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Connects food insecurity and poor dietary health to colonization/land theft.

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For Indigenous people in the U.S., food is considered a sacred gift. Healthy and bountiful produce is received when we care for the land.

Yet, with one in four Native Americans lacking reliable access to healthy foods and Indigenous peoples disproportionately affected by diet-related diseases, something clearly isn't working as it should.

As an expert on Indigenous health and food insecurity among Native populations, I argue that the high rate of food insecurity and poor dietary health of Native Americans can be traced to the events that disrupted Indigenous people's relationship with the land: colonization and the widespread theft of territory by white settlers. Any attempt to improve access to sufficient, nutritious foods today needs to focus on Indigenous food sovereignty and land justice - giving control and land back to Native communities to enable them to grow culturally appropriate, healthy produce and become self-sufficient.

A broken system

"A healthy food system is an indicator of a healthy community; one cannot exist without the other," noted the Native Hawaiian activist Kamuela Enos.

This view is increasingly being echoed by public health experts. Diet is the number one risk factor for preventable disease in the U.S. and is driven by a food system that comprises food production, access, marketing and individual dietary intake.

Since the 1980s, an influx of fast food restaurants and convenience stores and an exodus of supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods across the U.S. have led to chronic disease disparities in low-income communities and racial minorities. This is especially true among the U.S.'s Native population.

American Indian and Alaska Native adults are 50% more likely to be obese and 30% more likely to suffer from hypertension compared to white Americans. They are also 50% more likely to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, and three times more likely to have diabetes.

Native Americans also experience high rates of food insecurity, meaning they don't have enough food to live an active, healthy life.

In a study of a Northern Plains reservation in Montana, 43% of tribal households were found to be food-insecure. In Oklahoma, more than 60% of American Indians surveyed were food-insecure. This compares with a national food insecurity rate of 11%.

Structural, not short-term approaches

Government and social service organizations have tried to address food insecurity by promoting food banks or encouraging use of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.

But the limited existing research shows Indigenous communities are less likely than non-Native groups to use those services. This is due to a number of reasons including lack of access to places that accept SNAP or discriminatory practices such as being refused service at stores.

Meanwhile, public health efforts focused on encouraging healthy lifestyles - through eating more fruits and vegetables, for example - fail to acknowledge the systemic barriers that Native Americans face when it comes to accessing healthy, sustainable and traditional foods.

Feeding people is important, no doubt. But I believe it will never result in long-term health improvements in Native communities without looking and addressing the underlying roots of the problem.

Stolen land, forced removal

Indigenous people in the United States share a common deep ancestry and a contentious colonial history with the U.S. that resulted in land removal and confiscation on a massive scale.

The forced removal of Native people from their traditional homelands in the 19th century to often unfamiliar and barren reserves disrupted Indigenous food systems and diets.

For example, in my own Native population, Choctaw, a type of river cane, Arundinaria tecta, was used not only as a food source but also in medicine, for clothing, to build houses and to make baskets. In the places where my people were forced to move, this species of river cane did not exist.

Moreover, Choctaw are an agricultural society, yet many portions of reservation lands where Choctaws were forcibly moved to were arid plains or flood zones - places that were not able to be farmed. As a result, many people starved to death.

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This disruption was the impetus for the nutritional crisis seen today in Native communities. Forced removal was accompanied by a new reliance on government-issued foods for Native communities. From the earliest treaties with the U.S. government, Native Americans were promised food rations. This reliance continues today through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, through which the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides canned and packaged foods to around 270 tribes with limited access to SNAP. It constitutes the primary food source for 60% of rural and reservation-based American Indians, but the foods tend to be high in fat and sugar. Fresh vegetables are rarely offered.

Toward food sovereignty

To end reliance on government-provided foods, many Native communities are seeking a different approach: a return to traditional foods and practices that are healthy and culturally centered.

Indigenous food sovereignty - the right and responsibility of Indigenous people to produce healthy and culturally appropriate foods through traditional Indigenous food systems - has emerged as an important strategy to support Indigenous communities.

It involves Native communities taking greater control over their land and health and reducing dependence on packaged and fast foods and government-provided food.

For example, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma is supporting the development of sustainable agricultural practices that provide a sustainable source to increase their access to fresh vegetables, fruits and meat to their community.

"For us, food sovereignty means self-sufficiency," explained Osage Nation's Assistant Principal Chief Raymond Red Corn in an interview. "If we fed ourselves for thousands of years, I don't know why we can't feed ourselves now."
Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan is a Professor of Rural Health at Oklahoma State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ending Food Insecurity in Native Communities Means Restoring Land Rights, Handing Back Control

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For Indigenous people in the U.S., food is considered a sacred gift. Healthy and bountiful produce is received when we care for the land. Yet, with one in four Native Americans lacking reliable access to healthy foods and Indigenous peoples dispropor...

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South Dakota Public Broadcasting produces commercial-free TV, Radio, and Internet programs and provides valuable community education outreach and resources.

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Mentions some examples of how toxic waste affects food sources (poisons fish, leading to higher levels of PCBs, higher risk of diabetes and cancer, etc).

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While the word "reservation" may invoke ideas of protection or sanctuary, historically, Native American reservations have systematically been targeted as sites for toxic waste disposal, and the U.S. government has historically been indifferent towards this. Companies "hoping to take advantage of the devastating chronic unemployment, pervasive poverty, and sovereign status of Indian nations" offer millions of dollars to Native American tribes in exchange for the ability to dispose of toxic waste, according to Bradley Angel in a for the environmental organization Greenpeace.

The legacy of environmental racism towards Native Americans is also inseparable from the United States' history of nuclear development and military innovation. From the 1940s to the 1980s, the Navajo Nation was one of the most plentiful uranium mining sites in the country - the U.S. government extracted over four million tons of uranium ore from sites on the reservation to make nuclear weapons. Navajo people who lived near uranium mines were not warned about the hazards of radiation, and experienced alarmingly high rates of lung cancer, leukemia, kidney disease, birth defects and several other health issues. Mining companies later abandoned these mines without cleaning up the large quantities of uranium on the reservation; even today, the Navajo people continue to suffer adverse health effects related to radiation. The Oglala Lakota people living at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which also has an extensive history of uranium mining, have a cancer mortality rate that is 40 percent higher than that of the overall population.

And at the Dugway Proving Ground, located immediately outside the Skull Valley Indian Reservation, the U.S. government has tested , an extremely toxic military-grade poison gas, for decades. In 1968, over 6,000 sheep owned by Skull Valley Goshute Native Americans after exposure to this nerve agent - yet the military continues to conduct experiments there, despite the obvious health and safety risks to the reservation's residents.

The extent of toxic exposure in Native communities reflects the U.S. government's tendency to view Native American reservations, and by extension, Native American people, as expendable. Since this country's inception, Native American policy in the United States has largely been characterized by violence, abandonment, and disinvestment - it comes as no surprise that the government (with the support of private companies) values profit and resources over the health and well-being of the people it has oppressed for centuries. Although toxic waste exposure might not seem like an intentional or malicious attempt to harm Native American communities, the systematic exploitation of Native land and the lack of attention given to the ensuing health effects represents this country's callous disregard for some of its most vulnerable citizens.

For instance, in the late 1980s, Navajo activists formed a group called Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (CARE), which successfully fought the construction of a proposed toxic waste facility on Navajo land in Arizona. In the early 2000s, the Western Shoshone tribe in Nevada put up an impassioned, years-long fight against a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain - the protesters were eventually successful as the project was by the Obama Administration in 2010. And in the mid-2010s, Sioux activists at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation drew national attention to their efforts organizing against the Dakota Access Pipeline, though this protest was ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the pipeline.

Policy solutions that might help address the toxic waste crisis on Native American reservations include banning toxic waste dumping on reservations and passing legislation that prohibits polluting entities, such as nuclear facilities or hazardous waste incinerators, from being near reservations. The U.S. government should also economically invest in Native American communities so that reservations are not financially pressured to accept money from corporations who want to dispose of waste. The Indian Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for providing federal health services to Native Americans, can establish an office or task force dedicated to preventing health problems that arise from environmental injustice. Lastly, providing monetary reparations to survivors of toxic exposure can help mitigate the lasting harm caused by environmental injustice, especially since the government's approach has historically been to ignore and neglect these problems.

Addressing the harm inflicted by toxic exposure on Native American reservations will require sustained and equitable policy approaches that prioritize the interests of individuals over the interests of corporations. Above all else, the diseases and deaths caused by exposure to toxic chemicals on Native land serve as a stark reminder of the injustice that has been inflicted on Native Americans by the government and private companies for centuries.
Featured Image Source: Grand Canyon Trust

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The Lasting Harms of Toxic Exposure in Native American Communities

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While the word "reservation" may invoke ideas of protection or sanctuary, historically, Native American reservations have systematically been targeted as sites for toxic waste disposal, and the U.S. government has historically been indifferent towards this.

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Link between environment and cultural practices

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Link between environment and cultural practices

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In Akwesasne, the cultural diet is disrupted by the contamination from GM. The community has to stop eating fish in order to avoid consuming PCBs.

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Contains an interactive map of all Superfund sites in the USA. Could be interesting to compare to locations of Native American reservations.

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Do You Live Near Toxic Waste? See 1,317 of the Most Polluted Spots in the U.S.

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Hazardous waste sites are scattered all across the country. See a map showing where these "Superfund sites" are near you

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There are 532 Superfund sites on native lands.

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Of a total of 1,322 Superfund sites as of June 5, 2014, nearly 25 percent of them are in Indian country. Manufacturing, mining and extractive industries are responsible for our list of some of the most environmentally devastated places in Indian country, as specified under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the official name of the Superfund law enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980. Most of these sites are not cleaned up, though not all of the ones listed below are still active. Some sites are capped, sealing up toxics that persist in the environment. In cases like the Navajo, the Akwesasne Mohawk and the Quapaw Tribe, the human health impacts are known because some doctors and scientists took enough interest to do studies in their regions. Some of those impacts may persist through generations given the involvement, as in the case of the Mohawk, of endocrine disrupters. Read on. 1. Salt Chuck Mine, Organized Village of Kasaan, Alaska

The Salt Chuck Mine Superfund site in southeast Alaska operated as a copper-palladium-gold-silver mine from 1916 to 1941. Members of the Organized Village of Kasaan, a federally recognized tribe, traditionally harvested fish, clams, cockles, crab and shrimp from the waters in and around Salt Chuck, unaware for decades that areas of impact were saturated with tailings from the former mine. As if that weren't enough, Pure Nickel Inc. holds rights to mining leases in the area and began active exploration to do even more mining in summer 2012, according to Ground Truth Trekking.
2. Sulfur Bank Mine, Elem Band of Pomo Indians, California
The Elem Band of Pomo Indians, whose colony was built on top of the waste of what would become California's Sulfur Bank Mine Superfund site in 1970, have elevated levels of mercury in their bodies, and now fear for their health. According to an NBC News investigation, nearby Clear Lake is the most mercury-polluted lake in the world, despite the EPA's spending about $40 million over two decades trying to keep mercury contamination out of the water. Although the EPA cleaned soil from beneath Pomo homes and roads, pollution still seeps beneath the earthen dam built by the former mine operator, Bradley Mining Co. For years, Bradley Mining has fought the government's efforts to recoup cleanup costs.
3. Leviathan Mine, Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California
The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California requested EPA involvement in the cleanup of an abandoned open pit sulfur mine on the eastern slope of California's Sierra Nevada that became the Leviathan Mine Superfund site. The Washoe Tribe had become concerned that contaminated waters were affecting their lands downstream, causing impacts to culture and health, environmental damage, remediation, monitoring and testing, posting of health advisories, drinking water, effects on pregnancy, and cancer. Aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, iron, manganese, nickel and thallium have been detected in surface water and sediment downstream from the mine. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that exposures could result in cancerous and non-cancerous health effects.
4. Eastern Michaud Flats, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Idaho
The abandoned FMC phosphorus facility occupies more than 1,000 acres of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes' Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho, and lies within Eastern Michaud Flats Superfund site. The primary contaminants of concern at the site are arsenic, elemental phosphorous and gamma radiation. FMC left a legacy of contamination in the air, groundwater, soil and the nearby Portneuf River, which threatened plants, wildlife and human health on the reservation and in surrounding communities. The Shoshone-Bannock have long asked for a cleanup of contaminated soils, but instead the EPA's 2012 interim remedy is to cap and fill, including areas containing gamma radiation and radionuclides.
5. Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex, Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Idaho
The Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex Superfund site, located in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin, is one of the largest environmental and human health cleanup efforts in the country.

Its contamination, the result of decades of mining, milling and smelting, affected more than 150 miles of the river, lake and its tributaries. The area, listed a Superfund site in 1983, is one of the "largest and most complex" in the country, according to the EPA. Studies revealed that three quarters of children living in the area in the 1970s had unhealthy levels of lead in their bloodstream. The United States, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and the state of Idaho settled with the Hecla Mining Co. in June 2011 for $263.4 million to resolve claims stemming from releases of wastes from its mining operations, an agreement that will protect people's health by ensuring the cleanup of areas heavily polluted with lead, cadmium, arsenic and other contaminants.
6. Rio Tinto Copper Mine, Shoshone Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley, Nevada
The Shoshone Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley and the state of Nevada will oversee cleanup of the abandoned Rio Tinto Copper Mine Superfund site with $25 million paid by the Atlantic Richfield Co., DuPont and Co., the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. and Teck American Inc., all corporate successors to companies that operated the copper mine between 1932 and 1976. The agreement was worked out last year by the EPA, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. The cleanup will remove mine tailings from Mill Creek, make the creek habitable for redband trout and improve the water quality of Mill Creek and the East Fork Owyhee River.
7. Alcoa Superfund Site, Akwesasne and Saint Regis Mohawk, New York
The Alcoa Superfund aluminum manufacturing facility in Massena, New York, released hazardous substances including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) onto property and into the Grasse River, contaminating sediments in the river system to approximately seven miles downstream, a traditional area of the Akwesasne Mohawk. Analysis of fish in the Grasse River revealed high levels of PCB contamination. PCBs are linked to cancer, low birth weight and thyroid disease, as well as learning, memory and immune system disorders. When in April 2012 the EPA finalized a cleanup plan that requires dredging and capping of contaminated sediment in a 7.2 mile stretch of the river in April 2012, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe were not satisfied with the capping solution.
8. General Motors Massena, Akwesasne Mohawk
Some 4,000 Saint Regis Mohawks live adjacent to the General Motors Massena Superfund site in Massena, New York, which while in operation used PCBs, plus generated and disposed of various industrial wastes onsite. PCBs have been found in the groundwater, on- and off-site soils and sediments in the St. Lawrence and Raquette Rivers, Turtle Cove and Turtle Creek. PCBs are probable human carcinogens that can also affect the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems, as well as cause other health effects. Groundwater was also found to be contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are potentially harmful substances that easily evaporate in the air. Phenols have been detected in lagoons left behind.

Under an August 2010 EPA order, Motors Liquidation Co., formerly GM, and then RACER Trust became responsible for additional sampling, decontamination of the building and contents, demolition of the building, removal of PCB-contaminated soil beneath the building and restoration of the area. A controversial landfill of capped contamination will be moved 150 feet from the tribal border in 2014, EPA regional administrator Judith Enck told the Associated Press in 2012.

The bodies of young Akwesasne Mohawk adults contain twice the levels of PCBs as the national average, compared to those studied by the CDC. Researchers have already established that PCBs have altered thyroid gland function in the Akwesasne community. Prior studies found lower testosterone levels and established links to autoimmune disorders.

"Endocrine disruption seems to be the effect which is most far reaching, because other effects on the reproductive system may be well tied into that," said Lawrence Schell, a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY at Albany) and director of its Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities who was involved in an exposure research study at the St. Regis Mohawk Nation.
9. Onondaga Lake, Onondaga Nation, New York
Onondaga Lake is a sacred place. The Great Peacemaker formed the Haudenosaunee, known as the Iroquois Confederacy, on its shores.

