Reziliency Traditional Foods

Titooqanwitkii

Reziliency Traditional Foods

Hipt in Nez Perce language means food. With this project we will work with traditional foods map of seasonal harvests.

Lewiston, Idaho

United States

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

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Indigenous communities have some of the highest rates of diabetes per capita. As 4.2% of the US population, our numbers can improve. The result is due to a combination of historical and modern convenient factors. 1. The historical interruption of a traditional food diet and lack of movement. Historically, Indigenous people were not sedentary and mobile. Moving with seasonal changes to gather traditional foods with a harvesting window around 21 days was a significant way of life. Colonial disruption compacted with unresolved historical grief, loss and trauma mixed with unhealthy coping mechanisms resulted in a generational process of cultural erosion. 2. Modern conveniences of processed foods and lack of movement mixed in with the previous mentioned unresolved trauma resulted in a generational shock wave that has lingered. With less than 3500 tribal members, there is a significant number of diabetic tribal members in my home community, and the loss of a traditional foods diet and cultural knowledge has affected us greatly. Recovery is the one method of remembering who we are and where we come from, but so is resiliency. We are more than statistics and not monoliths.

Our solution works to gather and document traditional foods in partnership with cultural knowledge keepers while also creating a STEM education curriculum. We will work with local K12 science teachers to build upon the current traditional foods calendar that can also be utilized in collaboration and partnership with our local tribal health dietitians. Our cultural knowledge keepers work seasonally to gather traditional foods, this collaboration will provide the support needed to develop a map for K12 youth regarding our traditional food calendar timeline. The activity will involve working with local education communities, K12 educators and university faculty, and allows K12 students to learn environmental science, natural resources, and fisheries biology.

Our solution will serve as a map for K12 Native American youth who are our future and those young children who have yet to arrive, which in a part is also our reciprocal relationship and responsibility as stewards for future planning. The map will include unceded territories where traditional foods were gathered. The locations include traditional gathering seasons according to cultural knowledge keepers and result in an enhanced document that also uses historical records from the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery journals which have not been resourced. We will use AI to help identify known areas, but also include in our mapping system seasonal harvests that occur annually. The map will help K12 students learn about calendars and almanacs of traditional foods.