On today's episode of Around the Table, we are in conversation with members of Feasting for Change, an Indigenous-led project in Coast Salish territories in the area that is also colonially known as Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Feasting for Change, focused on community building, Indigenous resurgence, and decolonization through the revitalization of traditional knowledge about the healing power of foods, this intergenerational land-based project took place from 2007 to 2012 and held more than 51 feasts and events in the 9 South Island Coast Salish communities and a large urban community served by the Victorian Native Friendship Center. The voices that you will hear in this episode were recorded over 2 gatherings, with members of Feasting for Change in May and December of 2023. In May, the Around the Table research team myself, Cindy, along with my colleagues Fionna and Leslie, gathered with the following members of Feasting for Change:  W̱SÁNEĆ Elders Earl Claxton Jr. XEṮXÁṮEN, and Anna Spahan and Scia'new First Nation Elder Isabelle Charles, along Tina Tehano of the Scia'new First Nation, Raven Hartley, of the Rainy River First Nation, and collaborator Fiona Deveraux, a white settler of Irish ancestry. We gathered outdoors at TIX̱EṈ, a very important place for W̱SÁNEĆ people, on the traditional territory of the Tsawout First Nation. TIX̱EṈ is where we shared food, stories and laughter and learned about their innovative project and the importance of revitalizing traditional Coast Salish knowledge about food and feasting. In December 2023, some members of the group gathered again to record additional stories to share, and we bring these two recordings together in this important episode about Feasting for Change.

Participants:

Resources:

Journal Article on Feasting for Change

Feasting for Change Plant identification cards

WSÁNEĆ-English Online Dictionary

PEPAKEṈ HÁUTW̱ (Land-based education & ecosystem restoration on WSÁNEĆ homelands)

Information about TIX̱EṈ in the territory of the Tsawout First Nation

Indigenous Food Systems Website

Transcript available here.

SAGE Table is an initiative of SAGE, the largest and oldest organization in the United States dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ older people. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in New York City, SAGE is a national organization that offers supportive services and consumer resources to LGBTQ+ people and their caregivers. SAGE Table launched in 2017 launched in 2017 to fight isolation in the LGBTQ+ community through the power of intergenerational connections. SAGE Table events bring together people of all ages at hundreds of tables across the world to share a meal and conversation. The transformative relationships formed around a SAGE Table can alleviate social isolation and its consequences.

BIO

Sherrill Wayland, Senior Director of Special Initiatives and Partnerships, serves as a trusted thought partner to national initiatives team members and SAGE staff across the organization. They lead the National Resource Center on LGBTQ Aging, serve as SAGE lead for the Long-Term Care Equality Index (in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation) and work in close partnership with SAGECollab, SAGECare, and the Diverse Elders Coalition. Sherrill began work with SAGE at the local level in 2008, founding the SAGE Affiliate in St. Louis, MO (now Missourians Aging with Pride). Sherrill earned a Master of Social Work degree from the Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, and has over 25 years of professional experience in the fields of education, disability, and LGBTQ+ older adult advocacy.

RESOURCES

Transcript available here.

On this episode of Around the Table, my collaborator Fionna Chong and I are in conversation with Reverends Min-Goo Kang and Ha Na Park about their dinner projects – Friendship Kitchen, Taste of Home, and Belonging Dinners.

Ha Na Park started Friendship Kitchen in 2017 at The United Church in Meadowood in Winnipeg Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and the Homeland of the Red River Métis. The project supported newcomers to Canada and embraced a diversity of experiences – for example, two participants came to Canada through refugee sponsorship from persecution of sexual orientation and from the Syrian civil war. Friendship Kitchen built relationships of trust, friendship and community between newcomers and non-newcomers.

After Winnipeg, Ha Na and their partner Min-Goo moved to Victoria, the ancestral unceded territories of the Lekwungen and WSANEC peoples, the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSANEC nations, to join the ministry team at Broadview United. In 2023, Min-Goo started Taste of Home, an intercultural community-building program for newcomers who’ve made Canada their home in the last five years. Here participants share food and memories through cooking and eating together, and exchange stories about the cultural significance of the food.

In his role as Spiritual Care Provider in the Student Wellness Centre and Multifaith Centre at the University of Victoria, Min-Goo initiated another dinner program - Belonging Dinners where students cook and share a meal together, build connection and community. It provides a safe space for storytelling around the table in a holistic and embodied way that honours connections between body, mind and heart.

BIO

Min-Goo Kang has a strong sense of place, and likes to explore his surroundings. He believes that every place has its unique beauty. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in Korea in 2004 and was admitted to the United Church of Canada in 2010. He has been serving both in a Korean-speaking congregation as well as in English-speaking congregations in Canada over the last 18 years. He is currently working at Broad View United, in Victoria, BC as Intercultural Program Minister. He believes that becoming an intercultural church is deeply spiritual work. It begins with knowing who we are, where we came from, and where we belong. With deep spirituality, he integrates his Asian heritages such as Daoism and Buddhism into his theology and practice. Min-Goo is passionate about creating a space where people can feel safe enough to bring their authentic selves.