That the 4.5 square mile lake in Syracuse, New York is spoiled is a painful thing. Sewage overflows contaminated the lake over the years, as did industrial pollutants and heavy metals such as PCBs, pesticides, benzene, toluene, xylene, creosotes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), lead, cobalt, and mercury. The Onondaga Lake Superfund site, listed in 1994, consists of the lake itself and seven major and minor tributaries. Completion of the dredging work is being performed by Honeywell International with oversight by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the EPA and the New York State Department of Health, and capping is expected in 2016. The Onondaga Nation states the Honeywell cleanup plan does not effectively contain toxic chemicals and heavy metals that will be left beneath caps in the lake-bottom sediments.

"Caps are not a reliable form of containment-they will fail, and whether it is in 10 years or 110 years, it is only a matter of time," the Onondaga said in a statement. "And when that happens, the chemicals will be re-released into the ecosystem."

Nor does the plan set any goals for making the lake 'swimmable' or 'fishable' they say-a requirement under the Clean Water Act, the Onondaga added.
10. Tar Creek, Quapaw Tribe
Picher, Oklahoma, part of the Quapaw's tribal jurisdictional area, was home to productive zinc and lead mining until 1967, when mining companies abandoned 14,000 mine shafts, 70 million tons of lead-laced tailings, 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge and contaminated water, leaving residents with high lead levels in blood and tissues. The area was declared the Tar Creek Superfund site in 1983, but Picher was deemed too toxic to clean up after a 1993 study found that 34 percent of the children tested in Picher had blood lead levels exceeding the point at which there is a risk of brain or nervous system damage. Cancers skyrocketed. A federal buyout paid people to leave. The Quapaw Tribe has cleaned up part of the Tar Creek Superfund site known as the Catholic Forty and has signed agreements to clean up two other sections of the contamination. Their goal is to make the land productive again.
11. Midnite Mine, Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington
The 350-acre Midnite Mine Superfund site on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington is centered around a former open pit uranium mine that poses a threat to human health due to elevated levels of radioactivity and the presence of heavy metals. Years of digging for uranium from 1954 to 1964, and again from 1969 to 1981, have disturbed 350 acres, left two open mine pits and piles of toxic rock on the landscape. Under a September 2011 agreement, Newmont USA Limited and Dawn Mining Company LLC would design, construct and implement the cleanup plan for the site that EPA selected in 2006. They will also reimburse EPA's costs for overseeing the work. The United States will contribute a share of the cleanup costs. EPA will oversee the cleanup work in coordination with the Spokane Tribe. Cleanup is expected to cost $193 million.
12-532. Uranium Mining, Navajo Nation
The legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation is radioactive uranium contamination from 521 abandoned Superfund mine sites spread over 27,000 acres of Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona in the Four Corners area, leaving many homes and drinking water sources on the reservation with elevated levels of radiation. The health effects to Navajo citizens include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water. The EPA has completed on-the-ground screening of the mine sites, and with the Navajo EPA is determining the order of site cleanup. Cleanup of some sites has begun while the US EPA continues to research and identify Potentially Responsible Parties under Superfund laws to contribute to cleanup costs.

Article originally published at indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com.

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Kill the Land, Kill the People: There Are 532 Superfund Sites in Indian Country!

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Of a total of 1,322 Superfund sites as of June 5, 2014, nearly 25 percent of them are in Indian country. Manufacturing, mining and extractive industries are responsible for our list of some of the most environmentally devastated places in Indian country, as specified under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the official name of the Superfund law enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980.

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An interview with Elizabeth Hoover regarding her discussions of food and food sovereignty in The River is in Us.

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Dealing with environmental contamination from Superfund sites is difficult under even the best circumstances. But the Akwesasne Mohawk community in what is currently Canada and the United States has to deal with multiple jurisdictions over environmental clean-up. The community is downwind and downstream from three Superfund sites and has seen the effects of contamination in their gardens and and fish-and in their bodies.

Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, in her book The River Is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community, brings attention to ongoing efforts of the Akwesasne to reclaim bodily sovereignty and heath in the face of industrial colonialism. Dr. Hoover emphasizes the work of Tribal members to develop a community-based approach to health research.

I sat down with Dr. Hoover on February 16th during the Center for Culture, History, and the Environment's 12th Annual Graduate Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the keynote speaker.

Stream or download our conversation here. Interview highlights, edited for clarity, follow.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Interview highlights:
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Sheamus Johnson: I understand that the food production and particularly gardening was a central concern in in your book The River Is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community. Can you tell us more about that project at the intersection of food and health?
Elizabeth Hoover: The book is about Akwesasne, an Indigenous community bisected by the Saint Lawrence River in upstate New York. The act of gardening is central to Mohawk culture and the community relies on fishing and farming, so the book looks at the effects of environmental contamination on food production. In the 1950s a hydroelectric dam was put in and brought an aluminum foundry plant called Reynolds to the area. In the 1970s a lot of the fluoride that was coming out of the smokestacks of the factory was blowing over Cornwall Island and ended up decimating the dairy cattle population from fluorosis. They put scrubbers on the smokestacks, but people were very discouraged about trying to rebuild farms after that.

Then in the 1980s, it was discovered that another adjacent factory, General Motors, had been leaching PCBs into the river. There were fish advisories that used fingerprinting analyses to show that PCBs had migrated from the General Motor site into the sediment, the fish, and even the breast milk of women in the community. The public health response was, "don't eat the fish," and people said, "well, what are we supposed to eat?" Fish are part of a broader cultural system, so when people stop fishing there's a disruption in language transmission of the words around the names for the fish, the colors and the textures of fish, and the relationship that you're building with your grandfather when you're tying nets in the winter or that time with your grandma when you're cooking the fish. All of that changes when you stop.
SJ: You've said that you got the mandate for the book project from someone you knew in the community, and you mention in the book's introduction that you conducted your interviews as visits. Can you talk about the importance of visiting as a method and working closely with the community to carry out research like this?
EH: I wanted it to be a project that was meaningful and useful to the community and not just something that was theoretically interesting to me. So, the project was developed in an iterative process with members of the community like Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook. I found that when you make relationships with people working in their gardens, helping them pull weeds, helping them butcher chickens, you develop a different kind of rapport and they are more likely to agree to sit down and give you their time.

Making it a visit was important to set people at ease and show that I was invested in this community. And that doesn't just stop when your project is done. It's also about maintaining reciprocity afterwards.
SJ: Can you comment on how political and physical geography has an effect on environmental contamination and clean-up efforts?
EH: Part of what made the environmental cleanup of the Akwesasne site complicated is that there are three tribal governments involved, and the United States and New York governments, and Quebec and Ontario provinces. There were so many different entities with a sense of who had jurisdiction over the clean-up. But it's important to recognize that pollution doesn't care about boundaries. How do you determine the boundaries of a Superfund site when contamination moves and volatizes and travels with people and fish? Pollution is going to move where it's going to move, but where it lands temporarily and whose jurisdiction it falls under impacts how it gets cleaned up.
SJ: This book highlights the ways in which the environmental contamination is linked to health but also food sovereignty. What is food sovereignty, and what are the different ways you see it getting employed in Indigenous communities across North America?
EH: I've heard people say over and over you that can't say you're sovereign if you can't feed yourself, so it's about who has jurisdiction over your food and how tribal governments can pass legislation to support local food producers. It's not just about whether you have enough calories in your house; it's about whether people have access to the means of production and have culturally appropriate food available to them. If somebody controls your food system, they control you, so how do you wrest that control for the fate of your community away from multinational corporations? There's also a big focus on education and how to involve young people so they will teach their own kids and improve health statistics in that way.
SJ: Can you tell us a little bit about what's on the horizon for you and in relation to seeds and food sovereignty?
EH: The book that I'm working on right now is called From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds: Indigenizing the Local Food Movement. The first chapter talks about definitions of food sovereignty and the second chapter is on seeds and people's ideas around seed sovereignty. I asked people how they define a heritage seed or an heirloom seed. People told me it was important to preserve these seeds because the crops are needed for ceremony, they're needed for biodiversity, and they're needed to connect people to their ancestors and to these landscapes.
Featured Image: Elizabeth Hoover. Photo by Adam Sings In the Timber. / The River Is in Us book cover. Podcast music: "Gloves" by Elizabeth Hoover is Manning Assistant Professor of American Studies at Brown University, and teaches courses on environmental health and justice in Native communities, indigenous food movements, Native American museum curation, and community engaged research. Her book The River is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community, is an ethnographic exploration of Akwesasne Mohawks' response to Superfund contamination and environmental health research. Her second book project From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds: Indigenizing the Local Food Movement explores Native American farming and gardening projects around the country. Website. Contact. Julian Lynch. Used with permission.
Sheamus Johnson is a graduate student at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Anthropology Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research is in collaboration with the 1854 Treaty Authority to inventory climate resilient stands of sugar maple in the 1854 Ceded Territory. His research interests are environmental anthropology, political ecology, and treaty rights. His last contribution to Edge Effects was "Indigenous Youth and the Changing Face of Settler Colonialism: A Conversation with Jaskiran Dhillon."

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Dealing with environmental contamination from Superfund sites is difficult under even the best circumstances. But the Akwesasne Mohawk community in what is currently Canada and the United States has to deal with multiple jurisdictions over environmental clean-up. The community is downwind and downstream from three Superfund sites and has seen the effects of contamination in their gardens and and fish-and in their bodies.

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There is a disparity in treatment options given to Native American women compared to white women. A higher percentage of Native American women are given mastectomies over lumpectomies, which generally results in better patient outcomes. Notes that the study referenced was conducted by Native scholars.

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University of Arizona Health Sciences-led study uncovered disparities in breast cancer treatments that may lead to poorer health outcomes in Indigenous women, who currently have the worst breast cancer survival outcomes of any racial group in the U.S.

People with early-stage breast cancer often choose between two treatment options: mastectomy or lumpectomy, also known as breast-conservation therapy. A mastectomy is surgery to remove the entire breast, while a lumpectomy spares part of the breast by removing cancerous tissue along with a rim of normal tissue from the breast.

When lumpectomy is paired with radiation, the outcomes are the same; however, breast-conserving therapy consistently results in better patient outcomes including fewer complications, decreased pain, and better recovery and quality of life.

Jennifer Erdrich, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of surgery in the UArizona College of Medicine - Tucson, led a small research team that used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute to stratify female patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer from 2010 to 2015 by race and ethnicity, surgical procedure, radiation and region. In total, the study looked at 3,292 non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native women and 165,225 non-Hispanic white women.

They found that American Indian and Alaska Native women with early-stage breast cancer had a higher percentage of mastectomy (41% versus 34.4%) and a lower percentage of lumpectomy (59% versus 65.6%) compared with white women.

Geography mattered, too. Women in the Northern Plains and Alaska experienced the most significant difference, where 47-49% of American Indian and Alaska Native women received a mastectomy compared with 33-36% of white women in the same region.

The paper recently was published in the journal Annals of Surgical Oncology.

While the study doesn't establish what is driving the disparities in care, Dr. Erdrich and her co-authors -Felina Cordova-Marks, DrPH, MPH, MS, an assistant professor in the UArizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, and Angela Rosé Monetathchi, a graduate student studying cellular and molecular medicine - hypothesized that a mix of geographic and socioeconomic factors contribute to the problem.

"If we can look to other populations, there's consistent evidence that geography affects choice of operation," Dr. Erdrich said. "It would make sense that in the Northern Plains or in Alaska, which have wide swatches of rural land, that same kind of pattern would apply."

Access to reliable transportation, childcare and time off work can present challenges for rural residents who need to drive longer distances to receive care. Plus, in places with intense winters like the Northern Plains and Alaska, research has shown that people put off medical care during colder months.

Those barriers could discourage patients from choosing breast-conservation therapy when they are told the accompanying radiation requires more return visits for care. However, Dr. Erdrich said there are ways to make lumpectomy more available.

"If lumpectomy is what the patient desires, there might be a little more burden on the surgeon to pull that off, but it's doable," Dr. Erdrich said. "We can facilitate the multidisciplinary care that goes into arranging a successful breast conservation treatment package."

The key, Dr. Erdrich said, is to understand the patient's needs and be willing to work with the care team to make sure a patient is accommodated.

"There are patients who can't stop their job for five weeks or can't get to the Cancer Center regularly because of transportation issues. There are programs and help in place at the Cancer Center and with the tribe that, while variably resourced, can be pooled together to bridge gaps," Dr. Erdrich said. "Then we can also work with other providers as a team to cluster their care or choose the type of treatment duration more conducive to completion of comprehensive therapy, never at the expense of outcomes of course."

Beyond the fields that extended care teams typically include, such as social workers and financial counselors, Monetathchi also advocated for incorporating traditional healers into the team.

"Cultures are so unique and they have different perspectives and different beliefs, and it's really important to have people on the team that are also mindful of that," she said.

Not only was this study conducted by three Native scholars - Dr. Erdrich is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Dr. Cordova-Marks is a member of the Hopi tribe, and Monetathchi is Comanche -the data they used to conduct the study was originally collected in a culturally responsive way.

"It's important to include Indigenous scholars from the student level to the faculty level in all aspects of research, from the data collection to analysis to writing," Dr. Cordova-Marks said. "That ensures that the publication or any kind of research projects that come out are taking the culture and community that you're working with into consideration."

Publishing this paper was the first step in addressing breast cancer treatment disparities, but simply identifying the problem isn't enough. Native people, Dr. Erdrich said, are tired of hearing they experience poor health outcomes.

Dr. Cordova-Marks hopes illuminating health care disparities and bringing attention to the barriers Native cancer patients face can be a call to action. Patients could benefit from increased funding and resources for tribes and their cancer programs, which would enable better coordination between tribal programs and larger medical centers.

"I hope educating physicians about these findings will help when they're talking about mastectomies or any kind of surgical procedures with Native and or Indigenous women to ensure they're doing it in a culturally responsive way that isn't going to increase disparities," Dr. Cordova-Marks said.

This research was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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UArizona Health Sciences Study Identifies Breast Cancer Treatment Disparities Among Native American, Indigenous Women

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University of Arizona Health Sciences-led study uncovered disparities in breast cancer treatments that may lead to poorer health outcomes in Indigenous women, who currently have the worst breast cancer survival outcomes of any racial group in the U.S. People with early-stage breast cancer often choose between two treatment options: mastectomy or lumpectomy, also known as breast-conservation therapy.

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One summary of Indigenous worldview - emphasis on reciprocity and our role as part of the ecosystem. This link also includes videos of people discussing these topics.

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--Indigenous Worldviews — Our Laws Arise from the Land

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Indian Health Service fact sheet on health disparities in Native American communities.

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Members of 573 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and their descendants are eligible for services provided by the Indian Health Service (IHS). The IHS is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that provides a comprehensive health service delivery system for approximately 2.56 million of the nation's estimated 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. The IHS strives for maximum tribal involvement in meeting the health needs of its service population, who live mainly on or near reservations and in rural communities, mostly in the western United States and Alaska.

The American Indian and Alaska Native people have long experienced lower health status when compared with other Americans. Lower life expectancy and the disproportionate disease burden exist perhaps because of inadequate education, disproportionate poverty, discrimination in the delivery of health services, and cultural differences. These are broad quality of life issues rooted in economic adversity and poor social conditions.

Diseases of the heart, malignant neoplasm, unintentional injuries, and diabetes are leading causes of American Indian and Alaska Native deaths (2009-2011).

American Indians and Alaska Natives born today have a life expectancy that is 5.5 years less than the U.S. all races population (73.0 years to 78.5 years, respectively).

American Indians and Alaska Natives continue to die at higher rates than other Americans in many categories, including chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, diabetes mellitus, unintentional injuries, assault/homicide, intentional self-harm/suicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.

Given the higher health status enjoyed by most Americans, the lingering health disparities of American Indians and Alaska Natives are troubling. In trying to account for the disparities, health care experts, policymakers, and tribal leaders are looking at many factors that impact upon the health of Indian people, including the adequacy of funding for the Indian health care delivery system.

Additional information on the IHS is available at ihs.gov.

