Tribal Food Sovereignty Assessment

Toward Control of Food

Rudolph C. Rÿser, PhD, Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, Heidi G.Bruce, Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Abstract

Through collaboration between an American Indian Tribe (specific names have been substituted to ensure confidentiality) and the Center for World Indigenous Studies, the CWIS research team conducted the Tribal Food Sovereignty Assessment beginning in September 2016. The Assessment contemplated the formation of the Food Policy Council that would collaborate with the research team to gather Tribal Community information concerning the provision of adequate and culturally appropriate food supplies while investigating approaches for expanding locally controlled and locally based Tribal food systems that provide healthy foods for community members consistent with Tribal health needs and culture; and to identify proposed policies for implementation by the Tribal Council. Methods: The CWIS Research Team began planning and designing the investigations into the historical food used by Tribal ancestors, a Tribal Community Food Sovereignty Assessment Survey, Talking Circles of survey participants and purposively selected members of the community. Definitions: The underlying rational for the Assessment was that the meaning of Food Sovereignty would be for purposes of the study: the inherent right of the Tribal peoples, and communities to define their own labor, fishing, harvesting, agricultural, food and land policies that are healthfully, ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food processing-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves as a vital society. (Based on the Political Statement of the NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty June 13, 2002, Rome). Findings: Ninety percent of the survey respondents affirmatively stated that traditional foods would be consumed if they were easy to obtain even as eight in ten of the respond ents were dependent on “neighborhood grocery stores.” The Tribal community as a whole expended an estimated $1 million to $3.2 million annually for food obtained in local grocery stores that translated to an estimated $5.2 to $15.7 million annual expenditure that constituted a net loss to the tribal community economy that could be otherwise used to infuse the local economy and establish strong tribal food sovereignty. Conclusions: The Tribal Community survey results and Talking Circle conclusions produced a range of recommendations to the Tribal Council for action including the reestablishment of a farmers’/hunters’ market for fresh traditional produce and meats; expand community gardens; provide traditional food education to tribal youth, eliminate junk foods in food banks; supply elk, salmon, berries and deer to the food bank; establish a beef, deer, elk meat processing butchery and conduct more ceremonial fisheries to bring fish into
tribal homes.