This 22 Year Old Urban Femme Farmer Is An Activist For Justice & Sovereignty Through Her School, Workshops and Farm Cooperative Based in Toronto

We were so exited to speak with Cheyenne Sundance who is a self taught farmer. Her food justice center, Sundance Harvest, is a year round urban farm located in Toronto, Ontario. Sundance Harvest strives to provide resources, knowledge and guidance to start your own food and land sovereignty movements, create your own urban farming practice and to eradicate institutionalized racism within the food system.

Check out this interview:

When and why did you start farming?

I started having a true relationship with earth when I was 18, and I'm 22 now. I went to Cuba when I was 18 and lived rural for a bit and had the chance to farm and within a community. I started Sundance Harvest a bit over a year ago and went into full year round operation (greenhouse and also multiple plots of land in the city) September of 2019. I started farming because I noticed how glaringly white urban agriculture and farming is, yet the people who are most affected by food insecurity in Canada are Black and Indigenous people. So that clearly didn't make any sense to me. Methods and solutions for creating equitable and resilient food systems are known by many Black and Indigenous people and folks who have experienced colonization as we have been growing food within community and in relation to the earth and it's beings for a long while. In present day, frameworks of food justice have been laid out verbally and in grassroots groups across North America by other Black and Indigenous peoples too. Yet we aren't given the power within non-profit structures (The amount of white folks, especially white women, who are Executive Directors at food "justice" non-profits is astounding) or even in agriculture to enforce policy and decisions for the betterment of our people and the land. I couldn't see that leadership and I wasn't given the privilege to hold that at a non-profit or even a farm that already is in existence when I tried, so I started Sundance Harvest. Which is a year round vegetable farm right in the city that prioritizes those who are most affected in the food system by offering a space that acts as an incubator, while also understanding that myself being able to sell my produce and make a living wage is fair, for young femme and LGBTQ farmers to build community and grow. Sundance Harvest by itself is a hyper-local producer of veg in Toronto and I've created a project offshoot called "Growing in the Margins" where I teach free employable skills related to urban ag and mentor many youth.

Your farm is based in Toronto, what’s the historical/ancestral history of that land?

Toronto, Ontario is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Many other Indigenous peoples live in Toronto as well do to forced displacement from colonization which is still ongoing. Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. What was the most challenging aspect of starting a far? Building a community and getting folks to see year round urban agriculture must be present for a city to have a resilient food system. I feel that gardening is different than farming. Often times when folks relate to me as a gardener I make sure to let them know, "No, I grow food exclusively, I'm an urban farmer" . I am very adamant about that last piece, because showing that there is representation of people who grow food year round in the city, gets folks to see that they can do it too. Getting people to see me, someone who is not at all conventionally seen as a food producer or farmer outside of migrant worker exploitation, as someone who runs a sustainable year round farm - has been incredibly hard. The piece about building community I've found is also hard, there are so few people that are also Black, Indigenous POC femmes that see year round urban agriculture of an interest to them. However, I'm trying my best to build a community through my regular programming of Growing in the Margins events.

Share some historical context/ideas/ancestral knowledge/ food justice that our community may not know with regards to agriculture and land sovereignty for Black and Brown Indigenous communities.

The concept of "For Us, By Us" really matters in terms of urban agriculture and farming in general. Land sovereignty as well as Food Justice work can only be equitable and only work for the communities of Black and Indigenous people if they are the ones in direct leadership and decision making roles. So this is something to keep in mind. If you find you cannot get that decision making power at your work or at another collective, especially one that doesn't at all reflect you but they reflect power and privilege? Start your own farm, land healing collective, garden etc. There is no true liberation without land and food. I shouldn’t have to be fighting for a just and resilient food system which is food justice, I shouldn’t have to be the one who is filling the void that white supremacy and colonialism caused. Those in power should.

This yea - you will be starting the Radical Roots Cooperative which is extremely exciting - what are some first steps that other communities of the diaspora can do to get started?

I would say if other communities would like to start cooperatively run urban agriculture plots and communities, I would recommend a few things: Making sure you aren't on city land (unless you are a lucky duck and you have a cool city that values urban agriculture- if not it may take a year to get approval), if you are looking for land reach out to food justice minded organizations or places. If you know a non-profit in your neighborhood isn't really doing enough work for the community, ask for a piece of 1,000 sqft-5,000 sqft land to get started. If they say no, then petition loud and proud for it and call them out. There is an art of calling in and out. And it's important to hold those, especially non-profits because they literally get grant funding to serve US, accountable if they are not doing the work they say the are or would like to. Then from that point of land, you really want to make sure you have a relatively small core group, no more than 5-8 people who all know the basics of growing food unless you'll have one person pulling all the weight. From that point, you get growing.

What would you say is your great accomplishment and what are you looking forward to in the near future?

Starting Sundance Harvest by myself and keeping it going despite the rarity of a year round farm in Toronto. Having the guts and courage to push forward and expand it. In the future I'm opening to vamp up my greenhouse producing efficiency in the winter by purchasing a whole grow light system for the fall and winter. And in a few years I will be moving rural in Canada to start an intentional community with some pals and Sundance Harvest will be coming with me. For now, I'm still growing food in Toronto.