MORTALITY DISPARITY RATES

American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) in the IHS Service Area
2009-2011 and U.S. All Races 2010
(Age-adjusted mortality rates per 100,000 population)

MORTALITY DISPARITY RATES

AI/AN Rate 2009-2011

U.S. All Races Rate - 2010

Ratio: AI/AN to U.S. All Races

* Unintentional injuries include motor vehicle crashes.

NOTE: Rates are adjusted to compensate for misreporting of American Indian and Alaska Native race on state death certificates. American Indian and Alaska Native age-adjusted death rate columns present data for the 3-year period specified. U.S. All Races columns present data for a one-year period. Rates are based on American Indian and Alaska Native alone; 2010 census with bridged-race categories.

October 2019

Download this Fact Sheet [PDF - 296 KB]

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The Indian Health Service (IHS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for providing federal health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives. The provision of health services to members of federally-recognized Tribes grew out of the special government-to-government relationship between the federal government and Indian Tribes.

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Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities

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Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities

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This paper reviews the connection between living near abandoned mines and the increased rates of certain diseases. It includes case studies of the Sioux Nation and gold mines and the Navajo Nation and uranium mines, and addresses future concerns/actions.

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Abstract

Purpose of Review

More than a century of hard rock mining has left a legacy of >160,000 abandoned mines in the Western USA that are home to the majority of Native American lands. This article describes how abrogation of treaty rights, ineffective policies, lack of infrastructure, and a lack of research in Native communities converge to create chronic exposure, ill-defined risks, and tribal health concerns.

Recent Findings

Recent results show that Native Americans living near abandoned uranium mines have an increased likelihood for kidney disease and hypertension, and an increased likelihood of developing multiple chronic diseases linked to their proximity to the mine waste and activities bringing them in contact with the waste. Biomonitoring confirms higher than expected exposure to uranium and associated metals in the waste in adults, neonates, and children in these communities.

Summary

These sites will not be cleaned up for many generations making it critical to understand and prioritize exposure-toxicity relationships in Native populations to appropriately allocate limited resources to protect health. Recent initiatives, in partnership with Native communities, recognize these needs and support development of tribal research capacity to ensure that research respectful of tribal culture and policies can address concerns in the future. In addition, recognition of the risks posed by these abandoned sites should inform policy change to protect community health in the future.

Keywords: Abandoned mines, Native Americans, Environmental health, Environmental justice, Heavy metals, Environmental policy

Introduction

Contamination of soil and water by waste from more than 160,000 abandoned hard rock mines throughout the Western USA (operationally defined to include Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) has created a legacy of chronic exposures to metal mixtures in Native American communities. Biomonitoring in the Strong Heart Study cohort which included Native Americans from these Western states supports increased metal exposures by identifying unique patterns of elevated metal mixtures relative to several other races in urban, suburban, and rural settings [ 1]. The political and social context in which these exposures developed highlights a history of environmental injustices based in clashes of cultural values, and political and ethical failures to support negotiated treaty rights. Understanding the health impacts of these exposures is complicated by a lack of understanding of the toxicity of metals in complex mixtures in any population, exacerbated by a general lack of environmental health studies in Native populations in particular. In addition, many of the Native communities in proximity to these waste sites have numerous risk factors associated with disparities in health outcomes such as poverty, educational status, infrastructure, and frequently, compromised underlying health status. Further complications to predicting toxicological responses arise from the traditional and subsistence lifestyles of many Native communities that create distinct exposure patterns not captured in the assumptions of standard suburban, recreational, or occupational exposure scenarios used for risk assessments [ 2]. Traditional lifestyles, such as eating or harvesting local plants for sustenance, ceremonial or medicinal purposes, or drinking from historically used water sources may result in greater than predicted exposures of Native Americans to mine wastes now contaminating these sources.

The impacts of the waste on tribal nations are not likely to resolve for generations to come. In addition to the number of sites and estimated clean-up costs that exceed any available resources, the sheer volume of wastes at these sites is a barrier. Laguna Pueblo's Jackpile Mine Superfund site alone is greater than 34 km ² including disturbance of more than 12 km ² [ 3]. Geochemical and physical factors complicate understanding mobility and challenge technological remediation strategies as the complexities in mixture composition and geochemistry produce varying results across sites. Removal of waste is complicated by the hazards inherent in transport of such large volumes of hazardous materials through communities, and in the case of uranium, by the fact that the mixture of toxic and radioactive metals creates a mixed waste with limited disposal options. This paper will highlight the framework in which these health, political, social, and environmental factors converge to create ongoing uncertainty about tribal health and to discuss new initiatives to reduce these uncertainties for generations likely to face these risks well into the future.

Treaty Rights vs. Mining Interests on Tribal Lands

Through various treaties developed between Native American tribes and the US Government, the tribes ceded vast amounts of their traditional land base in exchange for recognition of their sovereign status to self-government and commitments to ensure protection of their health and culture. Through these treaties, certain regions of the country were set aside as Tribal "Reservations"-lands over which a tribe had sovereignty. As mineral resources were identified on those lands, ethical and legal responsibilities set in the treaties were abrogated by the US government to provide access for mining by successively shrinking the area of lands designated to each tribe; by legislating in the 66th Congress the leasing of tribal lands in the Western USA by individuals and corporations for purposes of mineral extraction for 20 years, renewable in successive 10 year periods; and by prohibiting in a 1919 law the creation of any future Reservations on Public Lands through executive orders of the President [ 4]. In If You Poison Us, Peter Eichstaedt's comprehensive review of congressional debates and policies leading up to this legislation describes discussions indicating that the creation of Reservations by Executive Order on lands holding such vast reserves of minerals would never have been allowed had Congress been aware of those reserves [ 5**]. In 1902, Indian Affairs Commissioner William Jones argued that land should not be set aside exclusively for Native American use and the more than 200,000 km ² currently in Reservations should be "thrown open as rapidly as possible", acknowledging that the treaties made it necessary for Congress to "treat with them" before opening their lands to settlement, and therefore Congress should use some arbitrary means to open the land [ 6 *].

The 1919 legislation provided for 5% of the net value of the extracted resources paid to the USA "for benefit of the Indians" to be deposited in the Treasury to the credit of those Indians having tribal rights to lease land, but at all times subject to "appropriation by Congress for their benefit". However, documented shadow accounting by mining companies reduced that net value and therefore the amount paid into those accounts [ 5**]. The continued disregard for the ethical and legal guarantees of the treaties resulted in long-term mismanagement of Native American Tribal Trust funds by the US government and further limited tribal benefits. Nearly a century later, between 2009 and 2016, the US Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior reached settlements with more than 100 tribes totaling $3.3 billion USD for mismanagement of monetary and natural resource assets held in trust by the USA for the benefit of the tribes [ 7]. These settlements, however, do not come close to addressing the mining legacy. A recent $1 billion USD settlement from Tronox awarded to the Navajo Nation has been estimated sufficient to address remedial action of only ∼10% of the 3.6 billion kg of uranium mine waste on Navajo Nation alone [ 8]. The 520 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo represent less than 12% of the more than 4000 abandoned uranium mines in the Western USA, and an even smaller fraction of the more than 161,000 abandoned hard rock mines in the Western USA. These numbers provide a perspective on the scope of the problem being faced by tribal communities.

Scope of the Problem and Ongoing Threats

As a result of the disregard of treaty rights, lands on and proximal to Native lands in the Western states (Fig. ) were extensively mined for metals such as gold, silver, lead, copper, molybdenum, and vanadium since the mid-1800s and uranium since the 1940s. As deposits played out and demand for specific metals declined, the mines were abandoned-resulting in more than 160,000 abandoned hard rock mines (not including coal) in the Western states [ 9], more than 4000 of which are abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) [ 10]. Today, more than 4.1 million Native Americans live in the Western USA, 478,000 on Reservation lands [ 11]. Combining US Census information [ 11] and a gridded population dataset [ 12], we estimated that more than 600,000 Native Americans live within 10 km of an abandoned mine (Table ). Potential associated contaminants of concern for Native Americans within 10 km based on the primary metal mined are listed in Table . In addition, depending on the process, chemicals such as cyanide, sulfate, nitrate, and others used in ore extraction could remain in the waste or water sources. Population estimates based on census data assume inclusion of tribal members in the Census pool. While estimates of accuracy of count for the most recent census are not yet available, previous estimates have indicated an undercount of Native Americans ranging from 5% [ 13] to nearly 20% [ 14].

Table 1

Hard rock metal mine type

Common metal contaminants of concern

Estimated count of Native Americans living <10 km from mine type

Additional associated exposure sources include ore transfer stations, waste piles, mill tailings piles, and areas affected by spills, resulting in more than 500,000 discrete contamination sources [ 9]. Sites are most often unmarked, unfenced, and located only through historical memory or mining records. Using available geospatial information on mineral extraction from the US Mineral Resources Data System [ 26], Fig. visually highlights the proximity of reservation land to these mining regions.

Although tribal control of mineral resource leasing and extraction has strengthened during the twentieth century due to laws such as the Indian Mineral Development Act of 1982 and the 2001 Bureau of Land Management Rule 3809 [ 27], the General Mining Law of 1872 remains in effect as the overarching regulation. The location of abandoned mines within tribal watersheds and the lack of environmental protections in the 1872 Mining Law has left a legacy for exposure not only through direct contamination of tribal lands, but through continuing drainage of contaminated mine water. Impoundments of untreated mine waste and water are designated as waste treatment systems, which exempts many bodies of water from Clean Water Act regulations [ 28]. This designation supported by the 1872 Mining Law allows discharge of untreated mine waste into surface water and has resulted in contamination of an estimated 40% of the headwaters of Western US watersheds [ 29], water sources still relied on by virtually all Native American tribes for survival and cultural preservation [ 28].

The Gold King Mine Spill in 2015 was but an example of the implications this legacy poses throughout watersheds in the West. In that spill, 11,300 m ³ of contaminated mine water breached containment from the abandoned Gold King Mine in Southern Colorado, carrying lead, arsenic, and other metals (see Table ) through Ute and Navajo tribal lands as well as non-tribal lands along the San Juan River [ 16], leading Navajo Nation to file a lawsuit against USEPA [ 30]. Releases from abandoned gold mines have also contaminated waters and lands of tribes including, among others, Fort Belknap in north-central Montana and numerous tribal lands in California, Colorado, Nevada [ 31- 33] and South Dakota (see " Case Study 1 " below).

The threats to tribal lands, however, are not only from legacy mines. New mines continue to be fought by tribal communities as illustrated by legal actions taken by the Western Shoshone Tribe in Nevada [ 31], the Menominee Tribe along the Michigan-Wisconsin border [ 34] and Navajo communities [ 35]. Pressure to open new uranium mines led Navajo Nation to pass the Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005 banning uranium mining and processing within Navajo Indian Country as the Fundamental Laws of the Diné indicate substances in the Earth harmful to the people should not be disturbed [ 36].

Sociodemographic and Infrastructure Risk Factors in Native Communities

Without proper understanding of toxicity and factors controlling it in Native American populations, the risks represented by these wastes remain ill-defined. Native Americans have lower life expectancy and more health challenges than other populations in the USA. Data compiled by Indian Health Services (2007-2009) and other entities illustrate the significant health disparities observed within these communities (Table ). These disparities are frequently attributed to genetic susceptibility, and while some studies show mutations in individuals with a specific disease, the lack of population genetic data defining prevalence questions this assumption [ 37**]. The persistence of disparities in virtually all prevailing diseases across multiple language groups suggests other contributors to these outcomes, such as social determinants, underexplored disparities in environmental exposures and response to toxic insults, or gene-environment interactions [ 38].

Table 2

Experimental and epidemiologic data support the association between exposure to toxic metals and increased risk for a variety of negative health outcomes including kidney and cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive disorders, and various cancers in both Native and non-Native populations [ 44- 56]. Cancer mortality rates for the Native American population increased over a 20-year period (1990-2009), while decreasing for Whites during the same time [ 43]. Two prospective studies have specifically linked exposure to the metals cadmium and arsenic to cancer mortality in Native populations [ 53, 56]. Preliminary epidemiologic data document nearly 4 out of every 10 residents of the Wind River Reservation of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho have a blood relative who has died of cancer [ 57]. Wind River was the site of a former uranium mill and the remediated waste pile remains in the community. The preliminary report falls short of making a direct association but reinforces their concern that the waste is adversely affecting health [ 57, 58]. In 1988, US DOE found soil, surface water, and shallow groundwater on Wind River Reservation were contaminated with uranium, radium, and thorium and chose to use natural attenuation to reduce the contamination over time. However, following floods in 2010, monitoring wells showed uranium spikes as high as 100 times the USEPA Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for drinking water (0.03 mg/L) [ 58]. Despite this and other reports of contamination linked to increased cancer incidence and other negative health outcomes, there remains a paucity of population studies in these Native communities. Moreover, our understanding of exposure-toxicity relationships in Native communities continues to be limited by our general lack of understanding of the toxicity of any complex mixtures. Even determination of dose in Native communities can be grossly underestimated by neglecting traditional cultural practices resulting in frequent and direct contact with contaminated lands and waters, and a greater, sometimes 100%, reliance on traditional and locally grown foods [ 2].

Disparities in tribal infrastructure further exacerbate risk. Nearly 14% of Native households lack access to a public water system compared to 0.6% of the USA as a whole; with some tribes lacking access for more than 30% of their populations [ 59], creating a greater reliance on unregulated sources. Uranium MCLs are exceeded in more than 13% of unregulated wells on Navajo Nation, with arsenic exceeding the MCL in 15% and co-occurrence in 7% of wells [ 60]. Concentrations are strongly associated with distance from abandoned mines. Moreover, when regulated public water is available, drinking water systems in Indian country experience "significant violations" or health-based violations of Safe Drinking Water Act regulations twice as frequently as other systems [ 61], exceeding MCLs for various metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, trihalomethanes, pesticides, and nitrates. Two months prior to detection of lead in the Flint, MI, water supply, a regulated community drinking water supply serving the Navajo community of Sanders was found to have exceeded uranium MCLs for more than a decade as a result of migration of contaminants from a 1979 uranium mill tailings spill [ 62]. Although state officials were aware of the problem, in contrast to Flint, no notification to the community occurred, and no federal outcry or resources resulted. These challenges and others demonstrate the need for infrastructure [ 63] and that the gap in fundamental infrastructure sets a background exposure upon which other environmental exposures and health disparities are overlaid.

Case Study 1: Black Hills Gold and the Sioux Nation

For the nine tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, the Black Hills are sacred lands of their traditional homeland in the northern Great Plains. Following the Battle of Little Big Horn, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between the US government and Sioux Nation guaranteed them "undisturbed use and occupation" of the Black Hills and stated that no treaty for the cession of any part of the reservation would be valid unless signed by three-fourths of the adult male Sioux population. However, when gold was discovered, those treaty rights were abandoned by US confiscation of the Black Hills in the 1877 Act, signed by fewer than 10% of the adult male Sioux population, to allow for mining. Over the next century, mining companies extracted billions of dollars in metals from these lands. Production from 1875 to 1971 reported more than 1.1 million kg of gold extracted, which even at $1 USD per gram would exceed $1 billion USD. The Sioux never accepted the legality of the Black Hills confiscation and sued the US government for return of the land. In 1980, the US Supreme Court upheld a decision to support the Sioux claim that US government's decision to occupy the Black Hills constituted a "taking of tribal property" with an implied obligation for the government to make just compensation. Rather than returning the land, however, the US Supreme Court awarded the nine tribes of the Great Sioux Nation $102 million USD as compensation for their loss. The Sioux have never collected this payment, which remains in trust and now exceeds $1.3 billion USD [ 64].

Why would some of the poorest tribes in the country, with unemployment rates as high as 80%, turn down such a large sum of money? The award of financial compensation misses many key points central to the disputes between the tribes and the federal government. First, the suit was never about money but about the return of lands central to the spirit of the Sioux Nation. Second, the value is small relative to the profit made from both the land and resource extraction in the intervening years. Third, to take money for the land is acknowledging a real estate transaction, and in the words of former Oglala president Teresa Two Bulls "If we accept the money, then we have no more of the treaty obligations that the federal government has with us for taking our land, for taking our gold, all our resources out of the Black Hills ... we're poor now, we'll be poorer then when that happens," [ 64]. While the Sioux and the federal government continue to seek a compromise, the legacy of the Black Hills mining continues to pose concerns for the health of the Sioux.

