Two of the five acts defined as genocide by the United Nations’ Genocide Convention of 1948 are causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. The material erasure of foods, foodways, and food systems under colonialism and the representational erasure of those same foodways and food systems from the historical record serve as genocidal elements designed to destroy the culture of colonized populations.
