How Young Agrarians and IndigenEYEZ partnered to grow more relationships between farmers and First Nations
Since 2012, Young Agrarians, a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network, has worked to support new and next-generation farmers across the Indigenous lands colonially called “Canada”. The first program the organization began coordinating to build the network was farmer meetups and social networking to overcome rural isolation and ensure new farmers knew other land and food-focused people, as well as whose lands they were on in the places they live and farm. The organization began connecting with First Nations to see if there was a desire to come and be together at events, and both open up the space and offer workshops to educate farmers in Indigenous Food Sovereignty work.
The work of being together in circle was inspired by the community-building facilitation model that the organization Power of Hope uses to empower youth and adults, an organization that Kelly Terbasket and Sara Dent both trained with. This model of working in community was the inspiration for Young Agrarians to coordinate and facilitate farmer-led spaces for on and off-farm learning. This laid the foundation for engagement, feedback loops and the development of more programs by and for new farmers.
Sara Dent, Executive Director & Co-founder, Young Agrarians
Kelly Terbasket, Program Director of IndigenEYEZ and KinSHIFT
As a land-based organization, recognizing the impact of agriculture and colonization on Indigenous food systems and sovereignty is essential. Making the kind of change that centres Indigenous peoples’ rights to land, food systems and cultural practices requires greater awareness of Indigenous perspectives. For a new farmer network, becoming allies requires education and the development of cultural competencies to grow capacity for understanding and fostering respectful relationships aligned with the directions provided by Indigenous peoples across communities. It means working alongside, rather than being deterministic as settlers, deep listening, self-awareness, and an ability to be in relationship.
Sara Dent, Founding Director of Young Agrarians, reflects after 20 years in the food systems space:
“Change towards greater food sovereignty requires meeting people where they are at and nurturing relationships and working alongside one another in ways that recognize the lands, cultures and ecosystems we rely on.”
The Beginning: An Invitation, Not a Deliverable
The collaboration between Young Agrarians and kinSHIFT began with a three-year proposal to a funder that has worked through a decolonization framework to now focus more of their funding on First Nations in “British Columbia”. Instead of asking kinSHIFT to co-write content or deliver a predefined product, Young Agrarians was able to work within the educational frameworks offered by the organization and begin a process of learning by enabling farmers to take kinSHIFT’s workshops.
Young Agrarians offers an ever-growing range of online and in-person learning and programs to support new and aspiring ecological farmers.
kinSHIFT is the social enterprise portion of IndigenEYEZ, which means that the additional benefit of an organizational partnership meant that for every workshop attended by a Young Agrarians farmer, proceeds would go back into programs by and for Indigenous youth and adults.
kinSHIFT workshops created a beautiful space for farmers to engage in a learning journey focused on deep listening and reflection. This created a space to ask the harder questions about how decolonization learning happens and what it takes to shift relationships shaped by generations of harm, extraction, and imbalance. From this shift, a relational container emerged that could continue to hold the learning over time.
Purppl, a social enterprise that supports social impact leaders in building sustainable revenue models, was at the time working closely with IndigenEYEZ on its social enterprise development. This close collaboration allowed them to witness firsthand the deepening of the relationship between the two organizations.
This gave Purppl the opportunity to support both organizations in various capacities, including operational logistics for a reciprocal relationship.
What Was Offered: Doing the Inner Work, Together
What IndigenEYEZ brought to this partnership was never just workshop content. It was an invitation to inner work that asks people to slow down, notice their reactions, and stay present even when things feel uncomfortable.
Through IndigenEYEZ’s newly developed kinSHIFT workshops for settlers, farmers were invited to sit in circle, reflect on their own conflict styles, and practice being in relationship through tension rather than around it.
IndigenEYEZ engages, inspires and mobilizes change through leadership and facilitation training, rooted in Indigenous ways of being, that helps strengthen communities to restore the circle and cultivate hope.
There was space to ask tough questions: How do we learn without causing harm? How do we take responsibility when we make mistakes?
Kelly Terbasket, IndigenEYEZ co-founder and program director, shares, “At the heart of this work is an invitation to believe that something better is possible. We ask participants to reflect on this question: What possibilities exist for doing the work of truth and reconciliation in new and meaningful ways?”
This work braided together multiple strands: Indigenous cultural experience, practical information, and deep relational learning, which, together, created the conditions for something lasting amongst the farmer community.
The Impact You Don’t Always See on a Report
This partnership also highlighted an important point.
With over 300 farmers having completed this learning to date, the team can see the fruits of their work almost immediately. The farmers who went through the kinSHIFT program are taking greater care in stewarding the land and understanding the connection to Indigenous ways of being and doing, many coming from settler backgrounds to Canada.
There is also a clear demand for this kind of learning and a sense that farmers want more than tools. They sought guidance on how to be in relationships with the land, with Indigenous communities, and with one another.
But the most meaningful impacts were harder to quantify.
When people take time to build relationships before conflict arises, their capacity to handle conflict changes. Disagreement doesn’t disappear; it simply becomes more navigable. People approach one another with greater grace, and accountability becomes possible.
Sara reflected that for years, the instinct had been to move quickly into coordination and logistics, getting the work done on the farmer side. And then came the realization:
“The upfront investment in relationship-building isn’t a delay. It’s what makes everything else possible.”
A Question for Funders
This collaboration raises an important question for funders working in complex systems like food, land, and reconciliation:
What if relationship-building weren’t treated as an invisible extra, but as core infrastructure?
Too often, the time required to build trust, hold space for mistakes, and stay in relationship is squeezed into the margins of a project, or absorbed quietly as operational labour. Yet it is precisely this work that allows programs to endure, adapt, and deepen over time.
In the context of Indigenous food sovereignty, this matters profoundly.
When Indigenous food systems are strong, the entire system is healthier, and Young Agrarians has seen this through partnerships like this one. The opportunity now is to recognize and resource the relational conditions that make this possible.
Holding Hope Through Relationship
Terbasket also often spoke about the importance of micro-shifts: small moments of awareness and choice that, over time, change how we show up. Not grand gestures. Not perfect language. But repeated, relational practice.
In a time when hope can feel fragile, this work has been sustaining.
Working alongside Indigenous leaders, listening, learning, and being in relationship has offered a different way forward. This collaboration has shaped how Young Agrarians are now approaching their broader Indigenous and food sovereignty strategy: showing up to listen, holding space with care, and staying for the long haul.
Because, beyond the scope of any single project, it is relationships that carry the work forward.
If this kind of partnership learning resonates, connect with IndigenEYEZ to explore reconciliation rooted in land and relationship. Reach out to Young Agrarians to find a supportive peer network for farmers. And contact the Purppl team to walk alongside your community or organization in navigating revenue, operations & impact challenges and possibilities.
