Recap: Ntamtqen Community Garden Work Party
As part of our Community Foundation’s Community Prosperity Fund project, Land to Table is continuing to build the cross-regional network, and bring together food champions to learn and share food knowledge and experiences, strengthen relationships across our food system, and support local Indigenous food sovereignty and food security projects.
On May 23 and 24, 2025, Land to Table coordinated a networking and work party with the Ntamtqen Community Garden & Food Hub located on 7.5 acres of Smelqmix (Similkameen) community land. The project is driven by Dixon Terbasket’s vision and experience farming the land, supported by a dedicated Ntamtqen team of staff and volunteers, and hosted by the Lower Similkameen Indian Band (LSIB). The purpose of the space is to promote food security and Indigenous Food Sovereignty, two initiatives central to Land to Table’s work.
Following the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Workshop hosted in Revelstoke in the fall of 2024, L2T asked participants how they wanted to continue connecting and learning. The group was clear in that they wanted to have opportunities to visit each other’s projects and both learn from the work happening on the ground and to lend a hand. With the Ntamtqen project gaining momentum and growing in size, a visit to the Samilkameen felt like a logical next step.
On a beautiful warm Friday in May, folks gathered from across the Interior to meet each other for the first time, to continue building relationships, and to learn all about the work happening at the Ntamtqen Community Garden. L2T Network partners and representatives working for Revelstoke’s Local Food Initiative and Food Commons project, Rise Up Indigenous Wellness, Shuswap Food Action Society, Interior Health, Unify Partners, Akisqnuk First Nation, United Way British Columbia, and Strawberries and Sweetgrass Indigenous Food Systems, arrived for two days of connection and working on the land. The Friday afternoon was spent touring the site and hearing the vision for the project, asking questions and sharing resources and inspiration. We set up camp in Dixon’s front yard before coming together to enjoy a delicious dinner of local and traditional foods, including big horn sheep, salmon, and potato mash, cooked with love by Debra Crow. The next day after an early breakfast and coffee, everyone put on their gardening gloves and got to work hoeing and weeding the potato patch and planting thousands of brassica and tomato starts and squash seeds.
We left Ntamtqen with new connections, dirt under our fingernails, and so much inspiration for the work that can be done when a vision is supported by local government and the community. Grant by grant, donation by donation, and volunteer by volunteer, our resiliency is strengthened not only in the spaces we build, but in the relationships we form along the way. Land to Table looks forward to returning to Ntamtqen in the fall to see the literal fruits of our labor, and to check in after a busy growing season. We are in the process of organizing another Indigenous food champions gathering in the fall, and will share details out to partner organizations in late summer.
