ABSTRACT
Indigenous Peoples who have maintained residence within their traditional territories have a vast knowledge reservoir of the function of biodiversity used for food and health within their culture. Species natural to the local environment, as well as those introduced over time from elsewhere, are present in current agriculture, as are wild species harvested locally. These local species are used today in combination with other foods (purchased in markets or traded from others) to compose the diets of families. Indigenous Peoples often find it important to characterize their local foods and record them for posterity; this can be done with interviews to understand the extent of species use and where and how species are grown, harvested, preserved, prepared, and served. In creating a food list such as this, species and variety/cultivar identifications can be accomplished with the aid of photographs or herbarium samples. Following this, laboratory analyses for nutrients or other health properties can provide unique and important information for building local education activities. Unique species/varieties/cultivars useful in agriculture can be identified, and foods useful in human nutrition rediscovered. There are many threats to the integrity of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems today, and the health of Indigenous Peoples would benefit from greater protection of their lands and resources, and use of their own local knowledge and foods. Efforts to improve health with local resources of Indigenous Peoples have been studied in several places and are reviewed in this chapter.