As illustrated in Fig. , more than 10,000 abandoned gold mines are on or near Native American Reservation lands throughout the Western USA. In the Black Hills, there are hundreds of gold mines but few as profitable as the Homestake Mine near Lead, which produced more than 964,000 kg of the 1.1 million kg reported for the Black Hills from 1875 to 1971 [ 65]. Homestake discharged high concentrations of arsenic from their mill directly into the Cheyenne River drainage for decades [ 66] contaminating 29 km of downstream creeks that received Superfund action for arsenic contaminated soil, sediments, and water. Although the site was removed from the National Priorities List in 1996, there remains a band of arsenic-containing sediment in the Cheyenne River banks and floodplains that form the southern boundary of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation (more than 250 km downstream) [ 67]. While the arsenic-contaminated sediment in the banks has been buried by years of deposition since the closure of the mine in 2002, intermittent floods during operational years deposited contaminated sediment that remains in surface soils of lands used for agriculture, ranching, and ceremonial purposes as far as 1 km from the river ( personal communication, Dec. 2016, C. Ducheneaux, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe).

Within the Cheyenne River Sioux, antinuclear antibody (ANA) prevalence exceeds that found in the US population, with occurrence predicted by the proximity to the arsenic deposits [ 68]. While the presence of ANA does not alone indicate frank autoimmune disease, an associated elevated prevalence of several specific autoantibodies was also observed [ 68]. ANAs serve as early serologic markers in a variety of autoimmune diseases [ 69- 71] and have also been linked to mercury exposure from Amazonian gold mines, to consumption of fish contaminated with methylmercury, and to drinking arsenic contaminated water [ 72- 76].

The arsenic is located in the floodplains where gathering of fruit for sustenance and herbs for medicinal, traditional, and ceremonial practices has been documented as well as other traditional land use practices that create direct exposure pathways through ingestion, inhalation, and dermal contact. These uses raise ethical and policy issues around how exposure and health are evaluated. If standard exposure assessment assumptions interpreted through extant health research are applied to a Native community practicing a traditional lifestyle, such as the Cheyenne River Sioux, results may underestimate exposure [ 2]. Secondly, not only are data on response to toxicants limited for Native Americans, the definition of health itself may differ substantially between the cultures with regulatory agencies interpreting health from a Western disease model and the tribal population using a more holistic view based their belief of interconnection between people, their ecosystem, and their well-being [ 77**]. Our team is currently working with the CRST to understand the mobility of the Homestake arsenic; evaluate human exposure through ceremonial, traditional, ranching, and recreation activities; and assess the contribution of exposure to the high prevalence of autoimmune markers observed in those living in the floodplain [ 68].

Case Study 2: Uranium and the Navajo Nation

Uranium mines present a special subset of abandoned hard rock mines resulting from the Cold War and associated political stressors. Although reservations encompass only 5.6% of land area in the Western USA, approximately one in five uranium mines are located within 10 km of an Native American Reservation with more than 75% (more than 3200 of the 4600) within 80 km (Fig. ). This does not include lands traditionally used by the tribes or lands feeding tribal water- and airsheds. Figure highlights areas where uranium was the dominant ore extracted and illustrates that multiple tribes are affected by AUMs, including Navajo Nation in the Four Corners region, multiple Sioux tribes in the Black Hills region, Northern Arapahoe and Eastern Shoshone at Wind River in Wyoming, and several tribes including the Spokane in Washington State.

The development of the atomic bomb and the subsequent nuclear arsenal that fueled the Cold War led to prioritization of uranium mining above protection of human health, as well documented by Eichstaedt in If You Poison Us [ 5**]. Vanadium, which occurs in combination with uranium in carnotite, was mined on Navajo as early as 1902 to support steel hardening. The Manhattan Project's need for uranium made the repurposing of these mines expedient and led to government action to promote uranium exploration without regard for protection of human health. The hazards of radiation were recognized since the 1920s, and increased respiratory disease and lung cancer in European uranium miners was well known by the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and others from the findings of lung cancer and respiratory disease in European miners. However, the AEC was reluctant to set standards within mines or take any other measures to protect miners' health, fearing that public awareness of the dangers in the mines would limit their ability to obtain uranium. Following the US Public Health Service's (PHS) requests to set safety standards, the AEC set standards of 10 pCi/L in all operations except uranium mines; after lengthy debate, a standard of 100 pCi/L in uranium mines was set in 1967-23 years after the beginning of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation and 17 years after the first US Public Health Service uranium miners' health study identified respiratory risks. It would be another 33 years before these details were made public and the US Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) that would begin a process of compensating those affected. Compensation of Navajo miners was slowed significantly, however, as a result of barriers in the law requiring documentation of births, marriages, and death records not routinely kept within the tribe and the restriction of compensable health effects to lung cancer only. The law has been revised only once, in 2000, to incorporate additional compensable diseases and include uranium mill workers [ 78], while additional revisions to compensate miners who worked after the government turned over mine safety to the private sector in 1971 remain in limbo.

As late as 1991-2005, 25% of the deaths in the 4137 former uranium miners followed by US PHS were attributed to lung cancer, with Native miners at triple the expected rate [ 79]. Native miners bore a disproportionate burden of non-malignant respiratory disease as well. Their rate of pneumoconiosis was as much as fourfold higher than in non-Hispanic whites (NHW), and they also had an increased risk of restrictive lung disease and decreased FEV ₁ [ 80]. For Navajo miners, underground uranium mining was the primary contributor to non-malignant disease including obstructive lung disease, while in non-Native populations, smoking was the major contributor. More than 70% of Navajo miners had never smoked (compared to 23% of NHW miners) [ 80]. However, compensation through the government's Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, discriminated against Native miners by requiring, in addition to radiographic evidence of lung damage, a second measure of spirometry less than 75% of a comparison value derived from a NHW population. Clinical researchers demonstrated that using that criterion to determine loss of function resulted in exclusion of 24% of Native miners who would qualify with a 75% reduction in lung function if Native American-based function formulas were used [ 80]. Other studies concluded that Colorado Plateau Native American uranium miners disproportionately suffer excess mortality risks from lung cancer [ 81, 82]. Native Americans were a substantial portion of the underground workforce, and it has been argued that the observed differences in effect related to a higher exposure. Disease rates reported above, however, were corrected for exposure, and Native miners were shown to have significantly lower average lifetime mining exposure than NHWs and Hispanics [ 80]. As many as 4000 Navajo men worked in the uranium mines and mills and hundreds of Navajo miners died and continue to die of lung cancer and other respiratory disease [ 83, 84], essentially wiping out a generation of Navajo men in some communities and leaving a legacy of psychological and environmental trauma [ 84]. The increased toxicity to Native miners underscores the potential for unique sensitivities to toxicants within the Native community as compared to all races results, questioning the derivation of standards on the basis of data collected from other populations.

While the fights over RECA proceeded, people living in Navajo communities continued to be chronically exposed to waste from the 520 abandoned uranium mines, 4 abandoned uranium mills, and more than 1100 waste sites [ 85] in and proximal to their communities. Uranium mine waste presents a unique hazard resulting from the associated radioactive decay chain introducing additional contaminants including radium, thorium, and radon to the already complex mixture of associated metals often including, for example, arsenic, cadmium, and lead [ 86]. The lack of regulation and security of waste associated with these facilities and abandoned sites, as well as lack of concern during the operational phase led to the use of contaminated material in the construction of homes [ 85], as well as contamination of water sources potentially used for drinking [ 59]. Looking at >1300 Navajo community members with and without exposure to uranium mine waste, we find a significant strong association between exposures occurring during the active mining era (1940s-1980s) and later development of kidney disease, exposure more than doubling the odds ratio. For those exposed to legacy waste, controlling for the mining era exposures, exposure is significantly associated with an increased likelihood of hypertension and of developing one or more chronic diseases including hypertension, diabetes, and kidney disease [ 87**]. Serum from a subset of >200 individuals from that cohort, representing a full range of exposure, showed a significant inverse relationship between inflammatory potential in cellular bioassays and distance from legacy waste sites consistent with induction of pathways that contribute to atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease [ 88]. While risk factors traditionally considered for these diseases clinically were also significant predictors, these results underscore the need for clinicians to probe for information about exposure as well in identifying those at risk.

Ongoing Concern for Future Generations

Among Native communities, there is concern about not only the health of people living in impacted communities today but also the health of generations yet to come. The Women of All Red Nations (WARN) worry that uranium mining may contribute to high rates of miscarriage and reproductive cancers observed among Lakota women [ 89]. While studies of direct impacts of mine waste exposures on tribal lands have been extremely limited, several recent initiatives are beginning to fill these gaps.

A 1981 study in Navajo babies showed that congenital anomalies, developmental disorders, and other adverse birth outcomes were associated with maternal proximity to uranium mining operations, tailings, or mine dumps [ 90]. Uncertainties in these results were not followed up until 2010 when the Navajo Birth Cohort Study (NBCS) [ 37**, 91] was initiated as part of a Congressional Five-Year Plan to Address Uranium Contamination on Navajo [ 92]. The NBCS is a prospective assessment of the effect of exposure to uranium and co-occurring metals in mine waste on birth outcomes and neurodevelopment through 1 year of age conducted as a partnership with the University of New Mexico, Southwest Research Information Center, Navajo Nation Indian Health Service, Navajo Nation Department of Health, and funders CDC/ATSDR. This is the first prospective birth cohort addressing the impacts of environmental contamination on birth outcomes in a Native population. Preliminary data confirm exposures to uranium prenatally and over the first year of life. The recently funded NIH National Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) initiative will include both the NBCS and a Sioux cohort in this national synthetic cohort of more than 50,000 children, allowing assessment of the relationship of metal exposure, neurodevelopment, and other outcomes through at least age 5. ECHO will also allow determination of unique sensitivities within these tribal populations through comparisons of exposure-toxicity relationships across cultures, races, and lifestyles.

Two of five NIEHS/NIMHD/USEPA P50 Centers of Excellence in Environmental Health Disparities funded in 2015 focus on multiple Native American populations and metals exposures. These centers will also help to identify unique exposure pathways, understand the biogeochemical characteristics of metal mixtures, and document mechanisms of toxicity.

These multigenerational studies using common methods and involving Native American communities in data collection and interpretation at all stages begin to answer the longstanding questions on health, and, importantly, to build capacity for investigation of these questions by tribal researchers.

Ethical, Scientific, and Policy Challenges to Increasing Native American Research

To fully understand the impacts of abandoned mine waste and to inform policies that protect tribal populations from future adverse health impacts, the body of scientific studies will need to incorporate more tribal studies, incorporate cultural and traditional practices into assessments of toxicity, and better understand unique responses in these populations. This broader inclusion, however, comes with its own challenges.

The recognition of treaties granting sovereign status to tribal nations within the USA brings with it rights of tribes to control the research process through their own institutional review boards, to mandate that all data and specimens generated through research remain the property of the tribe, and to mandate conditions for data sharing and certain types of analyses, such as genetic analyses. Recent requirements of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the major funders of health research in the USA, require sharing of all data collected with public funds, and often require investigators to obtain consent for genetic analyses, creating cultural conflicts between the tribes and research funders. Models are emerging, however, that show these issues are not insurmountable. Alaska Natives have developed a biospecimen and data repository that stores all samples and data collected on Alaska Natives and controls future use through a board on which Alaska Natives are in the majority [ 93]. NIH recognition of the importance of these concerns is supported by their creation of a Tribal Research Office within the office of the director, currently led by a Native molecular biologist [ 94].

Tribal demands previously seen as challenging, such as involvement of tribal communities in all phases and aspects of research; insistence on honest communication of research goals and progress throughout the study; and ensuring research has benefits for tribal communities by informing policy for improved health care and prevention of future health impacts are now consistent with best practices for environmental health studies as discussed in the Ethics Guidelines for Environmental Epidemiologists [ 95]. While recognition of the need to include tribal populations in research has grown in the federal agencies and research community, grant reviewers even recently have expressed ethical concerns over funding research in Native American populations because it will not be generalizable. Additional education and guidance to point out the ethical fallacy in the current practice of generalizing dominant culture results to policies affecting tribal populations may be necessary before equity is achieved.

Conclusions and Future Research Directions

The abandoned mines on and near Native lands in the Western USA are but one in an ongoing series of insults. The sheer number of mines and the volumes of waste guarantee that the legacy will persist for generations to come. In addition, the mines present only one chapter in the history of environmental injustices on Native lands. Similar articles could be written focusing on impacts to tribal lands from coal strip mining, from the legacy of military bases, and from oil and gas development. The support from thousands representing tribes across the country for the Standing Rock Sioux camp opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 is indicative of the common theme felt by tribes not only in the Western USA but throughout the country and the world where treaty rights to protect health and culture have been continually challenged and eroded in favor of resource development.

In spite of the recognized threats to tribal health posed by these ongoing toxicant exposures, and the demonstrated risk factors that put tribal populations in a position of increased vulnerability, research to understand the health impacts has been hampered by the small sizes of the communities, reviewers concerns about generalizability of results, and in some cases by the distrust of research within tribal communities who have witnessed researchers build careers but leave nothing behind to improve the health of the population. In contrast to the identified risks, the strength and support derived from the maintenance of culture, ceremonies, and traditional lifestyles may also provide a resiliency to offset some of the adverse effects. Understanding how these factors interact is critical to designing effective interventions to protect health benefitting all populations.

The history of mining in the Western USA and the legacy that affects so many Native American communities highlight the need for not only better inclusion of tribal populations in toxicologic studies but also in using these data in the development of standards that ensure the cleanup of the sites is truly protective of the health of the tribes. Ongoing studies point increasingly to the fact that the mixed metal wastes from these mines continue to have multigenerational impacts to the health of Native tribes. Our work and others have shown that metals can inhibit DNA-repair processes [ 96, 97**, 98, 99, 100] and induce immunotoxicity [ 101- 104], providing important clues into the mechanisms by which these mixtures affect health. Through understanding the mechanisms by which these effects occur and understanding the role of exposures in the health disparities seen in these communities, effective interventions can be designed to protect populations for the decades likely to remain before the mine waste is removed or remediated.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge all of our indigenous partners we have had the pleasure of working with over the last three decades and from whom we have learned about the lasting impact of the abandoned mines, with particular acknowledgement of those from Tachee/Blue Gap and Red Water Pond Road communities on Navajo, the 1304 families in our original DiNEH Project, and the more than 750 families currently in the Navajo Birth Cohort Study. We also acknowledge the partnership of our research partners from Southwest Research and Information Center, Navajo Nation Department of Health, Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, the Cheyenne River Sioux Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Crow Environmental Health Steering Committee, Missouri Breaks Industries, and faculty and staff from the UNM METALS team. We thank the following funding agencies for supporting work reported here: Navajo Birth Cohort Study: CDC/NCEH/ATSDR: 5U01 TS000135-05; Center for Native Environmental Health Research Equity: NIEHS/NIMHD P50ES026102 & USEPA (#83615701); NIEHS: R01ES014565, R25ES013208; NIHOD: UG3 OD023344-01; NIH/NCI 5P30CA118100-1; and a NIGMS ASERT IRACDA postdoctoral fellowship, K12 GM088021. This material was developed in part under Assistance Agreement No. 83615701 awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication. Finally, all Navajo Nation research is reviewed and monitored by the Navajo Nation Human Research Review Board.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All procedures performed in cited studies involving human participants conducted by the authors were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of New Mexico Institutional Review Board, the Navajo Nation Human Research Review Board, and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Council, and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Footnotes

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Ethics and Policy

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98. Hudson LG, Cooper KL, Atlas SR, King BS, Liu KJ. Arsenic interaction with zinc finger motifs. In: States JC, editor. Arsenic: Exposure Sources, Health Risks and Mechanisms of Toxicity. 1st ed.: John Wiley & Sons; 2015. p. 291-312.

