Restoring American Indian Food & Nutrition

by Laura Baldez

Native peoples’ genetic makeup has been influenced by the foods and medicines their ancestors relied upon for thousands of years. After generations of reliance on a particular food system, each tribe adapted to the plants and animals in their homelands.

In the last century, this intimate and deep relationship to the landscape has been violently disrupted due to colonization and globalization. Removed from their lands and forced to assimilate into Western culture, many Native people no longer live in their traditional territories nor do they eat their traditional foods. Refined sugar, processed flour, cheese and domesticated meats have become the staple diet, and nutritional-related diseases such as Type II diabetes have become epidemics as Native people become more and more dependent on foreign Western foods that their bodies were never meant to manage.

Despite the growing health crisis in Indian country, Native people are determined to regain control of their well-being and health. While Western systems of medicine and healing are part of the solution, it is time to look within Native traditions for answers. Across the nation, tribes are starting to address current health problems by revitalizing indigenous models of nutrition, and restoring traditional food systems within their communities. More gardening, farming, harvesting, and fishing projects are being created each year, giving birth to a nation-wide Native foods movement that is growing and spreading across North America. In the U.S. Southwest, the Tohono O’odham are bringing back tepary beans; in the Midwest, the Ojibwe are protecting their wild rice harvests; and in California tribes are keeping alive the tradition of gathering acorns.

In addition to bringing back their foods, Native people are also revitalizing many of the stories, songs, recipes, and practices that go along with traditional food ways. This cultural restoration is in itself a healing process that is helping to re-establish the relationship between Native people and the food plants and animals of their region.

The Cultural Conservancy (TCC), an indigenous rights non-profit based in San Francisco, is one of many organizations working to protect and revitalize Native foods and restore the rich storehouses of cultural knowledge and practices surrounding traditional food systems. TCC is currently developing a program called Restoring American Indian Nutrition, Food and Ecological Diversity (RAIN FED) that aims to work within two of the most marginalized Native American communities in the nation—the growing intertribal urban Indian community in the San Francisco Bay Area and the California Indian community.

Through RAIN FED, TCC will develop and create opportunities to reconnect these two groups to their Native foods and document the unique food traditions of these living cultures through media and digital storytelling. In addition, TCC is working with Slow Food USA’s Renewing America’s Food Traditions project to help in the assembly of a Native food producers’ directory and to interview culture bearers from across the nation who are involved in Native foods revitalization efforts.

Laura Baldez is the Native Foods Co-Coordinator for The Cultural Conservancy, and Executive Assistant at PAN.