1:00-2:30PM, SALON 2

Working with Our Ancestral Foods as Resistance

BACKGROUND

Elle Mari

Elle Mari is the Director of Urban Food Equity at UC San Diego Center for Community Health. She develops and leads projects grounded in a community asset-based framework to promote food justice and health equity. Elle has a Master’s of Science degree in Food Systems and Society, a program of study emphasizing social justice strategies to improve our food system. She has over 15 years of experience working in the public sector co-building equity strategies with underserved communities. Elle has supported neighborhoods across San Diego County since 2014, focusing her efforts with urban farms, small grocery stores, food pantries, residents, and students to improve food access. Elle’s interest in urban agriculture was sparked by memories of watching her mother, an immigrant from rural Croatia, grow food in their small yard and share vegetables with neighbors in Chicago.

Engage with the stories of Cacao and Huitlacoche, plant relatives that have provided healthy food and medicine to ecosystems for generations. Join Amana Ixim of Ama Cacao and Mario Ceballos of POC Fungi Community for a sensory exploration of these ancestral foods through film, sound, dialogue, and a tasting.

Practicing solidarity and recognizing interdependence among humans and with other species is a matter of survival—and yet, humans live on bordered lands. The reconnection we need now is a kind that fungi and other ancestral plant relatives are uniquely equipped to teach us.

Amana and Mario have prepared a special treat to offer attendees a chance to taste and experience the foods that keep them connected to their homelands, as well as offer healing benefits to their communities. These provide a life force that powers their resistance to a world of disconnection and monoculture—and guides them home, toward a vision of reciprocity and abundant diversity.

Voices