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Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities

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More than a century of hard rock mining has left a legacy of >160,000 abandoned mines in the Western USA that are home to the majority of Native American lands. This article describes how abrogation of treaty rights, ineffective policies, lack ...

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IHS Announces ​​$46.4 Million Available for Tribal Behavioral Health Programs

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For the population that has borne the brunt of COVID-19--Indigenous Peoples--Indian Health Services this month announced a $46.4 million investment into behavioral health programming across Indian Country.

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Addressing food insecurity in a Native American reservation using community-based participatory research

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Rural Poverty, Food Access, and Public Health Outcomes

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Rural Poverty, Food Access, and Public Health Outcomes

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Rural Poverty Food Access and Public Health Outcomes

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This 2011 paper includes a definition of food sovereignty, and compares food sovereignty with a neoliberal food regime.

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Food Sovereignty_A New Rights Framework for Food and Nature

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This article outlines dietary changes in Native American communities, including threats to nutrient diversity and how nutrient poor diets affect health. The authors point to tribal sovereignty as a model for American biodiversity.

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Perspectives from members of the Klamath tribe on the relationship between place and health.

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Native Americans know how place affects health | Place Matters Oregon | OHA

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CBPR study into effects of food security on health in Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. This study includes an assessment of food quantity and quality

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The American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) from the American Public Health Association (APHA) publications

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Objectives. To examine food insecurity and cardiovascular disease–related health outcomes among American Indians (AIs) in rural Oklahoma. Methods. We surveyed a cross-sectional sample of 513 AI adults to assess food insecurity domains (i.e., food quality and quantity) and obesity, diabetes, and hype…

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Focuses on seed sovereignty, with the goal to "radicalize and disrupt colonized spaces through land, body, and food sovereignty work, community building, and cultural preservation"

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ANCESTRAL ACRES FARM & GARDEN We are excited to announce that we are pursuing our first-ever farming adventure as Ancestral Acres Farm and Garden in a loving relationship with our newest collective member and land steward, Mayam! Through their leadership and in conversation with Tiwa relatives, we hope to grow food with our Queer [...]

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At an autumn Learning Lodge in Coast Miwok, Southern Pomo Territory, Elder Leroy Little Bear (Blackfeet) shared with us a powerful teaching: as Native Peoples, "we find our cultural resilience in the medicine of the land." As a place-based, Indigenous-led intertribal organization, The Cultural Conservancy takes this teaching to heart. It is a reminder that when things are difficult, we can look to the medicines of the land to strengthen us, and in times of disease or hunger, they are our blessings. Food is medicine. So how do we, as Native communities, best cultivate the medicines of the land and honor the resilience of our cultures?

Here in Coast Miwok Territory on the flanks of Mount Tamalpais in mid-summer, many medicines are revealing themselves: bay nuts, acorns, thimbleberries, manzanita, and madrone berries are all ripening with the long days and summer heat. We recognize the Native foods of this land and the First Peoples who have millennia-long relations with these plant and animal relatives, which they harvest for food, medicine, craft, tools, and historically, most of their material culture. While the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo (represented by the sovereign nation of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria) have the first rights to harvest and utilize these medicines, many of these Native foods are locked up on private property or protected areas where harvesting rights are off limits.

Planting Coastal Live Oak acorns with Mauricio. Photo by Mateo Hinojosa.

Thanks to the global Indigenous movement and national struggles and victories like Standing Rock, the Buffalo Treaty, the recent recognition of Muscogee Creek land rights in Oklahoma, mascot name changes, and the Black Lives Matter movement (to name a few), there is a growing awareness in mainstream society about the importance of respecting the sovereignty of Native Americans and their lands. For Indigenous Peoples the world over, the right to our lands and foods is primary. Food sovereignty is political and cultural, nutritional, and cosmological. It is about honoring the Indigenous foods that give us life-whether plants, animals, fungi, salt, or other place-based gifts from the land. As we have learned from relatives David and Wendy Bray (Seneca), the Haudenosaunee calls these foods "our life sustainers."

The Cultural Conservancy has been supporting and advocating for Food Sovereignty since we supported the restoration of a Victory Garden in the Presidio National Park with native seeds in the late 1990s, followed by our participation in a historic Native American delegation to Slow Food Terra Madre in 2006, and through urban gardens, workshops, and cultural demonstrations with intertribal and global Indigenous communities over the past 25 years. The Cultural Conservancy supports Indigenous food sovereignty through local farms, a growing Native Foodways Program, national and international networks, a podcast series, and global grantmaking. Our long term commitment is to mend the circle of Indigenous health and wellness through the revitalization of Native agriculture and foodways, from seed to plate, soil to sky, song to recipe, and ancestors to future generations.

The Cultural Conservancy team weeding and teaching in cornfields. Photo by Melissa K. Nelson.

Local Farms
Today, we are grateful to be a partner at the Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden at the College of Marin in Novato, California, where we have grown a large variety of heirloom Native foods since 2012. We were originally invited to become a farm partner by one of the farm's founders, Wendy Johnson, a Zen farmer and educator. We uplift this invitation as an important example of the kind of land rematriation work that needs to happen more-a non-Indigenous managed farm prioritizing sharing space and turning over fertile land to Native Food Sovereignty work. On less than half an acre, we grow native foods and medicines, save rare heirloom seeds, and revitalize California native plants, improving local Native communities' access to the land, food, and seeds that foster deeper connections to cultural traditions.

From origin stories to family histories, each resilient seed we grow at the farm has an ancestral story to tell. We are guided by the seed-keepers before us whose stewardship cared for the seeds, such as the Bray Family from Seneca Nation, who gifted us the responsibility to take care of Onëo-gen, the sacred eight-row Seneca white corn that we have been growing for more than seven years. This year, our fields are full of Chimayo chile peppers, Lakota squash, Hopi purple beans, Tohono O'odham tepary beans, Cherokee purple tomatoes, and many more heirloom varieties from Native communities across Turtle Island, each carrying thousands of years of knowledge and story.

Rowen White holding blue corn. Photo by Mateo Hinojosa.

The Cultural Conservancy's Foodways Program
The farm in Marin County is stewarded by our Native Foodways Program, a 12-year-old program that supports the Food Sovereignty of the Bay Area Native community through the revitalization of traditional Native foodways. From Indigenous agriculture to cultural land stewardship, we support a spiritual and reciprocal relationship to ancestral lands. This is especially needed in the Bay Area, where intertribal urban communities and displaced California Indian Peoples have been economically, politically, and culturally dispossessed of ancestral land and place-based traditions.

By providing community access to our farm and the foods it produces, our work mends the broken circle of traditional lifeways by offering opportunities for Native communities to reconnect with their ancestral knowledge systems, practices, foods, and seeds. Our programming includes a robust food distribution program, a Native seed library, Native youth internships and apprenticeships, educational events, workshops, and demonstrations on Indigenous agriculture, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Native sciences, and more. This work ultimately aims to heal historical trauma and return physical, mental, and spiritual health to Native community-all based in loving, reciprocal relationships with the land and her many gifts.

Branching Out
Food is a community endeavor. To cultivate and feast good food, we need community: farmers, seed-keepers, fishers, gatherers, knowledge holders, chefs, basketweavers, hunters, and more. We are grateful to be part of the Native American food movement through a series of networks and have supported the creation of the Slow Food Turtle Island Association. After years of informal networking and collaboration with each other and the Slow Food movement, Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) spearheaded this effort to bring us together in a historic meeting in Taos, New Mexico in 2016 to formalize our Native American food network. We are organized as an association directly linked to Slow Food International in Bra, Italy. Slow Food Turtle Island Association represents diverse intertribal communities in the U.S. and Canada concerned with health and well being, land use and farming, food policy, and the protection and revitalization of rare, heirloom food varieties and associated cultural practices. The Slow Food Turtle Island Association supports the general ethos of Slow Food to promote good, clean, fair food for all, with a focus on the First Foods of the Native Peoples of Turtle Island.

The Slow Food Turtle Island Association is also linked directly to the Indigenous Terra Madre Network, which defines itself as a network of Indigenous communities, partners, and organizations. It was born out of the wider Terra Madre network to bring Indigenous Peoples' voices to the forefront of the debate on food and culture, to institutionalize Indigenous Peoples' participation in the Slow Food movement and its projects, as well as to develop both regional and global networks. There have been three Indigenous Terra Madre global conferences, with the last one hosted by the Ainu of Japan in Hokkaido in the fall of 2019.

Nationally, we are also honored to collaborate with the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance and its Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, led by the dynamic Rowen White (Mohawk). Together, we document rare seeds and seed rematriation work and produce short videos about protecting and sharing heirloom Indigenous seeds and plants. Similarly, we have collaborated with Braiding the Sacred, a hemispheric network focused on Indigenous corn growers working to preserve and perpetuate traditional varieties of sacred corn.

Cranberry beans. Photo by Melissa K. Nelson.

The Native Seed Pod
The Cultural Conservancy sees a direct link between Food Sovereignty and Indigenous media, as we are traditional storytellers and artists who love to share the beauty, sights, sounds, and stories of our Indigenous foods in embodied ways. Audio and video recordings are powerful mediums through which we tell our stories, share our work locally and globally, decolonize media, and animate our Indigenous voices. To recognize the extraordinary wisdom and Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Indigenous farmers and food activists, we started the Native Seed Pod podcast series in 2018 to serve as "an antidote to the monoculture." Sixteen episodes (and counting) of in-depth conversations with hunters, farmers, seed-keepers, chefs, and more can be found at nativeseedpod.org.

Sharing Good Water: The Mino-Niibi Fund
The Cultural Conservancy's Mino-Niibi ("good water" in Ojibwe) Fund for Indigenous Cultures provides small grants through re-granting to Indigenous-led organizations in Turtle Island, Abya Yala (Central and South America), and Moananuiakea (Pacific Oceania). We support grassroots Native organizations working to revitalize their cultures, traditions, lands and livelihoods, most of whom are concerned with Food Sovereignty given climate disruptions and other uncertainties. To address these concerns, we have supported Aymara quinoa growers' agrobiodiversity projects on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia; Maya corn farmers in Guatemala; cultural exchanges between Pueblo, Mayan, and Zapotec youth learning about traditional agriculture; Hawaiian orchard stewards and traditional fishermen on Big Island; and young Inuit hunters in Nunavut.

The Cultural Conservancy's Native basket of food projects extend from the local to the global, from the wild to the cultivated, from individuals to networks, and from kitchens to soundwaves. We strive to enact Indigenous food justice and cultivate health and well being at many levels. By weaving traditional foods and cultural foodways into all of our programs and activities, we elevate the medicines of the land and our sacred responsibility to protect and care for them.

- Melissa K. Nelson, Ph.D. (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is a Native ecologist, writer, media-maker and Indigenous scholar-activist, and the president and CEO of The Cultural Conservancy. Maya Harjo (Quapaw, Shawnee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole) is a farmer and educator, and the Native Foodways Director at The Cultural Conservancy.

For more information, visit www.nativeland.org and www.nativeseedpod.org.

Top photo: Maya Harjo holding teosinte, ancestor to corn. Photo by Mateo Hinojosa.

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From Soil to Sky: Mending the Circle of Our Native Food Systems

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At an autumn Learning Lodge in Coast Miwok, Southern Pomo Territory, Elder Leroy Little Bear (Blackfeet) shared with us a powerful teaching: as Native Peoples, "we find our cultural resilience in the medicine of the land." As a place-based, Indigenous-led intertribal organization, The Cultural Conservancy takes this teaching to heart.

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Indigenous Terra Madre Network - Our network - Slow Food International

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"Indigenous communities are those that produce food in the same way as their great-great-great grandparents. They know how to live off their land, taking

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On February 22, 2016, representatives from Indigenous food projects around the country gathered at the Taos County Economic Development Corporation (TCEDC) with representatives from Slow Food USA (and Skyped in Slow Food International ) as well as the Christiansen Fund , to explore how best to establish an indigenous peoples Slow Food network in North America - from Canada, to the USA and to Mexico. Participants felt that having a Slow Food association separate from the national organizations would give Native communities better opportunities to network, develop presidia to protect Indigenous foods, and send Native delegates to Terra Madre in Italy .

To give a little background, the Slow Food Manifesto was drafted in 1989, with support from 15 international delegates. Today, Slow Food has over 150,000 members and is active in more than 150 countries, including national associations in Italy, the U.S., Germany and Japan. There are more than 170 chapters and 2,000 food communities in the United States alone . The goal of Slow Food is to support the development of grassroots projects and activities, as well as the project (which involves groups of producers who work together to protect and market their foods) and the Ark of Taste (an online catalog of foods that are at risk of extinction).

Nations like the US, Italy, Canada, Mexico, etc, have national associations, which come with certain obligations, including the registration of members, coordinating activities on the ground, and fundraising activities for both local projects and to support international campaigns. Rather that starting a new national association like this, our group decided to start a regional association, similar to the Terra Madre Balkans Network . Becoming a regional association would allow the group to still nominate presidia and coordinate networking among members and their communities, without the financial obligations of a national association.

Kyra Busch from the Christensen Fund noted that Slow Food has been recognizing increasingly over the past 10 years that its relationship with indigenous communities should be different than with nations, and has been working to develop this relationship. The first step was the creation of an Indigenous Terra Madre space within within the Terra Madre/ Salone de Gusto, as well as the establishment of a separate Indigenous Terra Madre event ( in November 2015 in Shillong, India ). This most recent gathering concluded with 70,000 people attending a food festival. Future editions of this event may be staged in Kenya and Canada. The group that gathered in Taos this past February hopes to take this a step further by establishing a separate Slow Food regional association dedicated specifically to support Indigenous people on Turtle Island.

One of the programs within Slow Food is the establishment of presidia, in order to sustain the quality production of foods at risk of extinction, to protect unique regions and ecosystems, to recover traditional processing methods, and to safeguard native breeds and local plant varieties. Today, 472 Presidia involve more than 13,000 producers worldwide. In the USA, there are 5 presidia, three of which involve Indigenous foods: the Navajo Churro Sheep Presidium ; the Anishnaabeg Manoomin (wild rice) Presidium; and the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium. Roy Kady from the Navajo Churro Sheep Presidium also reported that they have nominated the sumac berry as a presidium. Conversations came up at this gathering about how to protect other important foods- like taro (an important food stuff in Hawaii), heritage corns, maple syrup, chiltapenes (wild chilis in the Sonoran desert currently threatened by over-harvesting and environmental contamination), the California Tan Oak (currently threatened by blight), and the Broad Leaf Yucca Fruit. (To learn more about the guidelines to establish a presidium, here is a document shared with us by Slow Foods: PresidiaGuidelines . Once a community has determined that they want to nominate a food for a presidium, they would fill out this form: Presidium Nomination Form ).

Kaylena Bray, Melissa Nelson, and Elizabeth Hoover are currently in the process of drafting the official proposal to establish the Slow Food Turtle Island regional association. The proposal will be shared with Slow Food International by the end of March, to be put before the Executive Committee (a governing body of 8 people, similar to a board of directors) for approval in March, and to the International Council (a larger governing body of 40 people, including coordinators and volunteers from across the global network) for approval in June.

If you are interested in applying to be a delegate to Terra Madre this year, to fill out the application. Note: the application is due March 30, and requires a community letter of recommendation this year. The estimate is that Slow Food USA will be allowed 180 delegates who are afforded lodging, and then another 50 who will not have lodging or transportation covered by Slow Food. For people who apply Slow Food USA who identify as Indigenous, their applications will be sent to the Turtle Island selection committee. Of those, 20 will be selected to represent the Indigenous delegation, and the rest will go back into the Slow Food USA pool, and may be selected as delegates from there.

Reposted from gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com

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by Elizabeth M Hoover On February 22, 2016, representatives from Indigenous food projects around the country gathered at the Taos County Economic Development Corporation (TCEDC) with representatives from Slow Food USA (and Skyped in Slow Food International) as well as the Christiansen Fund, to explore how best to establish an indigenous peoples Slow Food network [...]

