Bella Coola General Hospital and the Nuxalk Nation are reorienting hospital food services around Indigenous knowledge and community priorities.
When a patient at Bella Coola General Hospital (BCGH) sits down to a meal featuring locally harvested fish, wild berries, or traditional teas, something larger is taking place than a change to the menu. The Nuxalk–BCGH Traditional Foods Project is quietly reorienting how a hospital understands food, not as a medical necessity, but as an expression of culture, community, and care. Wapat (Alec Willie), the food security director for the Nuxalk Nation and member of the Nuxalk-BCGH Traditional Foods Project team, reminds the team that:
Food played an integral role in ancestral governance of the Nuxalk People, reflective even in the Nuxalk laws of always sharing a meal coming from one of the four catastrophes of the first great era of being. Marriages, laws, songs, dances and cultural ceremonies, all had a connection to food.”
Launched in 2023, the initiative integrates traditional and contemporary Nuxalk foods into meal services at Bella Coola General Hospital for patients, families, staff, and long-term care residents. The seasonally curated menu — developed by Nuxalk Knowledge Keeper and Chef Nola Mack — draws on community-sourced ingredients including fish, crab, venison, berries, herbs, and seasonal vegetables. She also shares the central values around which the team orients the work:
We never put anyone on a pedestal. You know, we’re all equal, we’re all the same. It’s just a part of us to always invite people in. The people that are guests always come in and eat first.”
What distinguishes this project is its foundational approach. Rather than adapting Indigenous foods to fit health systems, the initiative reorients the hospital’s food services around Nuxalk knowledge, seasonal harvesting practices, and community priorities. Partnership meetings sustained over two years involve an advisory committee with Nuxalk leadership and community representation, researchers, hospital staff, food services staff and joint cooking sessions.
Navigating institutional procurement rules and food safety regulations was among the key challenges, addressed by developing new policies and procedures that align hospital systems with community knowledge.
Food is a foundational entry point for relational, cultural, and systems change. By definition, Nuxalk foods are whole and local — necessarily low emissions and low impact as compared to market foods shipped from around the world.” — Elizabeth Howard, Community Health Specialist, Bella Coola Medical Clinic, Vancouver Coastal Health
The environmental dimension of the project is significant. Locally harvested, minimally processed Nuxalk foods carry a fraction of the emissions footprint of industrially sourced ingredients shipped across supply chains.
Embedded research and evaluation — co-led by Nuxalk Nation members alongside Vancouver Coastal Health and the VCH Research Institute — is documenting both the process and its outcomes across cultural safety, health equity, and sustainable food systems.
The project offers a replicable model for health-care organizations seeking to advance reconciliation through tangible, community-led action. By treating food as medicine, culture, and connection to land, Bella Coola General Hospital is demonstrating what it looks like to build a health system that genuinely honours the communities it serves.
