Food sovereignty seeks to return Tribal access to healthy, culturally important foods | Opinion

Before settlers arrived in western Washington, Native Americans ate the abundant food, from the prairies, along or in the rivers or in the mountains. Gathering, hunting, and harvesting was a partnership with nature. Before harvesting, you would ask permission, say a prayer, and leave a gift.

Nisqually tribal members managed the lands and waters that nourished us and kept them sustainable. On the prairies, Douglas fir and other tree species would be weeded out to preserve the open habitat and its unique array of edible plants. Fruit bearing plants would be pruned back to keep fruit low for easy picking, and this often resulted in bushier plants. Managed fires would be lit to renew the earth with valuable nutrients.

Only what was needed was taken, and nothing was overharvested. What was not eaten right away was processed and stored.

Today, most of us do not know how to grow, gather, or preserve our own food. So what happened?

In 1854, the Medicine Creek Treaty was signed, and the Nisqually people were relocated to a reservation on a rocky bluff and expected to learn to farm like the settlers. The treaty stripped the Nisqually people’s access to our usual and accustomed land, and our ancestors lost access to much of their traditional diets. In its place, the federal government provided “commodity foods,” which included white flour, lard, and salt.

In addition to losing access to the land, Native children were sent to boarding schools to become “civilized,” lose their native identities, learn to farm, and eat commodity foods. Children were severely punished if they practiced any part of their culture, creating an exceptionally dark time in their lives. Many of the adults who survived early boarding school did not practice their traditions and were unable to pass those traditions down as an act of love and protection to the next generation.

The dietary change from cultural foods with diverse complex nutrients to commodity and industrialized foods full of bad fats, sugars, and refined grains was devastating to the health of Native Americans. Foods that were never eaten before led an entire population to be riddled with diabetes, heart failure, obesity, high blood pressure and other chronic food-related diseases.

The Boldt Decision 50 years ago has led to progress on treaty rights and tribal sovereignty, but there are still many barriers. Native nations still suffer from the loss of access to our accustomed lands and the healthy food they provided. We face regulations requiring permits for harvesting that cost money, and policies that regulate where food served in some of our programs comes from.

Access to areas that haven’t been bulldozed, sprayed with chemicals, over-harvested, or overfished is limited. Many Tribal members don’t have the time, money, or resources to get to these places.

Food sovereignty seeks to return our access to healthy and culturally important foods. The Nisqually Community Garden program is a big step in that effort.

We strive to improve the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health of our community by encouraging the practice of traditional ways of healthy living and eating. Our Garden produces about 15,000 pounds of produce annually. We also harvest traditional foods and medicine plants from the wild and make them into medicinal and body care products. All produce, medicine and body care products are distributed directly to Nisqually Tribal members, community members and staff.

Our goals are to offer a greater variety, to have a more accessible market, to create a teaching kitchen with classes on food preservation, to keep our own bees, to develop a robust composting program and more bountiful medicinal herbal gardens, to supply our elders and Head Start cooks with fresh produce, and to harvest more traditional foods such as native berries.

Billy Frank Jr. once said, “Indian tribes are sovereign nations, and part of that sovereignty includes access to traditional foods.” We honor his memory by working towards that goal.

Chantay Anderson is the Nisqually Community Garden Program Manager.