REGINA - Those involved with REACH (Regina Education and Action on Community Hunger) were busy packing food baskets this week in honour of Indigenous traditions.
They are sending out a special Holiday Basket this week in honour of National Indigenous People’s Day happening June 21. The basket was created in partnership with the Saskatchewan Indian Insitute of Technology.
The packing took place Thursday morning at their Osler Street location, where volunteers packed several box containers full of food items that reflect the Indigenous food culture.
According to a news release, the items included wild rice and mushrooms, Saskatoon berry bison pemmican, bannock mix, herbal Labrador tea, Saskatoon berry spread, as well as squash, carrots, blueberries, corn and green onions.
Local Saskatchewan-based suppliers were involved. According to a news release, Boreal Heartland supplied Labrador Tea, Canadian Prairie Bison provided traditional-style saskatoon berry bison pemmican, Northern Lights Food supplied wild rice from Canadian waters, and Over the Hill Orchard & Winery provided Saskatoon berry spread.
This is the second Holiday Basket they have done this year, after creating an Eid al-Fitr box to celebrate the end of Ramadan. REACH also regularly pack items every Wednesday for their family basket and Good Food Box programs.
Desiree Gibson, community manager at REACH, says their organization “deals with food security through a lot of different programs that provide healthy and affordable food to everybody in Regina.”
At REACH, Gibson said every week they “sell boxes of fresh produce that people can purchase and we pack them and send them to different pickup sites that people can pick up from.”
She said for the National Indigenous People’s Day baskets, they sold 87 of those and they will be delivered through Cosmopolitan Learning Centre to different pickup sites.
