Indigenous Food Sovereignty
Co-Designing Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the Tsawwassen Living Lab
By transforming a greenhouse into a community-governed climate-resilience living laboratory, this co-creation project is advancing Indigenous-led, multi-site food sovereignty research.
This project has received funding from SFU's Climate Innovation 2026 Amplification Grant.
A novel design-for-sovereignty framework
The project moves beyond conventional “smart greenhouse” research, which typically begins with sensors, artificial intelligence or yield optimization. It begins instead with food sovereignty: who defines food priorities, governs infrastructure and data, maintains and repairs the system, receives its benefits, and retains decision-making authority as conditions change.
Its novel design-for-sovereignty framework integrates four elements rarely addressed together:
- Indigenous governance, knowledge authority and data sovereignty;
- low-carbon, climate-resilient greenhouse engineering;
- locally repairable, vendor-independent agritech with transparent operation and safe manual fallback; and
- viable community operations, training and youth pathways.
The project will draw on SFU’s world-leading expertise in developing systems that can understand plant needs and support more responsive water/nutrient management. Two co-design workshops will align community food and cultural priorities with engineering options, automation boundaries, operating models, training pathways and scaling strategy. Through SFU's Global Institute for Agritech, the project will convene local partners, B.C. universities and prospective national collaborators, clarify roles, secure letters of commitment and identify demonstration sites.
Co-designed in Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN) community-owned greenhouse, rather than in a university laboratory alone, will enable real-world evaluation under heat, drought, flooding, smoke, power interruption, communications failure and supply chain disruption.
Project team and community partners
- Woo Soo Kim, SFU School of Mechatronic Systems
Engineering - Tammara Soma, SFU School of Resource and Environmental
Management - Nikki Lorenz, Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN)
Potential outcomes
Success will be measured through TFN-defined food, cultural, health, ecological and economic outcomes (the WEFE nexus), not yield alone. By combining a world-first technological foundation with Indigenous knowledge, governance, community-designed and controlled infrastructure and climate-resilient engineering, the work could establish a world-leading model for sovereign controlled-environment agriculture and a transferable framework that respects the authority and distinct context of each participating partner.
- Socially, the research program could increase reliable access to locally selected foods; support community programs and intergenerational participation housed in the future SFU Frontier Hub for Agritech Research and Methodology (SFU-FARM) and create training pathways for youth, greenhouse operators and technical staff.
- Culturally, Indigenous communities would determine which foods, practices, knowledge and community benefits are appropriate, while retaining authority over research design, processes, data and public communication. This strengthens self-determination and traditional food resurgence, rather than treating the community as a technology demonstration site.
- Ecologically, the living lab would test methods to reduce greenhouse energy demand, water use, nutrient losses, waste and greenhouse-gas emissions while improving resilience to heat, drought, flooding and service interruptions. Evidence would compare passive design, efficient controls, circular water and nutrient strategies, and locally maintainable systems across place-based operational scenarios.
- Economically, the program would create local employment, skills, procurement and food-distribution opportunities while reducing dependence on fragile supply chains and costly proprietary maintenance. Research on operating models, life-cycle costs and governance would help Indigenous communities and governing bodies decide which pathways are financially sustainable.
The expected breakthrough is not a single device, but an integrated and replicable approach in which community authority, climate performance, technical reliability and economic viability are designed together. The program could support a network of locally adapted living labs while ensuring that regional and inter-jurisdictional scaling occurs through consent, reciprocity and community ownership.