Anishinaabek Neighbors: Rosebud Bear Schneider

May 29—TRAVERSE CITY — In between the concrete jungles of Detroit, farmer, food educator, and seed keeper, Rosebud Bear Schneider, keeps her hands in the dirt.

For the past 15 years, Schneider, an Anishinaabe, Shawnee, P'urhepecha citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band, has been driven to help bring back traditional foodways to Anishinaabek communities throughout Michigan.

Food sovereignty drives Schneider, she said — her goal is to meet people where they are at in their journey to indigenize their diet and support that reconnection through feeding and educating the community with traditional foods and practices.

Schneider recently moved back to her community after spending the past three years as the director of Minogin Market and the Ziibimijwang Farm for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

Her work focused on providing a reliable food source independent of large food system chains, not just for the tribe's citizens, but also for the community at large in the Mackinaw straits.

Produce grown at Ziibimijwang is sold at the tribe's farm stand, purchased by local schools to feed students at lunch, and given to community members (and even other Indigenous communities) that are in need, she said.

After being back home, she began farming for Keep Growing Detroit, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the cultivation of urban food sovereignty within the city limits. Schneider formerly served on the board of directors for KGD until 2018.

In April, Schneider was appointed by LTBB's council to serve on the farm's board of directors, and will serve a four-year term to help with the overall policy and direction of the farm.

She said she is excited to continue her work with the farm.

She was born and raised in Detroit, and grew up in a family that was active in the city's Native American community.

Sovereignty was a rooted family value, her late father hailed from Shawnee and Ojibwe nations in Wisconsin and was active in the American Indian Movement.

Schneider said she grew up in the walls of the American Indian Health and Family Services, where her father worked, and where she recalled having her first memories of traditional foods at community feasts.

Her passion for Indigenous foodways began with the most fundamental nourishment of all: breastmilk.

"We can't talk about Indigenous food sovereignty without talking about breastfeeding," said Schneider.

It's the first food, she commented, something that sparked in her when she began her career with Healthy Start and WIC (Women, Infants and Children) as a maternal-infant home visitor.

From there, Scheider found passion in the connection with Indigenous foods, and made food sovereignty a part of her work. Through grants, AIHFS established Sacred Roots, a food sovereignty program that strives to reconnect people to ancestral foods and the land.

Schneider soon became a farmer and nutrition educator with the Sacred Roots project and as a board member at Keep Growing Detroit until she took the opportunity to manage LTBB's market in 2018.

The program began with a humble seed garden and seed library, as well as education on cooking, seed keeping and workshops. They established a 2-acre community garden with traditional foods such as beans, corn, and squashes, right in the heart of the city.

"Food sovereignty movements are premised on communities caring for their own, and the work often involves helping others overcome barriers to food access," said Scheider.

She has helped host community meals as a way to help achieve this.

It's important to understand the history of disruption and provide essential context for why the Indigenous food movement is necessary, Scheider explained. She said her time with Sacred Roots lit her passion to feed and care for her community.

"When you feed someone you also are feeding their spirit, I want to nurture that spirit," said Schneider.