{"id":14654,"date":"2021-08-06T11:08:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T15:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=14654"},"modified":"2021-08-06T11:08:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T15:08:40","slug":"news21-yurok-tribe-exercises-foods-sovereignty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2021\/08\/06\/news21-yurok-tribe-exercises-foods-sovereignty\/","title":{"rendered":"News21: Yurok Tribe exercises foods sovereignty"},"content":{"rendered":" \"Sammy<\/a>
The Klamath River\u2019s main resource, salmon, has been negatively affected by environmental and infrastructural issues, according to Sammy Gensaw, co-founder and director of Ancestral Guard. Photo by Beth Wallis \/ News21<\/figcaption>\r\n
Yurok Tribe in Northern California grows solutions in soil of crises<\/div>\r\n
Friday, August 6, 2021<\/div>\r\n
By Mackenzie Wilkes<\/div>\r\n
News21<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nA drought, a virus and a landslide \u2013 these concurrent crises have worsened the food insecurity of Northern California\u2019s Yurok Tribe and spurred some members to explore their own solutions.

<\/p>\r\nTheir reservation, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the redwoods of the Klamath Mountains, was declared a rural food desert by the USDA in 2017<\/a>. The situation worsened when the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with severe drought and a crumbling highway, slammed the reservation and nearby Indigienous communities.

<\/p>\r\nSammy Gensaw, 26, grew up paddling redwood canoes on the Klamath River and driving the winding mountain roads of California\u2019s North Coast. Since he was 10, Gensaw has been advocating for his people \u2013 and the food provided by the river and its valley \u2013 at government meetings and with nonprofit groups.

<\/p>\r\nGiving Indigenous communities the means to feed their families is a responsibility Gensaw wants to take on, starting with giving people access to healthful food choices.

<\/p>\r\n\u201cWhile people are dying here in the Klamath Basin \u2013 where people are getting sick and getting diabetes and not being able to provide for themselves \u2013 this is what we\u2019re facing,\u201d Gensaw said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the environment. We\u2019re facing a whole system that needs to be changed.\u201d

<\/p>\r\nIndigenous people suffer from negative health disparities<\/a>, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says makes them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Health inequity further exacerbates disparities in food, housing and income. In response, the federal government, through the CARES Act of 2020, allocated $8 billion<\/a> to be directed to Native American tribes and organizations.

<\/p>\r\nCARES Act funds and financial support from nonprofits have subsidized Indigenous communities\u2019 efforts to achieve food sovereignty. For the Yurok Tribe, that has meant a pivot from traditions such as fishing, which is becoming unsustainable as the West gets hotter and drier, toward gardening. Some tribal members are working to grow their way out of a food desert.

<\/p>\r\nThe CDC granted California tribes more than $19 million<\/a> in CARES Act funds to address health needs and related issues; only Alaska received more. The Yurok Tribe, the largest in the state, with more than 5,000 enrolled members<\/a>, received about $1 million \u2013 the largest sum from the CDC to any California tribe. The Yurok Tribe received more than $32.7 million<\/a> in CARES Act money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

<\/p>\r\nThe tribe used $490,000, according to property tax records, to buy 40 acres of land, which was originally a part of their ancestral home.

<\/p>\r\nThe tribe\u2019s Food Sovereignty Division plans to create \u201cfood villages\u201d on the 40 acres, manager Taylor Thompson said. The daisy-covered hills, grassy meadows and redwoods would become a communal garden and commercial kitchen, with small homes for workers to create a self-sustaining food system that can withstand a crisis.

<\/p>\r\nThese food villages would provide healthy food options in an area with limited food access<\/a>. The reservation\u2019s population is 836, according to the Census Bureau<\/a>, and the nearest supermarket is more than 40 miles north in Crescent City.

<\/p>\r\n\u201cThe accessibility of the nearest supermarket from some of these communities is like an hour and a half drive one way,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cSo it’s just a real barrier for people to be able to have access to fresh produce or sufficient food choices for them to be able to have healthy, well-rounded nutrition.\u201d

<\/p>\r\n \"Ancestral<\/a>

Members of the Ancestral Guard paddle out on the Klamath River in redwood canoes. Photo by Beth Wallis \/ News21<\/figcaption>\r\n

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Growing generational knowledge<\/strong><\/div>\r\nGensaw co-founded the organization Ancestral Guard, which became a nonprofit in 2015. The organization teaches Indigenous youth farming and fishing, as well as provides families a sustainable way to obtain and produce food.

<\/p>\r\nHe said it\u2019s particularly important to root food sovereignty in younger generations, who one day will become elders who pass on their knowledge.