Ha Na Park (she /they) is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada, currently serving at Broad View United, Victoria, BC. Her family migrated from Korea in 2007, when her older son, Peace, was 7 months old. In that year of transition, Ha Na realized that she had become the moon, “Which lives by depending on another and shines by reflecting another’s light” while living as the shadow of her ordained husband of two years. Since then, Ha Na has strived to be the Sun again and keep that poetic image as her motivation. Her recent path has been leading her to continue to evolve through her various interests and passions. Ha Na has committed herself to deepening her understanding of intercultural ministry, decreasing racism, and questioning white privilege in her institution, and decolonizing herself, her work and her theology. She believes in friendship and mutuality as the antidote to racism, and seeks liberation from patriarchy and racism for women of colour. In addition, Ha Na embraces mysticism and spirituality to help build resistance to oppression.

RESOURCES

Transcript available here.

What Artists Bring to the Table was a community program of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, organized by social practice artist Regan Shrumm, that took place every Sunday from July to November 2019. Regan says, the “project examined the wide range of narratives that food offers us”, where “participants worked directly with an artist to cook a meal or learn a food-related skill, and then sat down to discuss how the workshop related to a bigger food topic, like food security, sustainability, and food colonization.”

BIO

Regan Shrumm is a queer, genderqueer, and disabled curator, educator, and artist, who has been living on and off of the traditional and un-ceded territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Nations. They are from Italian, Polish, German, Scottish, and English ancestry. They have previously worked for museums such as the Museum of Northwest Art, Two Rivers Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the National Museum of American History. Their practice focuses on questioning every system and aspect of society, as the arts allow us to understand, complicate, and contradict truths about human experiences. 

RESOURCES

Transcript available here.

In today’s episode of Around the Table, my collaborator Fionna Chong and I are in conversation with Nina Fernando, Executive Director of Shoulder to Shoulder. The Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign: Standing with American Muslims, Advancing American Ideals is a national multi-faith coalition of religious denominations and faith-based organizations who are committed to ending anti-Muslim hatred, discrimination, and violence in the United States of America. They organize the United States of Love Over Hate: A Ramadan Supper Series campaign, bringing Muslim and non-Muslim people together to share an Iftar meal the breaking of the fast, which is one of the most significant points in the day during Ramadan. During the COVID 19 pandemic, they facilitated the Welcome to My Table initiative where they paired households to virtually connect and share an Iftar meal. Note that this episode was recording in 2023.

BIO

Nina M. Fernando serves as Executive Director of the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign, a multi-faith coalition of religious denominations and faith-based organizations committed to countering and preventing anti-Muslim discrimination and violence in the United States by building a society where all are treated with dignity and respect. Nina holds a MA in "Interreligious and Cultural Studies" from Claremont School of Theology and a BA in "Social Change through Music and Religious Studies" from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands. She was named a OneBeat Fellow in 2018, one of “21 Faith Leaders To Watch in 2021" by the Center for American Progress, is an Institute for Social Policy & Understanding Educator, and a member of The Religion and Society Program at the Aspen Institute's Racial Justice and Religion Collective. Nina lives with her family in Southern California.

RESOURCES

Ramadan https://www.shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/ramadan-series

Guidebooks, mini-documentary and video series with discussion guides, https://www.shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/ramadanresources

For information on 2024 Iftar listings, check out: https://www.shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/-2024-interfaith-iftar-listing

Transcript available here.

In today’s episode of Around the Table, my collaborator Leslie Williams and I are in conversation with Jennifer Hawkins, a community health organizer and researcher who was part of a dinner dialogue project called New Matrix Meals. This was a partnership with Chilliwack’s Pacific Community Resources Society in 2017, that focused on reducing stigma about substance use through meal sharing in people’s homes. It was part of a series of dialogue projects led by the Centre for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.

BIO

Jennifer Hawkins loves to dig her hands and mind in spaces and places where research intersects with community development. In her current role as Senior Project Manager, Community-based Research at UBC's Centre for Advancing Health Outcomes, she works alongside multi-sectoral collaboratives forwarding transformative work, particularly on issues surrounding substance use. Jen is blessed to live in Tse'elxwéyeqw (Chilliwack, British Columbia), and whenever she can, she'll be outdoors with the family dog and her human family and friends.

RESOURCES

Link to New Matrix Meals article.

Transcript available here.

