sustainable use of natural resources could contribute to developing good, clean and fair food systems.
The president and founder of Slow Food International, Carlo Petrini had participated in the Mawphlang Food Festival organised by The Indigenous Partnership, Rome and the William Boys’ Home of the KJP Assembly in November 2010. One of the participants in the Food Festival was the Nongtraw village of the Khat-ar Shnong area of Sohra whose campaign to revive the cultivation of krai (a millet variety) caught the attention of the visitors to the Festival.
Seeing their interest, The Indigenous Partnership gave the community members of Nongtraw village some training in participatory video to help them to document their traditional practices and prepare for their campaign to revive krai as an important food security crop of the area.
The people of Nongtraw delegated two people to Jokkmokk to tell their story. Kong Bibiana Ranee and her son, Pius Ranee were selected by the community to represent them and to present the video they had prepared on Krai, shah krot (a herbal tea drink) and traditional honey collection in their area. Bibiana gave her presentation in Khasi which was translated by her own son.
Her confident and very original style won the admiration of most of the participants. There was a very strong appreciation that a local community woman was given an opportunity to present her community story at such a global conference and that Bibiana was given the necessary support to effectively tell her story with the help of a video that the community members had themselves prepared.
L Baite, Project Director of the NEC and IFAD funded NERCORMP also gave an interesting account of community action taken by a Self Help Group in Garo Hills to clean up a river polluted by mining and promote fishery activities. Samuel Jyrwa (organiser of the Mawphlang Food Festival) and Perry Marak, a project manager with the Meghalaya Rural Development Society Project (MRDS) gave a Khasi musical presentation where one of Sweden’s well known singing star also sang a few songs.
Slow Food has been expressing its concern with the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. The motto of Slow Food is good, clean and fair food – meaning good tasting, clean for the environment, and fair to the people who produce it.
Supported by The Christensen Fund of California, USA, various indigenous organisations of North America and Europe and the recently established Indigenous Partnership for Agro-biodiversity and Food Sovereignty (The Indigenous Partnership) headed by Phrang Roy, the former Assistant President of IFAD, Slow Food has also come to recognise that the tribal populations of the world, internationally called the indigenous peoples, have been meticulously accumulating their knowledge and skills in their diverse food and sustainable agriculture through generations of interaction with nature.
In the last two years, the presence of indigenous peoples within the Slow Food movement has become quite prominent. For most of the participants from the North East, the meeting was also a great eye opener. It also gave them a rare opportunity to visit the Artic Circle and to see the midnight sun.