Building Food Sovereignty in San Francisco and Detroit

The Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance organized a seed drive to distribute thousands of seeds to 270 different tribes. The indigenous seed exchange led to the creation of an intertribal cooperative to share traditional knowledge and practices as well. It has conducted a seed census in addition to creating a seed sovereignty assessment toolkit for communities.

The Wild Basket allows community members of Temiskaming First Nation to gain traditional knowledge about native food sources and foraging techniques while re-connecting to the land and their roots. The initiative also provides a source of native food. The wild foods include mushrooms, fiddleheads, spices, and tea leaves which are sold to restaurants and other community members.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of the U.S. food supply chain, yet for indigenous led-operations there has been little interruption thanks to practices that rely on shorter supply chains that "work with local ecosystems, not against them." In Virginia, one farmer is using the lessons from this traditional knowledge to create a small-scale farming collective.

The Quapaw tribe runs the Downstream Casino Resort in Oklahoma where they combine Indigenous food and farming knowledge with modern hotel operations. They have seven greenhouses and two gardens with 20 varieties of vegetables and herbs that cultivate about 6,000 pounds of food per year for the hotel and casino. They also have their own meat packing and processing plant, coffee roasting program, brewery, and farmers market. By creating a system of locally sourced and sustainably raised food, the Quapaw are reclaiming their land and food sovereignty.

Native American communities combat pervasive food insecurity with novel approaches to their Food Distribution Program which is a part of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). The Spirit Lake Reservation has applied this FDP to a grocery store as part of a triple-pronged approach that seeks to give recipients more agency over their food system through physical grocery stores, gardening programs, and cooking lessons using cultural ingredients.

Tribal systems are preserving their culture by teaming up with advocates and lawyers to write tribal food codes. Food codes are federal laws that govern food processing, and are supposed to protect consumers. However, some food codes ignore tribal customs. By writing their own food codes tribes can protect their customs. “It’s one thing to say that we have to develop food and process food in certain ways, but it’s another thing to recognize that tribes have their own versions of food safety.”

The Mvskoke 4-H Ocmulgee Club, in collaboration with Oklahoma State University and MCN Food Distribution, teaches Muscogee (Creek) Nation students hands-on pecan tree planting and food sovereignty skills rooted in Mvskoke cultural tradition.

Denver Urban Gardens transformed vacant urban lots into 26 food forests containing over 1,200 fruit trees and berry bushes, providing free fresh produce to communities while reducing local temperatures by 5-15 degrees and increasing tree canopy coverage in one of America's least forested cities.

A food forest at St. Edward’s University has cultivated two heirloom varieties of Cherokee corn, helping Cherokee peoples connect to their ancestors and agriculural history.

The Al Barakeh Wheat Project is working to regain food sovereignty through urban wheat farming in Amman, Jordan, by partnering farmers with families to teach them how to grow and harvest wheat.