On today’s episode of Around the Table, I continue the conversation about The People’s Supper, with K Scarry, the director of Partnerships with The Dinner Party Labs, where we explore more about the complexities and transformative possibilities of dinner dialogues and the work The People’s Supper is doing to cultivate spaces of healing and connection.  K is the Director of Partnerships for The Dinner Party Labs. She works with communities to build trust and address rupture across lines of identity or ideological difference, spearheading extensive collaborations with the Mayor's Offices of New York City and Erie, PA, the United Methodist Church, and dozens of other civic and faith communities. When she's not at The Dinner Party Labs, she loves to build connection in her own neighborhood, hosting an open community meal in her home each week, and owning a creative vending machine company, where she vends locally made art as a way of elevating and supporting makers from her community. She writes at kescarry.substack.com. 

We acknowledge and respect the lək̓wəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory the University of Victoria stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

Around the Table is grateful for the support of a Faculty Fellowship Award from Centre for Studies in Religion and Society and an Internal Research Grant Award from the University of Victoria. We also appreciate the generous in-kind contributions from community partners, Vancouver Community College and Sharing Farm Society. Podcast editing is provided by New Leonard Media. Music is by Oleksii Kaplunskyi.

On today’s episode of Around the Table, I’m in conversation with Lennon Flowers, Executive Director of The Dinner Party Labs, and Reverend Jennifer Bailey, Executive Director of the Faith Matters Network, where we talk about two innovative dinner dialogue initiatives that have deeply inspired me: The Dinner Party and The People’s Supper.

This is part one of a two part episode, and next time, in part 2, we’ll be hearing more about The People’s Supper from K Scarry, the Director of Partnerships for The Dinner Party Labs.

The Dinner Party Labs takes the experiences and subjects that are hardest to talk about, and uses them as the starting point to help people make connections, build trust, and form relationships that matter. Its flagship program, The Dinner Party is a platform where 20-, 30-, and early-40-somethings who've experienced a major loss can connect to one another. They train a network of peer hosts, connecting them to 12-15 folks nearby who share a similar age and loss experience.

The People’s Supper began as a collaborative project led by Lennon and Jennifer, in the wake of the 2016 US election, to cultivate connection and community among people of different identities and perspectives through shared meals and dialogue. The People’s Supper creates tools, resources, and storytelling content that folks can apply and adapt to their own communities, and offers trainings, one-on-one coaching and partnerships.

Lennon Flowers is co-founder & Executive Director of The Dinner Party Labs She is an Ashoka Fellow, whose work has been featured on OnBeing with Krista Tippett, NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN, CBS This Morning, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications.

Reverend Jen Bailey is an ordained minister, public theologian, and a leader in the multi-faith movement for justice. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Faith Matters Network, Co-Founder of the People's Supper, and author of To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss and Radical Hope (Chalice Press 2021).  Rev. Bailey is ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. You can follow her on Instagram @revjenbailey.

Resources:

The People's Supper

Dinner Party Labs

The Dinner Party

Pathways to Repair

Guidebooks:

The People's Supper Guidebooks

A guidebook for civic leaders

Episode Transcript

Around the Table is grateful for the support of a Faculty Fellowship Award from Centre for Studies in Religion and Society and an Internal Research Grant Award from the University of Victoria. We also appreciate the generous in-kind contributions from community partners, Vancouver Community College and Sharing Farm Society. Podcast editing is provided by New Leonard Media. Music is by Oleksii Kaplunskyi.

Episode transcript available here.

Gathering for a meal, formally or informally, is a ritual that is a central part of human cultures. The food feeds our bodies. The gathering can feed something else—our sense of understanding one another, our sense of our shared humanity, our sense of community.

What is the power of shared meals, dialogue, and storytelling, to build community, deepen understanding, and create healing across differences of race, gender, sexuality, culture, age and faith? The shared meal as sacred space and site for healing is a repeated theme across dinner dialogues. This project centers around interviews with leaders from different dinner dialogue projects, edited and presented as a podcast series.

This pilot project is a collaborative, community-engaged research study led by Dr. Cindy Holmes (University of Victoria) in partnership with Fionna Chong (Vancouver Community College) and Leslie Williams (Sharing Farm Society). Our project builds on our past and existing relationships with Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer (2SLGBTQ) communities, Indigenous, newcomer and refugee communities, Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, farmers, and food producers.

We are critically examining the socio-cultural and spiritual impact these intentional dinner dialogues have in their communities. The heart of the project consists of interviews with community leaders from across Turtle Island (North America) structured as a podcast series. We are exploring how organizers understand 1) the relationship between food sharing, dialogue, spirituality and social justice, and 2) the impact the dinner dialogues have on individual, community and spiritual wellbeing.

We acknowledge and respect the lək̓wəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory the University of Victoria stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

Around the Table is grateful for the support of a Faculty Fellowship Award from

Join us as we release a limited series of episodes every two weeks in 2024.