Indigenous Food Ways: How do we move from Repression to Recognition?
In her book Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, lawyer, activist, and teacher — born and raised on the Penobscot (Penawahpskek) reservation —Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset) writes “One of the most important things we can do for ourselves, our children and the future of the planet is to decolonize our minds and ways of life.”
Even since last year’s Challenge, awareness and honesty continues to grow about the extent to which mainstream food systems are, at their base, an extension of a colonial enterprise. Mitchell defines colonization as “the act of appropriating or forcibly overtaking a place and exerting control over it.” American history centrally features the extermination of indigenous peoples, the theft of their lands and the repression of their traditions, including their food ways. A failure to recognize and publicly acknowledge these facts leads to a perpetuation of injustice and the dehumanizing impacts of the colonizer mindset. Mitchell writes that addressing colonization in the modern day means confronting “the lingering systems of control and the insidious patterns of thinking that colonization brings.”
One way for non-indigenous people to confront colonial mindsets and actions, beyond studying non-mainstream/dominant histories (see, for example, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States) is to get curious about the history of where you currently live, work, study and/or volunteer.
Explore/find out:Who inhabited the land prior to the arrival of Europeans? What happened to the indigenous peoples and their practices? Where are they now and what is happening to them? What indigenous people live in your area today? What fights for resistance and survival are they currently engaged in? You might consult this on-line map, which should not be seen as a perfect representation of official or legal boundaries of Indigenous nations. To learn about boundaries and historic territories, contact the nations/peoples in question.
For some further food for thought, check out this series of blog posts about indigenous foodways from Civil Eats and this article and podcast from The Table Underground(featuring Mohegan Anthropologist and Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute alum Rachel Sayet).
Also explore these indigenous food sites:
Garden Warriors Good Seeds
Indigenous Food Revolutionary
Cooking Healthy in Indian Country [YouTube channel]
I-Collective
What questions come up for you? How has what you knew before been affirmed, changed or challenged?
For those in the Portland, Maine area there is a free screening of DAWNLAND on April 18th at the Maine Historical Society along with a panel discussion. “The feature-length, award-winning documentary DAWNLAND follows Maine’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to contemporary Wabanaki communities to witness intimate, sacred moments of truth-telling and healing. The film’s groundbreaking process and never-before-seen footage reveals the untold narrative of Indigenous child removal in the United States. “This is part of Maine Historical Society new exhibition – Holding Up the Sky: Wabanaki People, Culture, History & Art – opens April 12. https://upstanderproject.org/dawnland
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Sometimes, the indigenous history and communities of New Hampshire can seem invisible. Much of the information I could find about NH and indigenous groups started with records from settlers. I am hesitant to go to traditional sources of information because I don’t know what biases exist. As far as I can tell, before colonization there were four tribes. These were the Abenaki, Malecite, Passamaquoddy, and Pennacook. I have some familiarity with these names. I love hiking, and many of the mountains I hike are named after significant leaders from different tribes, such as Passaconaway, who was a major sachem of the Pennacook tribe. Something I found to be very significant when reading about the diets of different peoples in NH, Arizona, and other places, was that the food eaten was largely determined by what naturally existed. This is very different from the pineapples I eat, which are certainly not found in the NH climate. I consider food to be a large part of people’s culture. Having so many people in the US disconnected from their food is a major challenge to the food movement.
I also believe that challenging white supremacy in all its forms is going to be a major part of any serious work done to dismantle the food system. White supremacy keeps people separated from history and their ancestry. It also impoverishes different farming communities while preserving healthy food for the elite of society. To bring in a new food system, as I believe is necessary, will require the confrontation of white supremacy in a historical context and the dismantling of white supremacy in society today.
For notes, I found the Civil Eats blog posts to be really helpful and interesting.
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Any way around the fact that Indigenous Foodways is requiring a subscription after two visit? I read one of the blogs this morning, one at lunch, and now it is requiring a subscription. I had the same trouble with the NYT videos yesterday.
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So sorry Stan. Some of other resources we have used in the past have recently added these “paywalls” or limitations on visits. We will try to avoid those in the future if we can detect it. Also, not a total solution, but if you switch browsers (i.e. among Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Explorer, etc.) that ~usually~ will get you around the limitation.
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First Nations Development Institute has an excellent website about Native foodways and food sovereignty projects they fund in Native communities:
https://www.firstnations.org/our-programs/nourishing-native-foods-health/
They also offer ways that other funders and individuals can donate or invest in the development of Native communities around the country.
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Thank you, Renee!
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Great resource!
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thank you!
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The acknowledge meant of the true history of Thanksgiving is an easy form to begin recognition process of Indigenous food. I am a food person and have always thought of food as a way to learn a culture. It is not the only step but since we all eat food it is a good place to start common ground. I need to do some digging within my own area to find ways to recognize Indigenous foods beyond that of latin American places. The indigenous food ways are a good reminder that it is not just the food we put in our mouths, but the story behind the foods that have the story of culture that can help us recognize indigenous food in the proper form.
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Thank you, Angel, and really appreciate your point “it is not just the food we put in our mouths, but the story behind the foods that have the story of culture that can help us recognize indigenous food in the proper form.”
