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Indigenous Food Security is Dependent on Food Sovereignty [1]
['Andi Murphy', 'Daniel Walton', 'Momo Chang', 'Nick Bowlin', 'Grey Moran', 'Brian Calvert', 'Raksha Vasudevan', 'Lisa Held', 'Jaya Saxena', 'Christina Cooke']
Date: 2019-07-24
Several times a year, the locals at Orleans, California see a surge of sport fishermen and trophy hunters come through town, driving big trucks decked out in camouflage and sporting polarized fishing sunglasses.
The locals, including some of the Native people from tribes in the Klamath Basin, have to enter the same lottery and buy the same hunting permits as the outsiders who may or may not see the cultural and nutritional value of the animals they are harvesting. For some Native people, including Lisa Hillman, seeing their food treated in this way was an unpleasant shock.
“It makes me want to turn away,” Hillman said. “Otherwise I might say something I shouldn’t, as a mother and as a leader in the community.”
Study after study has shown that access to healthy food is critically low in Native communities across the U.S. In Orleans, a small, unincorporated town with limited resources, Native people have a hard time accessing food, let alone traditional, indigenous food.
A new study from Hillman, a member of the Karuk tribe and the manager of its Píkyav Field Institute, and colleagues from U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, explores the profound lack of food access among tribal members in the northwestern corner of California.
Over the course the last five years, the researchers received more than 711 survey responses, conducted 115 follow-up interviews, and worked with 20 focus groups to determine the food access challenges that members of the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa, and Klamath tribes face. The study found that 92 percent face at least some level of food insecurity—compared with 11.8 percent of all U.S. households.
“We only have one highway,” Hillman said about Orleans, a hub for the Karuk tribe with a population of 600. “Getting food here is really difficult,” she said, and the nearest grocery store is a two-hour drive away.
The study also showed that essentially everyone who participated wants more access to indigenous foods, but they first have to overcome limited access, regulations, and a legacy of colonialism to eat the food that has been part of their tribal identity and culture since before colonization.
“It was just astounding how widespread these feelings of loss, need, want, and frustration were in our area and across the tribes,” said Hillman.
Sixty-four percent of Native households in the area rely on food assistance, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, sometimes called commodities or “commods.” And 21 percent of those households reported using these food assistance programs because Native foods weren’t available. About 40 percent of participants said they rely on Native foods for food security.
A Lack of Access to Native Foods
It wasn’t always like this; 84 percent of people didn’t used to run out of food or worry about running out of food in the past. Traditionally, indigenous people in the Klamath Basin lived off of an abundance of wild game and fish, nuts, berries, and herbs. They also had unlimited access and the practical and cultural knowledge to gather, cook, and preserve these foods.
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[1] Url:
https://civileats.com/2019/07/24/indigenous-food-security-is-dependent-on-food-sovereignty/
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