According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. It can be caused by poverty, unemployment, low income, a lack of affordable housing, chronic health conditions, lack of access to healthcare, and/or systemic racism and racial discrimination. Implications of food insecurity are that at least one person in a food insecure household has high blood pressure or diabetes and that the coping strategies such as receiving help from friends or watering down food or drinks alongside the stress of food insecurities lead to said health issues. (What is Food Insecurity by Feeding America) With that being said, Indigenous people suffer from the highest rates of food insecurity due to systemic racism. It was revealed in a study in Northern California/Southern Oregon prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that 92% of Indigineous households don’t have access to healthy nor culturally appropriate food. In Canada, the percentages vary vastly throughout different tribes and cities. Forty-eight percent of First Nation households struggle to put enough food on the table and families with children are more likely to struggle. In Alberta, sixty percent of Indigenous families are food insecure as well, that number being about seven times higher than Canada’s average food insecurity rate which is 8.4%. The food insecurity that Indigenous people face in Canada is a lot more easier to find than in America, Shina Novalinga sharing a video of “‘insanely expensive costs’ for groceries in some Indigenous communities, like $11.19 for a jar of peanut butter, $14.39 for strawberries, and $28.19 for a bag of grapes” (Stated in Dominique Stewart’s 2021 Article “End Food Insecurity” (https://the-ard.com/2021/11/26/food-insecurity-in-indigenous-communities-grows-with-rising-f ood-costs/). To remind you, the cost of peanut butter is about $2.70, strawberries about $2.74, and grapes being at most six dollars. Another person by the name of Jericho Anderson shared that in Kasabonika Lake First Nation in Ontario, Canada, water is $34 and soda is $22. Anyone else realizing that the healthy alternatives are relatively higher in price? Now, whilst America’s systematic racism/discrimination against Indigenous people is not as easy to find as Canada’s, that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Since 1492, there was always a silent genocide of Indigenous people that we hid underneath false stories like the first Thanksgiving. The only permanent way to end food insecurity amongst both countries is to end the systemic limitations put on Indigenous people by both the American and Canadian government. However, that can take a while as we’ve been fighting for equal rights for all for centuries and still haven’t reached the goal. In the meantime, we can hold food drives to help raise food for food insecure households while pushing for the right bills to be passed so that nobody has to worry about how they’re going to feed themselves and/or their family. We can hold soup kitchens filled with healthy and culturally appropriate meals so that Indigenous people can still practice their culture, something that gets difficult when culturally appropriate foods aren’t available. We might not be able to fix centuries of fib-telling and misconceptions, but we can fix the now in hopes that the future would look so much brighter.