Organization: Food As Healing
Location: Detroit, MI
In his words...
“I believe that food justice work is deeply spiritual and that food is a great medium for connecting food justice movements and healing together. I have witnessed first hand how deeply intergenerational trauma goes and how healing it was for me to reclaim embodied ancestral knowledge to address it. This shift from scarcity to abundance is critical for food justice.”
What gives him hope...
"I hope to share how reclaiming and practicing our ancestral food ways and subsistence practices can be healing. I also hope to learn how other fellows are already practicing food as healing within their own lives and communities to broaden my own learning. Additionally, I also hope to learn how my co-fellows and I can expand our collective capacity to love and heal our communities like Mama Charity Hicks (A Detroit water-justice warrior) did and continue her legacy."
Shane's Story:
Shane uses food as a medium for reclaiming ancestral knowledge and healing from intergenerational trauma. He works as a healer, youth worker, facilitator, and storyteller addressing the violent legacy colonialism continues to have on the food system and the health of Black, Brown, Indigenous and diasporic Asian communities. As a lifetime resident and non Black person of color in Detroit, a majority Black metropolis,
Shane views climate change and chronic diet-related diseases as the shared legacy of structural racism, anti-Blackness, western imperialism and colonialism. Making a strong case for indigenous land-based practices as the best way to heal the planet, as they sustain all life and connect us to the earth. His work is dedicated to his ancestors, his chosen and biological family, and those generations yet to come. Recently selected as an emerging national leader in the Grist 50, Shane co-founded the movement Food as Healing, teaches local youth how subsistence practices like fishing connects us to the seasons, and connects with the Filipinx diaspora over the traditional family dishes with the Detroit Filipino Supper Club using food as a mnemonic device to share personal stories.