<\/p>\r\n\u201cWhen we say sovereignty, we want our people to be able to make healthy decisions,\u201d Gensaw said. \u201cWe want our people to be able to say, \u2018Yes, I can grow a garden. Yes, I have the resources to do so. And yes, I\u2019m going to invest these resources back into my community,\u2019 because recreating these systems of reciprocity between Indigenous people and the land that we all live in (and) depend on, these have been broken by years and years of genocide.\u201d

<\/p>\r\nU.S. 101 is the main road through the reservation. Along the highway, on the western edge of the reservation, sits the tribal-owned Pem-Mey Fuel Mart, one of two gasoline stations on the reservation and the only source of food available to purchase. The fuel mart \u2013 which also provides WiFi for an area with spotty service \u2013 is where Gensaw submitted the application for the grant that funded Ancestral Guard.

<\/p>\r\nIf Yurok living on the reservation want to go to the nearest grocery store in Crescent City, it takes more than an hour even without traffic. A landslide in February<\/a> along a 3-mile stretch of U.S. 101 between Crescent City and Klamath, known as Last Chance Grade, stretched that drive to two hours. While repairs continue, the grade is closed<\/a> from 8 a.m. to noon Mondays through Thursdays, and 8 a.m. to noon and 3 to 7 p.m. Fridays.

<\/p>\r\nLast Chance Grade is so prone to landslides that locals refer to the patchwork repairs on the two-lane highway as \u201c$1 million Band-Aid.\u201d Since 1997, the California Department of Transportation has spent $85 million<\/a> on maintaining the road, according to the Last Chance Grade Project, which began surveying the area in 2015 and is dedicated to finding a permanent solution.

<\/p>\r\nThe project estimates that construction of an alternative route could be completed from 2031 to 2039<\/a> but would come at a steep cost, with alternative routes<\/a> costing between $295 million and $1.1 billion<\/a>. A 2018 study found that a one-year closure of Last Chance Grade would reduce business output by $456 million, accrue $236 million in travel costs and require residents to make a 320-mile, six-hour detour.

<\/p>\r\nGensaw said COVID-19 also highlighted the food insecurity in the Yurok Tribe and nearby Indigenous communities. Although the Ancestral Guard was in the works before 2020, it began its five-year food sovereignty effort during the pandemic, starting with the Victorious Gardens Initiative. It launched a 10-row community garden near a bend in the calm Klamath River and has since expanded into 3-by-6-foot garden boxes at 30 homes on the reservation and in Klamath and Crescent City.

<\/p>\r\n \"Drea<\/a>

Drea Lanctot, food program coordinator for the Del Norte County and Adjacent Tribal Lands Community Food Council, looks into a deep freezer housing salmon and other local fish. The organization partners with local fishing businesses to provide meat to the community. Photo by Beth Wallis \/ News 21<\/figcaption>\r\n

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Balancing food security, traditional practices<\/strong><\/div>\r\nThe Yurok traditionally are fishermen \u2013 for salmon, eels, sturgeon and crab \u2013 but they also gather acorns, berries and other foods. The Klamath, historically teeming with chinook salmon, runs south through the reservation from Oregon. Del Norte and Humboldt counties are experiencing severe and extreme drought, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.

<\/p>\r\nThat led Gensaw to start the Victorious Garden Initiative and show, as he says, that fishermen can farm. Teaching a young person how to garden not only will provide a stable source of food, it will create a culture of gardeners and farmers.

<\/p>\r\n\u201cWe\u2019re not just growing food, we\u2019re not just giving it to people,\u201d Gensaw said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to revitalize the idea that these gardens are a piece of our culture, because often in Indian Country, traditions and cultures get muddled together. In reality, these traditions are things that our fathers have done or our grandmothers have done and their grandparents have done and we\u2019ll continue to teach our children.\u201d

<\/p>\r\nThe historic drought has allowed the Ceratonova shasta parasite to rapidly spread<\/a> among the salmon, killing off juveniles. Although these parasites naturally are present in river water, experts say the ongoing drought and a dam upriver (which is scheduled for removal in 2023) have heightened the threat by contributing to the Klamath\u2019s low level.

<\/p>\r\nThe drought and pandemic have harmed tribal members financially. Jonathan Jackson grew up in the late 1980s and early \u201990s, fishing the Klamath by night with his parents and brother and processing the catch at home during the day. In 2001, he started commercial fishing and later established his own business, Pacific Native Fisheries.

<\/p>\r\nWhen the pandemic began in March 2020, he found that his regular customers \u2013 restaurants and fish markets \u2013 weren\u2019t buying. Jackson couldn\u2019t afford to stop fishing, so he began making home deliveries.

<\/p>\r\n\u201cWhen the pandemic hit and everything shut down, we lost all of our markets and then all the big buyers also quit,\u201d he said.

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