Julie Anne David, along with her brother Mike are taking over the family business and adding their own touches.
Moccasin Joe Coffee Roasters is located in Kanesatake, a Mohawk community west of Montreal.
It just launched a new line of coffee that is 100 per cent sourced from Indigenous-owned farms.
“Our first coffee partner for our new Indigenous to Indigenous coffee alliance line will be from Guatemala,” says Mike. “Actually, we are hosting the farmer today at our new roastery so it is pretty exciting.”
The company was started 17 years ago by their father Walter.
“I am taking over roasting,” says Julie. “It’s going on a year soon. I have been learning the ropes from my father and trying to learn everything about the entire roasting process right to the packaging. Next, it will be learning how to source the coffee.”
The siblings are on a mission to not only expand the company but to also make Indigenous partnerships an integral part of their work.
The Campesino Committee of Highland – or CCDA – is an Indigenous organization in Guatemala that supports Indigenous farmers and rural populations.
During a visit to Moccasin Joe’s new roasting facility, Leocadio Juracan, a farmer with the CCDA, said this new partnership is significant and strategic.
“It is a connection that is not only about marketing coffee but also about sharing cultures, sharing what we are, what we know,” Juracan said in Spanish. “Our vision for humanity. Our cosmogonic vision for society, for the search for social justice and, above all, to respect nature, mother Earth”
According to the siblings, the new line was inspired when they realized that there weren’t many Indigenous-owned coffee farms in source countries.
“This new line is really just to build out, hopefully, a supply chain of more indigenous ownership,” Mike says. “We kind of see the whole supply chain from coffee farmer to importers to producers to roasters and beyond.”