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Food and Seed Distribution

Food Distribution

In collaboration with Native community partners and local farms, we distribute Native foods, medicines, and local organic produce to Native community members and families throughout the Bay Area. Our food distribution program increases access to traditional foods - such as heirloom chiles, corn, and dried beans - and ancestral medicines - such as tobacco, sage, and cota tea.

Native Seed Library

Each season we grow, save, and share seed from culturally important Native heirloom crops and California native plants. Our Native Seed Library reconnects Native community members with their ancestral seeds and helps to keep alive seed stories and seedkeeping traditions from across Turtle Island. Seeds in our living library include Seneca White Corn, Cherokee Georgia Candy Roaster Squash, Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers, White Buffalo Calf Woman Tobacco, Zuni Gold Beans, and many other sacred varieties.

In the coming seasons, we will be expanding our distribution to include Native plant starts to more deeply support local community food sovereignty.

Please get in touch if you would like to learn more, share seed, or request seeds and plant starts!

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Native Foodways - The Cultural Conservancy

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In collaboration with Native community partners and local farms, we distribute Native foods, medicines, and local organic produce to Native community members and families throughout the Bay Area. Our food distribution program increases access to traditional foods - such as heirloom chiles, corn, and dried beans - and ancestral medicines - such as tobacco, sage, and cota tea.

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This film follows the opening of an Indigenous cafe, a study on bison, and the Ancestral Guard (a group working to save the Klamath river).

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Gather documents the growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty.

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Overview of the loss of Native American diet.

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It's no secret that the rich, highly processed, and refined foods of our Western diet are wreaking havoc on the general population. Obesity rates are growing, and nearly half of American adults are dealing with diet-related chronic illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or type 2 diabetes.

A diet loaded with saturated fats, refined sugars, sodium, and less than healthy substances is having devastating effects on our bodies, but it wasn't always this way.

Our ancestors - including the Native Americans of the western hemisphere - relied on wild foods, domesticated crops, fresh game, and fiber-packed legumes and fruits for a truly diverse (and utterly healthy) diet. For communities living in the desert, these foods would have included chia, nopales, and - a Cappadona Ranch favorite - mesquite.

Many of these foods are high in vitamins and mineral content, making them wonderfully beneficial for the people of those days.

Eating Like Our Ancestors

The hunter-gatherer people were likely to be a very healthy bunch. Depending on all-natural sources of food meant they had a solid supply of nutrition.

When the Native Americans began inhabiting the Americas, they found a land with abundant game like deer, buffalo, wild sheep and goats, elk, caribou, bears, beavers, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, alligators, snakes, wild birds, insects, as well as fish and shellfish.

Then there were the domesticated crops and wild foods. While there were many nomadic tribes that thrived on hunting and gathering, many others became advanced farmers, developing special techniques like irrigation, terracing, and crop rotation to have enough food to survive through winter. Farming in unison with gathering - from simple berry picking to more complicated processes like tapping trees for maple syrup - provided these indigenous people with a variety of healthy sources of food.

Important crops and wild foods included pumpkins, wild rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggs, honey, a variety of nuts, cranberries, strawberries, wild plums, roots, greens, and a huge variety of other fruits and vegetables.

Several things are worth noting here including the fact that because of the size of the New World (and America), every distinct tribe had its own unique diet, customs, and language. Because of this, it is difficult to pinpoint a specific "Native American Diet". However, since there were plenty of trade routes throughout North America, many types of foods could be found in all corners of the New World. This includes the staple foods known as the three sisters: corn (maize), beans, and squash.

Another interesting point is that the foods that were first developed in the New World through hybridization and selection have become the cornerstone of many diets throughout the world. It's estimated that now nearly 60% of all foods consumed worldwide came from the New World.

Desert Foods & Mesquite in the Life of Native People

The diversity of landscapes in the New World meant that each tribe had unique variations in their diet. For the people of the southwest, this included a variety of plants and foods that could only be found in their environment.

These desert foods offered many health benefits that helped to prevent many of the diseases that now run rampant in the native community. These foods included: acorns from the Emory Oak, grains such as amaranth, tepary beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, lima beans, lentil beans, cacti pads, tuna, chiles, chia, plantago, and - Cappadona Ranch's beloved - mesquite beans.

Of all these various desert foods, mesquite became a major resource for the people living in the American Southwest. The mesquite tree came to be such an essential tool that many tribes, such as the Pima, eventually came to identify it as the "Tree of Life".

Not only was the mesquite tree and bean a valuable commodity that was eaten and even mixed with water to produce a refreshing drink, the trunks and limbs of the tree were used to make shelters and fencing; the leaves were turned into lotions and medicines for toothaches, sores, burns, and chapped skin; the gum was used for treating upset stomach, aiding in digestion, and used as a glue; the sap helped wounds; the bark was used as cloth; the roots and woods became valuable sources of fuel; and it was even used for sports.

These foods provided the sustenance, vitamins, protein, and calories these ancient people needed to remain healthy and strong.

Sadly, things would soon change.

A European Way of Life Emerges & the Western Diet

The arrival of Europeans meant a drastic change in the way of life for the native people of the New World. While the Native Americans were initially able to adapt to the tremendous changes that were occurring - including the arrival of new plants and animals - many were eventually forced to change their traditional lifestyles.

From traditional big game being over-hunted to waterways being dammed shut and forests being cleared, it became harder for natives to eat and thrive as they once had. Many tumultuous wars left the native population relegated to reservations, where their diets of hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming were replaced by government-supplied commodity foods.

These changes in lifestyles and foods have come to play a major role in the present-day epidemic of obesity and diabetes among Native American populations.

But this way of living and eating hasn't just affected these native peoples - it has affected us all.

While this may not come across as the most positive of facts, it certainly is true. More than two-thirds of adults, and nearly one-third of children and youth, are overweight or obese, according to data drawn from the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans report. This change has a number of factors including the development of poor eating habits, increased access to highly processed foods, less physical activity, environmental changes, and less sleep.

Our diet plays an especially beneficial - or in this case harmful - role in our overall health. The type of foods we consume can have a huge effect on our intestinal flora, which is the 100 trillion different types of bacteria that call our gut home, and can also greatly affect our immune system.

These modern changes in diet and lifestyle have led to drastic changes in our health, but changing the way we eat and how much physical activity we get can help to prevent these issues, especially as we get older.

A New Hope

The epidemic of diabetes and obesity that has affected the Native American population has drawn plenty of attention from concerned medical professionals, nutritionists, scientists, government agencies, and community organizations.

And many people are fighting back. For several decades now, various agencies, universities, community partners, and community leaders have urged native people to return to the traditional diets of their ancestors. From tribes in Arizona who evolved metabolically to the feast-and-famine cycles experienced by their forefathers, to the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest who would have had a diet based largely on fish, these first Americans are returning to their roots to avoid the health-related pitfalls of their modern diet.

Studies from as far back as the early 1990's indicate that " a change in the Indian diet back to the beans, corns, grains, greens and other low-fat, high-fiber plant foods that their ancestors depended upon can normalize blood sugar, suppress between-meal hunger and probably also foster weight loss. "

While researchers continue to investigate the link between traditional desert foods and diabetes prevention, American Indians are forging ahead by returning to a diet that offers them a new hope, and they're getting help from many places.

Take, for instance, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which is working to preserve and restore the traditional practices of sound land stewardship, language fluency, and community development. One of their goals is also to preserve traditional American Indian foods and cooking methods. Then there's the Native Seeds/SEARCH organization, which is working hard to preserve native plants from the Southwest and Northwestern Mexico.

Scholars and universities are also getting involved in the movement. There was the Decolonizing Diet Project initiated by Marty Reinhardt at Northern Michigan University. This year-long challenge was designed to challenge participants to eat only foods that were available in the Great Lakes region before 1602. While this specific study ended several years ago, it sparked a resurgence in research into indigenous diets. The nonprofit First Nations Development Institute noted an increase in agriculture-related grant request several years ago.

Even entrepreneuring Native Americans are making a push to bring traditional foods into the mainstream. Chef Sean Sherman (a.k.a. Sioux Chef), who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, operates the Tatanka Truck in Minneapolis which specializes in the traditional foods of the Great Plains.

The echoes of America's past are finally coming through, hopefully in time to save us all.

Tips for Improving Your Diet and Health

Research continues to show that eating healthier and an active lifestyle can greatly improve our health, and it doesn't have to be super complicated or unpleasant.

The following tips and changes to your diet can go a long way in helping you improve your health in the long-term:

Eat more high-fiber plant foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.

Watch out for all of that salt and sugar! Plenty of refined foods will have these two in bulk.

Don't forget those prebiotic foods like onions, garlic, asparagus, beets, cabbage, beans, oats, bananas, and more.

Healthy fats can be great for you including fats found in foods like salmon and oils like olive oil and peanut oil.

Let go of those bad habits like smoking and overindulging in alcoholic beverages.

Remember to aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day.

At Cappadona Ranch, we are doing our part to provide delicious, healthy treats for you and your family. Our goal is to provide natural foods that satisfy and stories that touch the soul. Find out more about our products here.
Sources:

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Forgotten in Time: The Native American Diet and How It Has Returned to Heal the First People

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It's no secret that the rich, highly processed, and refined foods of our Western diet are wreaking havoc on the general population. Obesity rates are growing, and nearly half of American adults are dealing with diet-related chronic illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or type 2 diabetes.

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Transcript of a talk given by Stuart Harris at the Annual National Forum on Contaminants in Fish on how fish contamination affects Native American culture. Harris summarizes the importance of fish in his culture and the negative impacts that come from the loss of fish populations.

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The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

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This article covers the contamination of water on Native American lands that comes from mining, power plants, and other pollutors.

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MINNEAPOLIS - Outrage erupted earlier this year as we learned that local, state and federal officials knew about Flint, Michigan's lead-contaminated water supply for nearly a year, but they did nothing to address the deadly problem.

But few took note when people converged in Washington to protest radioactive pollution affecting the water of Native American communities. Even though the level of contamination is far higher and persisted longer than the crisis in Flint, there was barely a peep from the mainstream media.

Since the 1950s, waste from active and inactive uranium mines has seeped into the Navajo Nation's water supplies, which has led to increased rates of cancer, genetic defects, Navajo neurohepatopathy, and increases in mortality.

The material that fed the Cold War by making atomic bombs possible is also found in low concentrations of ore, making its runoff a toxic sludge containing other harmful elements, like arsenic and lead.

It's not just uranium mining that's made the Navajo Nation's water so dangerous, though. Dirty coal-fired power plants have also been major polluters of both water and air throughout the 27,000 square miles that the Navajo Nation occupies in the Southwest.

The latest assault on their water came just last year, when "acid mine drainage" entered the Animas and San Juan Rivers following the EPA's reckless attempts to address long-standing issues with the abandoned Gold King Mine in Colorado. The spill was so severe that parts of the Animas River turned a bright gold within a day, and the affected area, which passes through three states, has been declared a disaster zone.

The Navajo Nation certainly isn't alone in their fight against repeated violations of the sanctity of their land, not only at the hands of the nuclear and coal industry, but by the government itself.

In December 2014, We on a last-minute provision tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act which would allow for the creation of the continent's largest copper mine in protected national forest in Arizona, part of which includes lands considered sacred by multiple Native American communities.

The land at hand involves Oak Flat and Apache Leap, sacred, ancestral lands in parts of the Tonto National Forest from which Apache communities had been forcibly removed. In 1955, federal law closed the land to mining out of respect for the Apaches' spiritual ties to the land and concerns about water safety.

The plan for the proposed copper mine had been rejected by Congress and opposed by tribes for years.

Yet, once it was hidden away in the fine-print of the mammoth annual document that funds the Pentagon, the 2,400 acres of previously protected Apache land could be handed over to Resolution Copper Mining and these tribes could soon face a water poisoning disaster that worse than Flint and comparable to the Navajo Nation.

It's important to consider who snuck the policy rider into the NDAA: Two of the plan's greatest champions are Arizona's Republican senators, John McCain and Rick Flake. Both of them have received campaign contributions from Rio Tinto, the British-Australian mining giant which owns Resolution Copper. Flake even worked as a lobbyist for Rio Tinto.

And, indeed, the law does mandate environmental impact studies and tribal consultations.

But, the law is worded in a way that Resolution would receive the land for mining regardless of the outcomes of those environmental assessments and consultations.

What's worse, though, is that the law doesn't include any penalties for the company for any future environmental or cultural harms in the area, leaving the Apaches themselves - not the mining giant, not lawmakers - to deal with the aftermath.

Once the scope of the provision became apparent, Apaches decided to "occupy" Oak Flat.

They stayed for months last summer, refusing to leave. Their tenacity ignited a growing movement against the land swap, with over 104,00 signatures on a "Stop Apache Land Grab" petition to the White House and at least a million people calling on Congress to repeal the deal.

Only time will tell what the impact of this pushback will be. People have enormous power, but, unfortunately, so do corporations and the lawmakers who support them instead of working for the public they're elected to represent. If the mine begins operating, it seems almost inevitable that the effects will play out as dangerously as they have for the Navajo Nation.

Just like the people of Flint, Apaches and Navajos will scramble to secure emergency supplies of fresh drinking water. But, unlike in Flint, their plight will go largely unnoticed by the mainstream media. Madonna and Michael Moore won't be sending bottled water by the busload to Apache school children. Racism against Native Americans will persist as America's silent genocide of Native communities continues.
Watch the full episode of Behind The Headline:

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The Native American Water Poisoning That's Far Worse & More Persistent Than Flint

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In this episode of "Behind the Headline," host and MintPress News Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh explores decades of water pollution in various Native American communities -- an issue the mainstream media and public overlook while erupting with outrage over the Flint crisis.

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This report looks at five case studies that are each involved in environmental health research, and discusses reproductive justice.

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Privacy Policy | Environmental Health Perspectives, 111 TW Alexander Drive, Durham, NC 27713

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An infographic from Feeding America that covers food insecurity statistics as of 2020 and 2021.

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Defines what these terms mean in the context of Native American history.

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It is important to understand what colonization, assimilation, and integration are. In the context of Indigenous Peoples, colonization means control.

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A USDA study into food access on Native American land. This study found that only 25.6% of people living in tribal areas live within 1 mile of a supermarket, compared to 58.8% for the general population.

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Website of chef Nephi Craig's Cafe Gozhoo, featured in Gather.

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Café Gozhóó is an Apache response to our community need for quality food options, a fueling station on the north end of Whiteriver and to promote/reinforce social recovery in a community space. Located in the communities of North Fork and Diamond Creek at the intersection of AZ-73 and East 57th Street. Café Gozhóó provids accessible and affordable quality food, coffee-based products, arts/crafts and wellness related literature to the thousands of White Mountain Apache Tribal members that live within a ten-mile radius.

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Mission: Café Gozhóó is an Apache response to our community need for quality food options, a fueling station on the north end of Whiteriver and to promote/reinforce social recovery in a community space. Located in the communities of North Fork and Diamond Creek at the intersection of AZ-73 and East 57th Street.

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Outlines seven pillars of food sovereignty and provides a list of Indigenous food organizations.

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Everybody eats. We all need food to live, and we all need healthy food to be healthy. But not everyone has equal access to healthy food. In fact, of all the ethnic groups represented in the Americas, there's one that consistently has the least access to healthy food and has suffered some of the worst health outcomes and rates of chronic disease.

Indigenous peoples disproportionately experience a lower life expectancy, more chronic conditions, and overall lower quality of life. They also face significant amounts of poverty, chronic disease, and violence - as well as food insecurity.

In the Americas, Native peoples have been forcibly evicted from their ancestral lands and relocated to remote locations where they no longer have access to their traditional plants, medicines, and ecosystems. As a result of these evictions, and in some cases, because of forced integration into the colonizing culture, many Indigenous groups have struggled to keep their cultural traditions alive, including their native diets. Instead, many Indigenous peoples have had to rely on government assistance programs, subsisting on refined and processed foods for survival - while also experiencing less access to and discrimination in healthcare services.

But over the last few decades, despite the grim realities many Indigenous Nations still face, a movement towards food sovereignty has expanded. And many Native peoples have sought to reclaim and reconnect with their traditional or Indigenous food systems - and by extension, their health, both individual and communal.

