CINE responds to Indigenous Peoples’ concerns and priorities about their traditional food systems and environment through education, and initiatives conducted in partnership with Indigenous communities and organizations. Through multidisciplinary knowledge co-production, sharing, reciprocal learning, and capacity-building, CINE seeks to promote well-being, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health, Indigenous self-determination, culture, and language.
Guiding Principles
- Document, promote and respect Indigenous knowledge of nutrition and environment
- Respond to concerns of Indigenous Peoples on their food, food use and environment
- Develop collaboration between communities and researchers for undertaking research in nutrition and ecosystems
- Encourage ongoing communication with and recognition of Elders to enhance the relevance of CINE's work
- Implement ethics guidelines for research, including those related to intellectual property rights as adopted by University Councils and the CINE Board
- Provide training to students and youth of local communities
- Communicate research findings widely, both nationally and internationally, and contribute to policy developments in areas related to the CINE mission
Knowledge Focus
- Work towards quantifying nutrients, non-nutrients and contaminant levels in traditional food systems
- Contribute to the understanding of the many health benefits associated with consumption of traditional food resources, as well as health risk from contaminants
- Contribute to the development of techniques to identify trends in deterioration in quality of traditional food systems, and to suggest possible remedial actions
- Contribute to the development of the necessary tools, methods and protocols for nutritional and related environmental studies
- Undertake collaborative international research and exchange among Indigenous Peoples on CINE issues
CINE @McGill
CINE's Role within McGill University is to:
- Serve as a focus for information exchange and cooperation among interdisciplinary McGill staff and communities of Indigenous Peoples to address issues of food systems, nutrition and environment in research and education
- Contribute to university education at pre- and post-graduate levels in disciplines related to studies in nutrition and the environment
- Ensure that faculty and staff are full and contributing members within the McGill community, and to scholarly communities to which they belong
