Now what do we do with these community cookbooks?

Telling stories of food injustices and insecurities…

Keep in mind when planning your community cookbook — Who does this community cookbook collection or workshop benefit? When seeking community participation in counter-archiving, we must understand that it is important to form a reciprocal relationship where we are also giving back to the people who have helped us in the development of our project. Especially considering marginalized communities, some members may have a more vulnerable or traumatic experience with food, which they may or may not wish to share. Hence, trauma-informed practice, is necessary, as it seeks to provide “a framework of safety and offers a model of collaboration and empowerment that recognizes and centres the expertise of the individuals and communities documented within the records held in archives.” As we navigate imagined, contested borders of. food, we realize that we all hold different positionalities when it comes to the act of tasting and consuming.

As Dusting for Fingerprints: Introducing Feminist Standpoint Appraisal (2019) states, historical archival theory starts “from the perspectives of the colonized abroad and the oppressed in the metropole,” which reinforces “Jenkinson’s moral defense of “Truth” [that] evades responsibility for archival complicity in deeply troubling systems of domination.” Hence, archival records are necessary to have as tangible evidence of our struggles and survival. However, it is undeniable that there are many historical gaps created from an erasure of Black, Indigenous, and racialized knowledge, culture, and stories of pain and resilience.

First Nations Principles of OCAP® (Ownership, Control, Access, Permission) asserts that “in the past, Aboriginal people have not been consulted about what information should be collected, who should gather that information, who should maintain it, and who should have access to it.” The community cookbooks that we aim to create will further adopt these principles, as it is immensely important to consider our relationship to Indigenous peoples, and their land, which we use to harvest and cook our meals.

Please note that the following modules in this section will primarily give tribute to culinary stories from Palestinian and Black diasporas whom have experienced intergenerations of trauma, through using reference from the Sufra Archive أرشيف سفرة, internet posts, Feast Afrique, and The Jemima Code.