Defining Indigenous Foods and Food Systems

Dana Thompson (lineal descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota tribes and a lifetime Minnesota native) is executive director of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS), a nonprofit working to improve Indigenous food access and education. As she explained to us in an interview, Indigenous food systems encompass more than the specifics of what's on the store shelves and on people's plates. They include "...how the foods are produced and that the foods are grown in an environmentally sustainable way."

According to Thompson, Indigenous food access and education "...can help us to reclaim the health of Indigenous foods, which is really important. And it's not just physical health; it's spiritual health; it's cultural health."

As for the Indigenous foods themselves, they are those that Nations have historically had access to within their region of origin from farming, hunting, or wild-harvesting. Because climates and ecosystems vary widely, so, too, did traditional Indigenous diets in the Americas.

As Thompson explains, "If you're down in the Southwest, you're going to have access to cholla buds and all sorts of different stuff, all the great foods out of the desert. If you're up in the Pacific Northwest, you're going to have access to the ocean and all of those ecoregions inland with all the forests and different types of foods."

Although traditional diets of Indigenous people in the Americas varied widely by region, what united them was unprocessed, whole, plant-based foods, coupled with wild fish and/or game. Their diets generally consisted of a healthy balance of macronutrients and were naturally low-fat and rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and complex carbohydrates that provided lasting energy.

But we're not here to paint a romanticized picture of life in the Americas before colonization. Indeed, researchers believe that life expectancy in many parts of the Americas before colonization may have been low by today's standards. But there's also little doubt that when the Europeans arrived, they reached a continent that was lush with natural resources - abundant in topsoil - and in plant and animal life. The Native Americans that lived on the continent had done so sustainably and clearly hadn't made a mess of things.

Learning from Indigenous Land Management

Although there's some controversy over exactly how many thousands of years Indigenous people have lived in the Americas, there's little doubt that traditional Indigenous food systems accomplished something that the modern industrial diet has not: they were sustainable and regenerative. In fact, they were sustainable because they were regenerative - a term that refers to agricultural practices that improve the fertility of the land rather than degrading it over time.

While many traditional foods were wild-harvested or hunted, Indigenous peoples also remained interconnected to their ecosystems through regenerative farming practices and land management.

In the Americas, Indigenous Nations managed complex ecosystems with agroforestry, which is defined by the USDA as "the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems to create environmental, economic, and social benefits." This type of farming system helps protect crops from extremes in weather while also allowing for a variety of resources to be harvested from one location. Plus, it can also increase soil fertility and add more carbon to the soil, which is particularly significant now since it can help to offset greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.

Intercropping and polyculture have also been used in a similar way by Indigenous cultures, increasing production by planting multiple crops together. The "three sisters" crops - corn, beans, and squash - are an early example of intercropping among Native Americans. Research has shown that these crops have a complementary relationship and that planting them together increases both their nutrient levels and their yield.

These practices also produce crops that are more resilient in the face of pests and extreme weather.

Now, farmers, permaculturists, and ecologists are increasingly looking to Indigenous wisdom for insights on how we can live in a more balanced way. Industrialized agriculture has become one of the most environmentally destructive forces on the planet - depleting groundwater, topsoil, and forest cover; polluting our air and water; and destabilizing our climate. But Indigenous farming wisdom holds keys that could be of real value to the future of humanity.

But Indigenous farming wisdom holds keys that could be of real value to the future of humanity.

The Introduction of the Reservation System

Although there's a lot we can learn from traditional Indigenous farming and land management, the sad truth is that much of this knowledge has been lost over time. Many Nations have had to relearn the ways of their ancestors due to the loss of Elders, forced assimilation in Native American boarding schools, the dominance of modern food technologies, and many other restrictions placed on them by colonizing forces.

But although colonization's impact on traditional food systems started much earlier, it was the imposition of reservations in the United States that systematically separated Indigenous people from their traditional land and food ecosystems.

When the reservation system was created, many Nations were forcibly removed from their native lands and driven to remote locations. It was thought that by doing so, they could avoid conflict with white settlers. In fact, many reservation lands were selected just because white settlers didn't desire them. Lands selected for reservations were often barren and ill-suited for hunting, wild harvesting, or traditional forms of agriculture.

Reservations have had a lasting impact on both Indigenous food knowledge and access. They made finding and harvesting Indigenous foods for many Nations nearly impossible, especially in amounts that could sustain a population.

Food Insecurity and Colonizer Foods

Because Indigenous peoples were displaced from their native lands and forced onto reservations, they started to rely on colonizer foods provided by the US government. White flour, lard, sugar, dairy products, and canned meats were provided for Indigenous Peoples to subsist on - a stark contrast from the unprocessed, whole foods they were used to. Although processed food products were foreign to Native Nations, these foods quickly became a survival necessity as access to traditional foods decreased.

Because of the relative isolation of reservation land, many reservations also became " food deserts," with limited access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy whole foods. Even though the reservation system was created back in 1851, it continues to have a devastating impact on Native Nations. Today, one in four Indigenous people living on reservations experience periods of food insecurity.

In the Klamath River Basin (home to the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa, and Klamath tribes), a 2019 survey found that 92% of tribal households were food insecure. And only 7% of those surveyed reported access to traditional foods. Even if Indigenous peoples can access nearby grocery stores or healthy food, brutal poverty on reservations means that they may not be able to afford that food. One in three Native Americans lives in poverty, forcing many tribal members to continue to rely on US government food aid for their survival. Unfortunately, the program offers an extremely limited variety ( only 100 items) of food choices - the majority of which continue to be processed foods with little nutritional value.

Chronic Lifestyle Disease

Indigenous people also face significant health disparities. In fact, Native Americans are more likely than any other ethnic group in the US to report poor health status.

As Dana Thompson of NATIFS explained in her interview with us, from the beginning of the food aid program, the foods provided by the US government have played a major role in the poor health of tribal communities. "They started seeing these foodborne illnesses pop up in the form of inflammatory diseases, starting with tooth decay and going so far as to... cause diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cancer, mental health problems, and addictions."

In the United States, Indigenous people have much higher rates of chronic disease, along with lower life-expectancies, compared to non-Indigenous people. And one of the biggest risk factors for developing these lifestyle diseases is the high rates of obesity seen among Native Americans. A 2018 National Health Institute Survey found that 48% of Indigenous people in the US were obese. This has also led to particularly alarming rates of type 2 diabetes. According to the International Diabetes Federation, over half of Indigenous adults have type 2 diabetes. That's more than any other US racial group; twice the incidence among white Americans; and with a staggering, five times higher rate of diabetes-caused kidney failure.

Heart disease also often accompanies obesity and is the leading cause of death amongst Native Americans. And even though heart disease rates have gone down over the past 25 years due to increased preventive care measures, cancer incidence continues to climb among Native Peoples due to higher rates of obesity, poor diet, smoking, lack of physical activity, and infrequent health screenings.

Sadly, that also means Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus as well. Indigenous people in North America have already died at twice the rate of white people from COVID-19 .

Food Sovereignty and the Re-Indigenization of Diet

Although the social disparities facing Native Nations are grim, there are many community leaders and organizations that recognize the connection between the diets and health of Indigenous populations - and are actively working to improve them.

Food sovereignty is a term often used in association with the Indigenous foods movement. It comes from La Via Campesina, an international umbrella organization working for peasant and Indigenous rights. They define food sovereignty as "... human beings having direct, democratic control over the most important elements of their society - how we feed and nourish ourselves, how we use and maintain the land, water, and other resources around us for the benefit of current and future generations, and how we interact with other groups, peoples and cultures."

Indigenous food sovereignty takes that model and applies it to tribal systems, putting the power of food back into the hands of Indigenous communities.

As outlined during the International Forum for Food Sovereignty, the seven pillars of food sovereignty are:

1. Focuses on food for people

2. Builds knowledge and skills

3. Works with nature

4. Values food providers

5. Localizes food systems

6. Puts control locally

7. Food is sacred

Food sovereignty advocates seek to help Indigenous peoples to decolonize and re-indigenize their diets. In doing so, they can reconnect with their ancestral foodways and reclaim power over their own bodies and health.

And I feel compelled to add here that we could all do well to remind ourselves of this body of knowledge and way of living in the world. Unless non-Indigenous peoples begin to adopt these same pillars, it's hard to see how we can keep our civilization going for much longer. It's fine to point to the three sisters as examples of Indigenous farming knowledge, but the true wisdom we need to save ourselves comes from these deeper principles: humans weaving community in direct connection with a land base - and in ways that sustain both the community and the land.

Indigenous Food Organizations to Support

Many organizations and businesses among Indigenous populations are working toward furthering the Indigenous foods and food sovereignty movements. Here are a few. Check out each of their websites to learn more about what they're doing and ways you can help support their work.

Sean Sherman, also known as The Sioux Chef, and Dana Thompson started NATIFS to provide education and access to Indigenous foods and foodways. Their work addresses and seeks to heal ancestral trauma using food, by promoting greater health and connection to Indigenous wisdom. They recently opened the first Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis, MN, which will be a culinary training center for working with Indigenous foods. "Our team is working really hard to build this educational model so that there are opportunities - there's the curriculum for people to just get the fundamentals - so they can bring that knowledge back to their own communities and set up their own businesses," Thompson informed us. You can donate, join their mailing list, or follow them on social media to keep up with their work.

Native Seeds/SEARCH is a seed-saving nonprofit based in the southwestern United States. They work to protect traditional foods, biodiversity, farming techniques, and the cultural heritage of Indigenous communities by providing seed saving and farming training. Self-identifying Native Americans can order heritage seeds directly from their website. They also have an Adopt-a-Crop program and an online store with locally made food products for the general population to purchase.

Ojibiiikaan Indigenous Cultural Network works primarily with Indigenous youth and their communities in the Toronto area. Their programs help to revitalize knowledge of Indigenous food and food systems through growing practices and gardening, traditional Indigenous cooking, and education of medicinal plants. They accept monetary donations as well as Indigenous seeds and rootstock.

Founded by internationally renowned environmental and Native American activist, Winona LaDuke, White Earth Land Recovery Project is a nonprofit working to preserve and restore the land of the White Earth Indian Reservation while committing to re-indigenizing and revitalizing their cultural identity. Some of the projects they're currently working on include promoting food sovereignty through a tribal food policy as well as farm to school initiatives. They also have an Indigenous seed library and sell traditional foods and crafts through their Native Harvest brand.

To hear more of Winona's view on food sovereignty and Indigenous foods, check out her TEDx Talk below.

Vince Medina of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and Louis Trevino of Rumsen Ohlone tribe created an organization called mak-'amham (meaning "our food" in the Chochenyo Ohlone language) to preserve their nation's traditional foods. Based in what is now the Bay Area of California, they gather pre-colonial Indigenous foods themselves in areas of their ancestral homelands. Before COVID-19 hit, they had both a catering business and a pop-up restaurant called Cafe Ohlone.

Although at the time of this writing, the restaurant is closed due to COVID-19, they are still bringing the flavors and culture of the Ohlone to people in the Bay Area. In addition to providing complimentary fresh meals as a service to Elders in their community, they've also launched curated dinner boxes that include two meals, a candle, and a curated playlist to immerse you in the Cafe Ohlone dining experience. A portion of the proceeds of these boxes goes back to the Ohlone community and also helps support the cafe as they work towards securing a new brick-and-mortar restaurant and cultural space.

Food is Life

Native peoples have suffered immense trauma through centuries of genocide, disruption of their culture, language, ecosystems and food systems, and in some cases, forced relocation. But everywhere there is a problem, there are people finding solutions. And in Native communities, leaders are emerging with beacons of hope for their people and for all of us.

The truth is that if you go back far enough, all of us have Indigenous ancestors. All of us have roots in a food system based around real, whole, and natural foods that came from the Earth. And perhaps we would be well advised to bring some of the wisdom of our ancestors into our future. Humans can eat real food. We can live sustainably on this planet. And we can treat one another, as well as animals and our environment, with respect.

Tell us in the comments:

Were you aware of the impact of food on the health and culture of Indigenous people?

What other Indigenous foods or food sovereignty organizations should we be aware of?

Feature image: iStock.com/grandriver
Read Next:

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Indigenous Foods: How Colonized Diets Have Made Native Nations Sick - and What's Being Done About It Today

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For hundreds of years, Indigenous peoples in the Americas (and across the world) have faced genocide, land theft, and in many cases, forced relocation, all of which have deprived them of their ancestral foodways. Today, many Native peoples are grappling with the devastating health consequences of these ancestral traumas, along with grinding poverty and a diet of highly processed foods.

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Nephi Craig's "Apaches in the Kitchen" blog.

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Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine
Pre-Reservation term for this region where our kitchen is located: Dzilgha'a

On this pre-reservation map of place names, take a look at the portion on the right called 'Dzilgha'a' near Mt. Baldy. That is where our kitchen is located. These mountains are sacred to us since time immemorial. Our entire way of life reflects this landscape and on an even deeper level, before the concentration prison camp that is every "Indian Reservation" in America, this landscape holds a profound form of Ancestral Knowledge. What makes our landscape different from some reservations in the United States, is that we are on our Ancestral Homeland, we did experience some dislocation, relocation and assimilation from Western society, still much of our life ways that were reflective of the land remained intact. This knowledge remains in various carriers of memory.

The first group of carriers of memory are the plants. The indigenous flora of our homeland hold medicinal and culinary applications that are woven into our clan-system, relationships with bands and routs of trade. Clans are named after places where medicine and food plant relatives grow, or where they choose to live.

The second is the terrain. In Dzilgha'a we are at 10,000 feet with peaks that still rise above us to 12,000 feet and more. To the lower end of our territory on the east end to an elevation of 4000 ft. We have an amazing array of foods, animals and terrain that carry memory, that carry our identity for us.

Third is the people, or N'Dee that are also carriers of memory. We also embody knowledge that is carried in our DNA, a spiritual awareness that can be difficult to describe but it is there. Many people embody indigenous principles in different ways, some speak Apache fluently, others are genuinely happy to be cooking and grateful, others are filled with laughter and humor. Some are knowledgeable about the landscape and wild foods that would put trained botanist/linguist and master chefs to the ultimate test.

Embodiment of Indigeneity and awareness of what we carry with us, often without knowing, is a powerful element of our collective communities. My late-father is Dineh from the eastern part of the Navajo Nation or Dinetah. I grew up on both reservations and have keen memories of food, ceremony, life, loss and growth on and off the reservations.

I am Nd'ee and Dineh. My son, my brothers and our boys are sons of sacred mountains, as are all other White Mountain Apaches and Navajo...we are sons of sacred mountains. These towering ancient beings are keepers of knowledge and humble power. There is no other place on earth like this. Despite generations of heartbreak and trauma, our peoples are resilient. In our Dzilgha'a Kitchen we are focusing on the human aspect of food and cooking. When we are in an age where we are starving for knowledge of indigeneity and health, the landscape still holds those messages. The people are conduits for this knowledge. My favorite phrase I learned in sobriety and in adulthood is, "Wisdom Sits in Places" because embodiment requires much more than simply, "understanding", it requires actual footwork, actual journey and conscious choice to seek out lessons and wisdom. This does not come when we want it, but rather when the power/knowledge chooses an individual, that is what I believe. Wisdom Sits in Places and waits for you to be ready.

That being said, for chefs, "Wisdom Sits in Places" too. There is a culinary program out on the eastern agency of the Navajo Nation, in the very same town that my late-father is from, the same place where I climbed the sandstones, threw rocks at my brothers and picked crystals out of the ground in amazement. The same places where Stinkbug speaks, where Monsters dwell in wait, where the darkness brings coyotes and trickery. This is Crownpoint, New Mexico. I have a working relationship with the culinary program there and we invited chefs to come and be stagiers with us in our Dzilgha'a Kitchen in the spirit of community building and revitalizing trade routes. When people gather, specifically chefs, when we gather our senses collaborate and create memories. These memories are the intangible building blocks of cuisine and indigeneity. These memories are what we create from and carry with us until the end of our lives, speaking of experience and drawing inspiration after moments have past. The intangible become tangible, we create from memory and in the indigenous realm of cooking, just like in ceremony, gathering of people in humility is where growth happens.

