{"id":34343,"date":"2023-12-11T15:57:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T20:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=34343"},"modified":"2023-12-11T15:59:04","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T20:59:04","slug":"kaiser-health-news-food-sovereignty-movement-grows-in-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2023\/12\/11\/kaiser-health-news-food-sovereignty-movement-grows-in-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaiser Health News: Food sovereignty movement grows in Montana"},"content":{"rendered":" \"American<\/a>
American Indian Hall at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. Photo by Montana State University<\/figcaption>\r\n
Food Sovereignty Movement Sprouts as Bison Return to Indigenous Communities<\/div>\r\n
Monday, December 11, 2023<\/div>\r\n
By Jim Robbins<\/div>\r\n
Kaiser Health News<\/div>\r\n
khn.org<\/a><\/div>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nBOZEMAN, Montana — Behind American Indian Hall on the Montana State University campus, ancient life is growing.

<\/P>Six-foot-tall corn plants tower over large green squash and black-and-yellow sunflowers. Around the perimeter, stalks of sweetgrass grow.

<\/P>The seeds for some of these plants grew for millennia in Native Americans\u2019 gardens along the upper Missouri River. It\u2019s one of several Native American ancestral gardens growing in the Bozeman area, totaling about an acre. Though small, the garden is part of a larger, multifaceted effort around the country to promote \u201cfood sovereignty\u201d for reservations and tribal members off reservation, and to reclaim aspects of Native American food and culture that flourished in North America for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers. Restoring bison to reservations, developing community food gardens with ancestral seeds, understanding and collecting wild fruits and vegetables, and learning how to cook tasty meals with traditional ingredients are all part of the movement.

<\/P>\u201cWe are learning to care for plant knowledge, growing Indigenous gardens, cultivating ancestral seeds \u2014 really old seeds from our relatives the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara: corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers,\u201d said Jill Falcon Ramaker, an assistant professor of community nutrition and sustainable food systems at Montana State. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Anishinaabe.

<\/P>\u201cA lot of what we are doing here at the university is cultural knowledge regeneration,\u201d she said.

<\/P>\r\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Montana\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\tMontana Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

Happy New Year all my relatives out there, I do hope that you are well and healthy. With the new year brings thoughts of the coming spring and getting ready to plant some seeds. MIFSI is getting…<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

\n\t\t\"www.facebook.com\"\t\twww.facebook.com\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nBut it also has a very practical application: to provide healthier, cheaper, and more reliable food supplies for reservations, which are often a long way from supermarkets, and where processed foods have helped produce an epidemic of diabetes and heart disease.

<\/P>Many reservations are food deserts where prices are high and processed food is often easier to come by than fresh food. The Montana Food Distribution Study<\/a>, a 2020 paper funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that the median cost in the state of a collection of items typically purchased at a grocery store is 23% higher on a reservation than off.

<\/P>\u201cWith food sovereignty we are looking at the ability to put that healthy food and ancestral foods which we used to survive for thousands of years, putting those foods back on the table,\u201d Ramaker said. What that means exactly can vary by region, depending on the traditional food sources, from wild rice in the Midwest to salmon on the Pacific coast.

<\/P>Central to the effort, especially in Montana, are bison, also referred to as buffalo. In 2014, 13 Native nations from eight reservations in the U.S. and Canada came together to sign the Buffalo Treaty, an agreement to return bison to 6.3 million acres that sought \u201cto welcome BUFFALO to once again live among us as CREATOR intended by doing everything within our means so WE and BUFFALO will once again live together to nurture each other culturally and spiritually.\u201d

<\/P>Nearly a decade later, dozens of tribes have buffalo herds, including all seven reservations in Montana.

<\/P>\r\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Montana\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\tMontana Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

Such a great day to harvest a buffalo, brought us closer to nature and where our food comes from. The buffalo gave his life for us and we are grateful for that life.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

\n\t\t\"www.facebook.com\"\t\twww.facebook.com\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nThe buffalo-centered food system was a success for thousands of years, according to Ramaker, who directs both the regional program, known as the Buffalo Nations Food Systems Initiative \u2014 a collaboration with the Native American Studies Department and College of Education, Health and Human Development at Montana State \u2014 and the Montana-specific effort, known as the Montana Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative. It wasn\u2019t a hand-to-mouth existence, she wrote in an article for Montana State, but a \u201cknowledge of a vast landscape, including an intimate understanding of animals, plants, season, and climate, passed down for millennia and retained as a matter of life and death.\u201d

<\/P>With bison meat at the center of the efforts, the BNFSI is working to bring other foods from the northern Plains Native American diet in line with modern palates.

<\/P>The BNFSI has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to carry out that work, in partnership with Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in New Town, North Dakota.

<\/P>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLife on reservations is partly to blame for many Native people eating processed foods, Ramaker said. Food aid from the federal government, known as the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, has long been shipped to reservations in the form of boxes full of packaged foods. \u201cWe were forced onto the reservations, where there was replacement food sent by the government \u2014 white flour, white sugar, canned meat, salt, and baking powder,\u201d she said.

<\/P>Experts say<\/a> processed foods contribute to chronic inflammation, which in turn leads to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, which occurs at three times the rate<\/a> in Native Americans as it does in white people.

<\/P>\r\n

<\/ins>