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The resources from Civil Eats are fantastic. Just looking at the images readjusts my mind, shakes it out of old patterns about food and who does what work and why. Questions raised for me as I explore the material: Who in my community is doing this work? (I know one or two people, but I bet there are more here in farmland VT.) How much do I rally know about reparations? So many women/female identified people are changing this piece of the world, so why are so many of them not on my “intersectional feminist” radar? I have so little time to dive in, but I am already relishing the time/space that will open for me when I can do so.
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Very much appreciating your questions. Also your comment about how images can readjust your mind. That’s the power of an “equity prime” – a question, image, reminder to pause before proceeding in a typical way.
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Exploring these resources brought up a number of things for me. First and foremost was overwhelming sadness at the total environmental destruction that has been wrought on Native American lands and ecosystems; in looking through the map of the regions I consider home, most of the Native communities subsisted on wild game and foraging, buffalo in particular. These local food systems are far healthier in every way for both the individuals (nutritionally,) communities (shared cultural activities around hunting/foraging, processing, and preserving,) and the environment (lack of pollution from farming, grazers and herds evolved to live in symbiosis with the environment, as opposed to non-native species,) and represent a way of eating that is seasonal and sustainable.
As a younger and very idealistic foodie/environmentalist/budding farmer, I spent a few years really enthused about eating as many native foods as possible. At the time, in southern arizona, that meant I harvested wild mesquite pods to grind into flower (it’s DELICIOUS, btw) preserving nopales (prickly pear cactus, both paddles and fruit,) and growing beans, squash, and maize. One of my favorite reads from this period is Coming Home to Eat by Gary Nabham, who embarked on this dietary lifestyle in the same region, and sought out native american knowledge to aide him – no one else would know how to thrive on the slim resources in the desert.
A food culture will ideally be a sacred bond connecting communities to the land – this bond is another thing colonization ripped away from Native American peoples. It saddens me immensely that those native food cultures have been replaced with one so terribly DISconnected with the environment around us.
The next reflection I had was about how cruelly the removal of a food system/food culture can effect the physical health of a community, and how that is reflected in current public health data.
I also thought about alcohol, and the role alcohol has played in colonization. I was fortunate to see Artist Lyla June twice in the last year, and she spoke movingly about the history of alcohol as a tool to steal from Native peoples. https://dreamwarriors.co/artists/lyla-june/
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Hey Emily – I spent a few years in southern Arizona, as well, and I actually got to know Gary a bit while I was down there. He’s an incredible person. I’m a new transplant to Wisconsin, now, and one of things I miss the most about Arizona is the sense of place and connection to place and past that so many people down there have. And, along with that all, is the amazing bounty the desert provides, especially when people pay attention to indigenous foods and production methods!
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Margee from Alexandria , Va
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Boohoo!!
I have come to appreciate the culture and traditions of the Anishnabe (Ojibwa) people in the Keweenaw Bay Indian community at the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I see a lot of similarities in some of the traditions as an African and the tremendous effort they are making in the are of maintaining their food systems. As part of the council of the three fires, the Ojibwa people has adopted the “Sankofa” rule, loosely translated as ‘go back and get it’ where they are asking questions of nature and edging original ways of thinking based on sacred stories that are tied to the generosity of the earth and people’s ability to learn to give back. The cultivation of the spirit food Manoomin (wild rice) and the collection and boiling of sap during the Moon of boiling sap ‘Iskigamizige-giizis’ are not only representation of culture and traditions but unity of families and a right of passage of knowledge from old to young.
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The entire state of Nebraska is Native lands. The tribes face much discrimination all around them and friction amongst the tribes creates a situation where they are often very closed off. Growing up nearby, the reservations were presented as a sad reality and that it’s ok to be racist because “they are racist, too.” Now I see the food movement finally taking hold. In a town where there isn’t a grocery store, there is now 350 family gardens. The projects are being led by tribe members, and it’s lifting everyone up bit by bit. It’s powerful to witness a change of this nature and it feels so right because it is meeting resistance and bringing things to light. It helps me see what to continue towards in our food systems work focused on inclusion and equity.
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I visited Canada last summer and appreciate their use of the term “First Nations peoples” to distinguish between people who were recently born in their country but of European descent from those people whose ancestors crossed the land bridge and have inhabited North and South America for the last 6-7,000 years.
I know that here in Iowa there is a reservation near a town called Tama and they were raising their own bison. This effort was meant to return the indigenous population to a more traditional diet. More lean bison meat was supposed to facilitate the reduction of a western diet (Mc Donalds) and the illnesses that follow (diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, etc. ).
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I also work with a large population of immigrants from northern Africa and they have a hard time finding herbs, spices and seeds for the flavors they want to taste and miss from home. I had a great conversation with a student about how this degraded her diet and she wasn’t able to expose her young children to the flavors of her homeland (Sudan). It was very depressing for her. I had not considered the lack of traditional spices as yet another mechanism to losing ones culture and connection to family history.
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Two great things to pay attention to for people on Narragansett, Nahaganset, Pocasset Pokanoket, Wampanoag and/or Nipmuc land!
This rich and fascinating collaborative history of King Philip’s War: https://www.ourbelovedkin.com/awikhigan/index
And the Narragansett Food Sovereignty Initiative: http://www.narragansettfoodsovereignty.org/
I wrote some self-reflection notes up at the blog: https://climateanxietycounseling.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/day-2-indigenous-food-ways-how-do-we-move-from-repression-to-recognition/
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