The Dineh Stagiers converged in our Dzilgha's Kitchen on January 1st through the 4th, 2015. We also had another guest with us for those same days. We had scholar, stagier and soon to be PhD Claudia Serrato with us in our kitchen. This was how we brought in the new year by celebrating and developing Indigenous foods as carriers/conduits of memory.

Claudia helped frame the experience and came to learn and to teach. She brought an indigenous skill set of observation and research methods to be employed while cooking with our Dineh and N'Dee chefs in this kitchen. Claudia helped to talk about the framework of mindfulness and sensitivity as we worked. She is studying the transfer of ancestral knowledge and helped us to better see how each chef embodies powerful knowledge that can be drawn on in our individual and collective practice as chefs. There is much to say about what Claudia brought to our kitchen that day and I will share a few images.

Here is an image that is taken just before dinner service in our kitchen. Claudia prepared and taught us how to make Quinoa Water. Here is the Dineh Stagiers, our Apache chefs and our Apache Waitstaff listening to her brief lecture on the process. They are also anxiously waiting to sample two types of Quinoa Water because after all, this is "edible ancestral knowledge". Above the door beam is one of our kitchen credos, "Participate in your own evolution".

As Claudia prepared the quinoa water and I was setting up my station on the line, I noticed that the quinoa water produced a froth that held its form for minutes. As a chef, I am not a fan of the trendy foams, nor do I make them on purpose, but this quinoa water produced a clean white froth that I saw and I decided to plate this dish of 'Carrots and Quinoa".

This dish here is Sioux Maple syrup roasted baby carrot, carrot puree, a single turnip, toasted quinoa topped with the quinoa froth and garnished with carrot tops. This is a cold dish that is sweet and clean.

Our staff and stagiers enjoyed the quinoa water and we got back to service. As we were plating orders and the chefs were assisting us in the kitchen, we all talked and shared about food. We also prepared for the chef's table that they would observe the following day and at which Claudia would be a diner.

We talked about plate selection and intention. We talked about personalizing interpretation with indigenous foods and how we carry memory and embody culture.

Our kitchen days are long and intense. The following day our Apache culinary team and the Navajo chefs collaborated and produced my Chef's Table menu of 14 small courses. This was a plant based menu with only small portions of salmon and rabbit. As every Chef's Table goes, we are always too busy to take any photographs of the process but we did manage to capture a few images from a kitchen perspective and the diners took their own photos as well. Here are a few indigenous sensory collaborative dishes from that day on January 3, 2015.

Often our Chef's Table dishes are a mixture of Family Style for sharing and plated dishes. We celebrate artistry of plating but also familial sharing of food among diners. Her is a course by course description. The first two courses are not pictured. The next 12 photos were taken by my wife Jandi Craig.

These dishes are the result of collective indigeneity and an example of what we carry with us. When we frame our work with Ancestral Knowledge and humility great things are possible. This is only the beginning of an exciting evolution...or a continuation of Indigenous Food Ways. Nothing that we do is new...the Ancestral Knowledge and principles of leadership are already in place. Our Plant, Animal, Medicine Food relatives have protected them for us. The Land, Plants, waters and animals are the profound teachers and carriers of identity.

Since time immemorial, "Wisdom Sits in Places" and cooking with a sense of place in our Dzilgha'a Kitchen is the continuation of our sophisticated Indigenous Food-ways. I am excited about the future of Indigenous Foods. In this age of conceptualization and reclamation of the intelligent Ancestral Food-ways that revolutionized the cooking and cuisines of the world, from Argentina to Alaska, we can stand strong with a sense of place and say with confidence that Indigenous Cuisine of Turtle Island is a Mother Cuisine.

This was an eventful and memorable Chef's Table, the first of the year. I have no doubt that this set the tone for the rest of 2015. Our work ethic, tenacity and courage to continue on this pathway will be strengthened by more collaboration and community building. We ended the Chef's Table with Apache Coffee and Chocolates. In pure spirit of resiliency, the seeds of the 800 year old Gete-Okosomin Squash were saved, just like the memories of sensory collaboration that we created during our time in our kitchen together. I am grateful for the resiliency, survivance and vitality of our indigenous cuisine. These humble foods tell an honest story of who we have been and who we are. Every moment is powerful. Life is a complete spiritual experience. Life is the ceremony. Stand Strong. Nurture our seeds. Tell our Children.

Thank you for supporting Indigenous Culinary Culture Building!

Purhepecha Stagier Serrato

White Mountain Apache Tribe

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Western Apache Cooking and Cuisine Pre-Reservation term for this region where our kitchen is located: Dzilgha'a On this pre-reservation map of place names, take a look at the portion on the right called 'Dzilgha'a' near Mt. Baldy. That is where our kitchen is located. These mountains are sacred to us since time immemorial.

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In April 2002, IITC organized the first Indigenous Peoples' Global Consultation on the Right to Food in Sololá, Guatemala. The "Declaration of Atitlan," adopted by consensus of the participants from all regions, affirmed that "the Right to Food of Indigenous Peoples is a collective right based on our special spiritual relationship with Mother Earth, our lands and territories, environment, and natural resources that provide our traditional nutrition. IITC's Food Sovereignty Program builds the informed participation of Indigenous Peoples, including traditional food producers and knowledge holders, in local, national, regional and international processes to protect and restore their traditional food systems. IITC provides community trainings and organizes gatherings for Indigenous Peoples to build mutual support, develop collective strategies and share traditional knowledge, practices, seeds and methods. IITC also defends rights to land, water, traditional knowledge, culture and Treaties that are the basis for Food Sovereignty and supports the establishment of Indigenous Food Sovereignty Zones free from pesticides, GMO's and extractive industries.

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Food Sovereignty | International Indian Treaty Council

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In April 2002, IITC organized the first Indigenous Peoples' Global Consultation on the Right to Food in Sololá, Guatemala. The "Declaration of Atitlan," adopted by consensus of the participants from all regions, affirmed that "the Right to Food of Indigenous Peoples is a collective right based on our special spiritual relationship with Mother Earth, our lands and territories, environment, and natural resources that provide our traditional nutrition.

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Another group dedicated to seed sovereignty. They work to promote Indigenous cultural diversity through preserving heirloom seeds and plants.

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Across Turtle Island, there is a growing inter-generational movement of Indigenous people proud to carry the message of the grand rematriation of seeds and foods back into our Indigenous communities. Some of these seeds have been missing from our communities for centuries, carried on long journeys in smoky buckskin pouches, on the necks of peoples who were forced to relocate from the land of their births, their ancestral grounds.

Generations later, these seeds are now coming back home to communities of origin, from the vaults of public institutions, seed banks, universities, seed keeper collections, and some lying on dusty pantry shelves of foresighted elders, seeds patiently sleeping and dreaming.

Seeds waiting for loving hands to patiently place them into welcoming soil once more so that they can continue to fulfill their original agreement to help feed the people.

In the seed movement, we have begun to use the word rematriation, instead of the more patriarchal repatriation, as it relates to bringing these seeds home again. In many communities, including our Mohawk tradition, the responsibility of caring for the seeds over the generations is ultimately within the women's realm.

Both men and women farm and plant seeds, but their care and stewardship are part of the women's bundle of responsibility. So the word rematriation reflects the restoration of the feminine seeds back into the communities of origin. The Indigenous concept of rematriation can also encompass the reclaiming of ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge, and resources. It simply means back to Mother Earth, a return to our origins, to life and cocreation, honoring the life-giving force of the Divine Feminine.

Relationships and partnerships are being developed to ensure that communities who have been absent of their seeds are reunited with them, and that in many cases those seeds are then reunited with their ancestral soil. This process often entails policy documents and negotiations, but also spiritual and emotional work-developing new ceremonies and protocols to welcome home these relatives, as well as acknowledging the elders who have worked for so long to make this movement possible.

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Indigenous SeedKeepers Network | NAFSA::Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance

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Across Turtle Island, there is a growing inter-generational movement of Indigenous people proud to carry the message of the grand rematriation of seeds and foods back into our Indigenous communities. Some of these seeds have been missing from our communities for centuries, carried on long journeys in smoky buckskin pouches, on the necks of peoples who were forced to relocate from the land of their births, their ancestral grounds.

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Also focuses on preservation of Native American seeds, as well as biodiversity, farming techniques, and cultural heritage.

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NS/S provides only OP varieties. Seed saved from the parent plant will grow with the same characteristics if care is taken to prevent crossing.

Seeds from the NS/S Seed Bank Collection are landrace or heirloom varieties with a long historical connection to the Greater Southwest. Landraces are farmer-developed varieties of crops that are adapted to local environmental conditions. Heirlooms are similar in that they are grown and shared over generations.
Organic Growing Practices
Most seeds in our Seed Bank Collection are grown out at our Conservation Farm in Patagonia, AZ or by partner farmers. While we are not USDA certified organic, our current growing practices meet and often exceed the standards for organic certification. Please contact us if you have questions about the specific growing conditions of any seed offered by NS/S. All of our seeds are untreated and allowable for use in certified organic programs.

We also include OP species and varieties from outside our collection to broaden our offerings. These Non-Collection varieties perform well in the Greater Southwest even though they do not have a deep historical connection to the region. Those that are certified organically grown are noted as such on their webpage. All purchases support our conservation mission.

NS/S is a member of the Safe Seed Initiative. We do not buy, sell or use genetically modified seeds. Our seeds can be considered GMO-free and we take efforts to ensure that they are not cross-pollinated by GMO or hybrid seed stock. For more information contact the Council for Responsible Genetics, sponsor of the Safe Seed Initiative.

We support free access to crop diversity and support the rights of indigenous communities and all farmers to benefit fairly from the crops and associated knowledge they developed. Seeds obtained from NS/S are not to be used for commercial breeding purposes with a patent outcome unless there are written agreements with the originators of the seeds in the NS/S collection.
Our Region
Seeds in the collection come from the Greater Southwest region: stretching from Las Vegas, Nevada in the west to Las Vegas, New Mexico in the east, and from Durango, Colorado in the north to Durango, Mexico in the south.

The seeds originate in this very diverse region, which includes High Desert (above 3500 feet elevation) and Low Desert (below 3500 feet elevation).

Nuestras Semillas

Estamos comprometidos en conservar la biodiversidad agrícola y de proporcionar la más alta calidad de semillas disponibles. Con estos valores en mente: las variedades de NS/S de polinización abierta proveen únicamente variedades de polinización abierta. Las semillas recolectadas de la planta madre crecerán con las mismas características si se previene el cruce de especies.
Variedades autóctonas y heirloom (ancestrales)
Las semillas de la colección del banco de semillas de N/S, son variedades autóctonas o heirloom (ancestrales) con una conexión histórica en el Gran Suroeste. Las variedades autóctonas son variedades desarrolladas por los agricultores que se adaptan a las condiciones ambientales locales. Las semillas heirloom o ancestrales son parecidas a las variedades autóctonas en que son semillas que se han compartido y sembrado por generaciones.
Semillas de no colección
También incluimos especies de polinización abierta, variedades que no pertenecen a nuestra colección para ampliar nuestras ofertas. Estas variedades no de colección crecen exitosamente en la zona del suroeste a pesar de que no tienen una fuerte conexión histórica con la región.
Prácticas de cultivo orgánico
La mayoría de las semillas de nuestra colección perteneciente a nuestro banco de semillas se cultivan en nuestra granja de conservación en la ciudad de Patagonia, AZ. Aunque no estamos certificados por el USDA, nuestras prácticas actuales de cultivo cumplen y generalmente superan los estándares asignados para la certificación orgánica. Por favor contáctenos en caso de dudas sobre las condiciones específicas de crecimiento y desarrollo de cualquier semilla de N/S. Todas nuestras semillas no son tratadas y son permitidas en programas orgánicos certificados.
Semillas seguras y transgénicos
N/S es miembro de la iniciativa de semillas seguras. Nosotros no compramos, vendemos ni mucho menos usamos semillas genéticamente modificadas. Nuestras semillas pueden ser consideradas no transgénicas. Tomamos medidas serias para prevenir que las semillas no sean polinizadas por variedades genéticamente modificadas o semillas híbridas. Para obtener más información póngase en contacto con el Consejo de Genética Responsable (CRG), patrocinador de la iniciativa de semillas seguras.
No patentes en semillas
Apoyamos el libre acceso a la diversidad de cultivos al igual que apoyamos los derechos de las comunidades indígenas y (a todos los agricultores), para beneficiarse de manera justa de los cultivos y conocimientos asociados que se han desarrollado gracias a estas siembras. Las semillas obtenidas a partir de N/S no deben utilizarse para fines de reproducción o difusión comercial con un resultado de patente, al menos que existan acuerdos escritos con los fundadores de las semillas en la colección de N/S.

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We are committed to conserving agricultural biodiversity and to providing the highest quality seed available. Open Pollinated Varieties NS/S provides only OP varieties. Seed saved from the parent plant will grow with the same characteristics if care is taken to prevent crossing. Landraces & Heirlooms Seeds from t

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Comprehensive overview of why seed sovereignty is critical and methods of seed sovereignty.

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When communities are free to shape their own food systems, food can be a vehicle to justice, health and sustainability to all.

It's time to reclaim the power of food

Food sovereignty is what we mean when we talk about reclaiming the power of food.

When food is grown by farmers to benefit their communities, it can provide nourishment and security without damaging the land. This kind of agriculture can make us stronger, healthier, and more connected to the land, to our culture and to each other. That's the power of food.

When the power of food is usurped by corporations that put profits first, other considerations that are important to farmers and their community - like making sure our food is healthy, accessible to all and sustainable - take a backseat to priorities held by corporate shareholders. Farmers' incomes deteriorate, our diets worsen, and the planet suffers.

What is food sovereignty?

Food sovereignty is a powerful and innovative concept that was coined in 1996 by La Via Campesina , a global movement of farmers, to describe their vision of a better food future.

La Via Campesina defines food sovereignty as "the right of Peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems."

In other words, food sovereignty puts producers and democracy at the centre of our food systems. It recognizes food as a right and a public good, not as a commodity. It identifies sustainability as essential, and promotes the use of agroecology. It also recognizes the various layers of discrimination that combine to place an even heavier burden on some family farmers, like women, Indigenous people, youth, and LGBTQ2S farmers.

Food sovereignty requires bringing all voices to the table, and sharing land, seeds, water, credit and other resources equitably.
It is what guides our work in Canada and around the world.

The seven pillars of food sovereignty

Farmers at the International Forum for Food Sovereignty in Nyéléni, Mali, in 2007 defined six pillars of food sovereignty. A seventh pillar was added by members of the Indigenous Circle during Food Secure Canada's People's Food Policy process.

What's the difference between food security and food sovereignty?

Food security

Focuses on peoples' ability to access adequate food

Understands food as a traded commodity and hunger as the result of insufficient production and lack of access

Is less focused on production and procurement methods

Based on four pillars: food availability, food access, food use, and stability of the first three

Food sovereignty

Focuses on food producers' right to determine local food systems

Recognizes food as a right and understands hunger as a problem of food governance, unequal distribution and injustice

Puts small-scale farmers and other food providers at the centre of the food system and highlights relationships between communities and nature

What is seed sovereignty?

Seed sovereignty is about farmers, seed keepers, peasants, and other food producers having the capacity and right to save, grow, sell and share their seeds.

The Lexicon of Sustainability defines seed sovereignty as "The farmer's right to breed and exchange diverse open source seeds which can be saved and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants."

When smallholder farmers are empowered to take control of their seed security, they also build seed sovereignty. Keeping seeds in farmers' hands and maintaining a high diversity of seeds is critical for building resilient food systems in the face of climate change.

Learn more about farmers' seed systems and their critical contribution to food sovereignty here.

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When communities are free to shape their own food systems, food can be a vehicle to justice, health and sustainability to all. Food sovereignty is what we mean when we talk about reclaiming the power of food. When food is grown by farmers to benefit their communities, it can provide nourishment and security without damaging the land.