By Raymond Johnson-Brown
Growing up, I often felt like a bit of an anomaly. My Afro-Mi’kmaq mother and European father shaped one part of my identity, and my first-generation Jamaican foster family, the Browns, added layers of complexity. Navigating these diverse cultural spaces made me realize the importance of embracing my Two-Spirit gifts as a bridge between worldviews, with a goal of contributing to Indigenous resurgence on these lands. After years of working in various systems, I recognized it was time to shift focus towards a new space for growth and change.
At Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC), the Groundwork for Change initiative began as a way to establish a foundation for growth built on relationships with Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations across the country. As a non-Indigenous organization, CFCC started with a period of listening—engaging the community for guidance and feedback. In 2024, we launched the revitalized Indigenous Network at CFCC, where over 225 organizations come together and engage in four distinct pathways that support each community from where they stand, helping them show up meaningfully and on their own terms.
In an Indigenous Studies class at McGill, I came across the term “Indigenist,” a word that immediately resonated. Similar to how feminism advocates for collective empowerment, Indigenism is about advancing Indigenous voices, recognizing that healing fractures in our world requires a joint effort that operates beyond restrictive silos. Groundwork for Change was designed to reflect this, and to help us all imagine solutions that honour traditional knowledge and respect interconnected ways of being.
As we launched into this work, one theme identified by our network was the need to support traditional knowledge systems and access them freely. The Groundwork for Change framework addresses this through three foundational pillars: embracing communities for change, revitalizing traditional knowledge systems, and nurturing sustainable life cycles. By embedding these pillars throughout our work, CFCC moves away from prescribing solutions and, instead, co-creates sustainable frameworks with communities, ensuring they address needs from within.
An Indigenous Network member and registered dietitian, Teri Morrow, invited us to document this framework at work in Six Nations. So often, Western perspectives search for binary solutions, yet one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work for Indigenous communities—or any community. True change happens when we step beyond transactional models and develop initiatives that honour and revitalize traditional ways of knowing. This shift allows us to imagine food as more than sustenance; it becomes a symbol of collective health, intersecting with the myriad institutions that shape our society.
Through the Groundwork for Change documentary and zine, we hope to offer tools that spark essential conversations and encourage a shift in perspective—toward a future centered on reciprocity, respect, and collective wellness.
To learn more about the Indigenous Network and explore these resources, visit: CFCC Indigenous Network.
Raymond Johnson-Brown is Indigenous Network Manager at Community Food Centres Canada.
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