Desert Food challenges the notion that the best way to protect a thriving natural ecosystem is leave those communities alone, with as little human intervention as possible. The project recognizes the network of reciprocity between humans and landscape and humans and other beings, particularly present in indigenous communities, and proposes the rethinking of conservation as the protection of both biological and cultural diversity.

 

Within this scheme, food operates as the main network of reciprocity between humans and the landscape. Food sovereignty is the collective goal of the proposed Internationally Protected Area. This Protected Area crosses political boundaries to encompass the traditional territory of the Okanagan Nation. Thus, it questions political boundaries that were superimposed on pre-colonial patterns of settlement dictated by food. It recognizes the cultures developed over millennia that harvested and cultivated these landscapes.