Food Empowerment: The Muckleshoot Tribe Reintroduces Traditional Fare    
      
      
      
   Anne Minard   
      
      
      
   2/28/12   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
   Students from Northwest Indian College at the Muckleshoot Tribe learn about   
   traditional salmon preparation and skin tanning during a monthly seminar of   
   the Food Sovereignty Project. (Courtsey of Jon Hiskes at Bastyr University)   
      
      
   Many years ago, members of Pacific Northwest tribes subsisted on a wide   
   diversity of foods from the sea and land. More than 300 fish, shellfish,   
   greens and berries graced their seasonal menus and shaped their cultural   
   lifeways.   
      
   "The foods that were eaten here were a huge pillar of our culture," says   
   Valerie Segrest, a Muckleshoot tribal member and a Native nutrition educator   
   at Northwest Indian College. "They'd follow the huckleberries. Twenty   
   varieties grew from the seashore    
   to the higher elevations; they would follow them as they ripened."   
      
   Today, such a life has become virtually impossible. "First of all," Segrest   
   notes, "there was a loss of land and a loss of rights. There is the issue of   
   environment toxins now, the cultural oppression around harvesting food,   
   invasive species that have    
   come into our environment and changed it. There's a lack of time. Now in our   
   modern world people have jobs. You have to have vacation time to go out and   
   harvest. Areas for harvesting mussels are located on an island. You have to   
   have money to put gas in    
   your vehicle to get to the ferry, and pay for the ferry."   
      
   As a result, Pacific Northwest tribes got disconnected from their traditional   
   food sources. They came to rely on processed foods, some of which are provided   
   through the dominant federal assistance programs and others that are front and   
   center at grocery    
   stores. Like many tribes across the country, the Muckleshoot and other tribes   
   have begun to see epidemics of diabetes and heart disease.   
      
   But Segrest is doing her best to reverse that. Today, she heads up the   
   Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project, which aims to reintroduce traditional   
   foods into the diets of tribal members. The two-year project is funded through   
   the U.S. Department of    
   Agriculture and supported by Northwest Indian College's Traditional Plants and   
   Foods Program.   
      
   Before the project actually got under way, the Muckleshoot, Suquamish and   
   Tulalip tribes, along with the University of Washington's Burke Museum, laid   
   the groundwork by investigating plants used by the tribes before European   
   contact. They built a    
   database of such foods, so people wishing to incorporate the traditional foods   
   into their diets have a solid place to start.   
      
   Segrest's program now offers a Native foods course at the college as well as   
   community seminars centered on specific foods, such as deer, berries or   
   salmon. The project has also yielded a Native berry garden at the college, an   
   orchard at the Muckleshoot    
   Tribal School and a widening "cultural landscape" including native plants at   
   the new senior center.   
      
   Segrest's efforts resulted from a combination of academic training, starting   
   with her undergraduate years in the nutrition program at Bastyr University   
   near Seattle, and her cultural education, whereby her elders taught her how to   
   work with people and    
   empower community health programs. She acknowledges her accomplishments are   
   the result of standing on the shoulders "of many giants," and she points out   
   that her program is one of countless traditional foods movements that are   
   springing up across tribal    
   lands in the Pacific Northwest.   
      
      
      
      
      
      
   Before cooking, salmon skin is surprisingly resistant to tearing. (Courtesy of   
   Jon Hiskes at Bastyr University)   
      
   "There are so many things that are happening right now," she says, "lots of   
   food-restoration programs. There are community gardens coming up, community   
   food banks that people are starting to organize. The Muckleshoot tribe is   
   doing a lot of work around    
   this, but so are the Tulalip, Suquamish and Makah. People are creating   
   partnerships with local farms. There are agricultural harvest boxes being   
   distributed to tribal members."   
      
   One of the most problematic challenges is trying to incorporate traditional   
   foods into modern lifestyles--or replacing some foods, like the camas   
   root--that were once essential but are now difficult to find. Elk burgers, for   
   example, have become a    
   popular modern spin on traditional game. Segrest greets nearly every morning   
   with a huckleberry smoothie. And many tribal members are perfecting recipes   
   for kelp pickles, rosehip jam, nettle pesto and camas nettle soups.   
      
   Clearly, Segrest has found herself caught up in a powerful movement. But what   
   has spurred it? Segrest's best guess is a simple one.   
      
   "We're sick of being sick," she says. "We're sick of heart disease and   
   diabetes. We know that diabetes was nonexistent in our communities 100 years   
   ago, because we ate these foods. I think it's just this consciousness that   
   people are becoming more and    
   more passionate about."   
      
      
   Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/02/2   
   /food-empowerment-muckleshoot-tribe-reintroduces-traditional-fare-100414   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)