Planting Seeds, Inspiring Minds at Nawalakw

The boy had never used a rake, planted a seed or combed through mushy, brown dirt with his hands to pick a carrot when he pulled up to the plot of land on a hot July day.

But none of that mattered to Verna Ambers, who told the 15-year-old that he was going to help her plant and grow 20 apple trees on the nearly three-acre garden run by Nawalakw on the ʼNa̱mǥis First Nation traditional territory.

“We’re going to work side by side,” said Ambers, a ʼNa̱mǥis member and food security manager at the Nawalakw community garden.

Nawalakw is a charitable organization that runs language and cultural programming within Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw territory in Alert Bay and Hada, located off the eastern coast of Vancouver Island. Nawalakw means “supernatural” in Kwak̓wala.

Ambers, 71, walked the boy over to the orchard, carrying a shovel and a pot that held a small apple tree. She told him to dig a hole in the ground. The boy stared back at her.

“I’ve never used a shovel before,” he said.

“Ah, you’re working with me all day today,” Ambers said. “And he did. After we put that first apple tree in the ground, he wanted to be the guy that was digging all the holes for the apple tree. He took great pride in doing that.”

It was far from the first time that the Nawalakw community garden has given a young person a green thumb, Ambers says. That same year, a high school student helped Ambers deliver soil and make garden boxes for residents interested in starting their own garden.

“He said he’s going to graduate high school, go to university and do a program in horticulture,” she explained. “He just came back here and did his six-week practicum in the garden.”

Momentum to form the Nawalakw community garden began at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As travel restrictions took hold across the province in March 2020, it was difficult for local communities to secure fresh fruit and vegetables.

Delivery trucks were not coming to the island, so some organizers at Nawalakw had an idea: build garden boxes so people could grow their own food.

“We had a really hard time getting fresh vegetables and fruit here into the community,” Ambers said. “The Nawalakw Healing Society came up with a plan to build cedar boxes, four by eight, and place them strategically through the community for anybody who wanted them.”

Many Indigenous communities, who often live in remote pockets of the country, face similar struggles and high costs to access fresh fruit and vegetables.

Indigenous families are more likely to be food insecure than non-Indigenous families. According to data published by the federal government last year, 31 per cent of Indigenous families above the poverty line were food insecure — more than double the rate for non-Indigenous families.

The garden box idea temporarily allowed the community to address its growing food insecurity problem.

But by the end of 2021, they went one step further, agreeing to a lease with the ʼNa̱mǥis First Nation to convert an unused plot of land beside a cemetery into a community garden. The concept no longer placed a burden on residents to grow their own food and reduced the reliance on transportation companies to bring fresh food in.

“It was all overgrown with alders and all kinds of things,” Ambers said. “It had to totally be cared [for]. We had people doing that by hand, cutting down everything, digging out the rocks.”

The community garden, which sits on 2.5 acres of land, now produces thousands of pounds of potatoes and roughly 100 pounds of carrots per year, Ambers said. There are also two greenhouses and nearly 200 different types of fruit trees and vegetable bushes on site.

The Nawalakw Community Farm was recognized with the Food Sovereignty Award last month at the 2024 Land Awards, an event held biannually by the Real Estate Foundation of BC to honour projects that create more sustainable, inclusive and resilient communities.

“It was humbling,” said Ambers, adding that the Real Estate Foundation of BC has provided funding in recent years that has allowed the nation to hire over 35 seasonal employees and retain staff like Edwina Rufus, the food security co-ordinator at the Nawalakw Healing Society.

“I can help train Edwina to one day take over the farm, which is the intention here. Another young fella... he’s about 29, this was his first job.”

Before she calls it quits at the community garden, Ambers is interested in bringing more young people into the garden.

The garden is her classroom — a space where garden boxes are the blackboards and shovels are like pencils. It’s a place where Ambers teaches local Indigenous youth, and allies that come up to visit the island, how to plant vegetables and fruit. And the importance of respecting the land.

It’s a concept that also resonates with Rufus, who previously worked as a youth worker within the nation and views the garden as a place that can provide structure for children and teenagers.

“We have to-do lists, we describe what we do, ‘This is what you can do today, you, and you, then you guys can do this,’” she said. “I think it’s a confidence builder.”

Down the road, Ambers thinks Nawalakw may look at expanding the garden in ʼNa̱mǥis territory on Vancouver Island. In the meantime, though, she said that the community garden at Alert Bay is mindful of becoming even more self-sufficient and less reliant on grants or other investments.

This year, the nation sold starter plants for the first time and is planning to sell vegetables and fruit on site three days per week.

But no matter how far the garden strays from its original home on Alert Bay, Ambers is hopeful that it will continue to instil a sense of pride for locals and youth, particularly, who may plant its seeds years down the road.

“When we told the youth that work here we won the Land Award, they were all so happy,” Ambers said. “It’s unreal all the unity.”