At DOXA, Tea Creek explores a farmer's push for Indigenous food sovereignty
Documentary film shares the story of Jacob Beaton, who is training Indigenous people to grow their own food
Jacob Beaton.
DOXA Documentary Film Festival presents Tea Creek on May 4 at 4:15 pm at VIFF Centre-Vancity Theatre and on May 9 at 8:45 pm at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
IN 2018, TSIMSHIAN member Jacob Beaton and his family bought the 140-acre Tea Creek Farm on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Gitxsan people in what is now known as northern British Columbia. In the time since, he has transformed it into a training centre for Indigenous food sovereignty, spearheading a movement geared toward restoring the rights of Indigenous people to produce, distribute, and consume their own food.
Beaton’s journey is now the subject of a documentary that is having its world premiere at the 2024 DOXA Festival. Tea Creek director Ryan Dickie, a descendent of the Dene people of northern Canada, says he can relate to many of the issues affecting Indigenous people in Gitxsan territory.
“As an Indigenous person who grew up in community, living in northern British Columbia, it was a story that really spoke to me, because I think a lot of our communities are feeling a sense of urgency around food insecurity and finding ways to become more sovereign as community and Nations,” Dickie says in a Zoom interview from his home base in present-day Fort Nelson. “You know, we live it and we see it every day here in the northeast with our traditional food network being affected by things like climate change and industrial development—some of the same factors that were affecting the food network in Gitxsan territory where we filmed the story. I definitely share a lot of the lived experience of the characters and the people in the film.
“I think right now we all feel the effects of the uncertainty around the globe, whether it's inflation or things like the pandemic that really brought to light some of the vulnerability in our food network,” continues Dickie, who is also a photographer and cultural mentor. “But also, I think there's a really great opportunity for Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people to have a better understanding of our history when it comes to food production and agriculture and stewarding the land to produce food.”
Director Ryan Dickie.
Tea Creek, which was produced by Ben Cox and is part of CBC’s Absolutely Canadian documentary series, follows the farm’s growing season. Tomatoes, Swiss chard, onions, potatoes, daikon, melons, banana squash, patty pan squash, zucchini, turnips, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, and corn are just some of the foods the farm produces. Beaton points out that prior to colonization, every single Nation was food sovereign, creating an abundance of food. Indigenous people not only harvested the three sisters—corn, beans, and squash—they also grew foods like potatoes and wild rice. They were active farmers, but Indian residential schools put an end to their practices. Intergenerational trauma continues to have a detrimental impact on the ability of Indigenous peoples to be self-sufficient food-wise.
“It was always believed that Indigenous people were hunter-gatherers, and that was basically our lifestyle,” Dickie says, “but when you really dig back and discover the way we stewarded the land to produce food, you really realize that we had an agricultural past before colonization, especially in Gitxsan territory. They've got a deep history around agriculture, and I think that was really compelling and really provided me with hope that we can reclaim some of those aspects of our history that were nearly lost through a lot of the changes that happened over the last century.
“We’re at a place in Indigenous communities where it's hard to find hope sometimes,” Dickie adds, “especially right now with a lot of the crises we face around illicit drugs and food insecurity. And so this story, I really hope, brings a sense of hope for the future that, given the right opportunity, there can be changes for the better that really have an impact for our future.”
Tea Creek Farm, which produces between 20,000 and 25,000 pounds of food annually, aims to restore what was already here, to create resilient Indigenous communities and economies centred on culturally safe land-based programs and abundant local food.
Tea Creek Farm worker Justice Moore.
Accessing funding for the program is a constant challenge. As the film relays, Tea Creek Farm is more than an agricultural venture; it is a healing place. In one moving scene, Beaton shares how he remembers being hungry in his youth. Indigenous communities are more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity and poverty than non-Indigenous people, Beaton says. One of the workers, Justice Moore, shares in the film that if it weren’t for Tea Creek, he wouldn’t be here. The suicide rate among Indigenous youth aged 15 to 24 is five times higher than that in the non-Indigenous population, Beaton notes.
Beaton and his wife, Jessica Ouellett, were selected by the United Nations as Canada’s Food Heroes in 2022. The same year, they also won a B.C. Land Award for the best use of food lands. In addition to teaching trainees practical skills, like how to grow produce and use farm equipment, the Tea Creek program also helps build self-confidence and pride.
“There’s an urgency in this country to move from trauma, suffering, and marginalization to healing and abundance,” Beaton says in the film. “Part of this story for me is that we need to be able to talk about both sides of this reality. We have this horrible, painful, exhausting, and sometimes hopeless situation—then we also have this opportunity and this hope.”
Dickie says that positive changes are needed now more than ever, particularly in light of the climate crisis.
“We’re heading into a really dire situation, I think, this summer in the north and across western Canada when it comes to the climate; you're seeing a lot of predictions of another year of drought. And particularly for us in the North, last summer was unlike anything I had ever seen or a lot of our elders had ever seen around the wildfire situation, with highway closures and all of that.
“We do touch on climate a little bit in the film, but I think there's a sense of urgency for people like myself who live in the north, and people like Jacob who are food producers,” he goes on. “And you look at the forecast across western Canada for food producers, and it's not good because of the drought. And I really hope that this film can provide a sense of urgency for supporting our food producers and finding grassroots solutions to some of these issues around food production.
“I’ve just come to admire Jacob and his ability to adapt and overcome challenges and to continue to drive forward towards his vision,” he says, “and I think that's a really inspirational thing.”
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