Native Americans Discuss Return to Traditional Natural Foods to Combat Health Pr

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Native Americans Discuss a Return to Traditional Natural Foods to

Combat Health Problems

 

www.washingtonpost.com

The New Focus On Native American Cooking

By Karen Lincoln Michel

Special to The Washington Post

 

Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page F01

 

Cedar-planked, fire-roasted juniper salmon and the ash-roasted sweet

corn with hazelnut butter are not typical cafeteria fare in the

museums that line the Mall, where hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza are

in abundance. But as these dishes and other regional foods make their

appearance on the menu of the Mitsitam Cafe in the new National Museum

of the American Indian, it will be one more step in a growing movement

to highlight and preserve Native American cuisine.

 

The movement was the focus of the Native Food Summit held in Milwaukee

earlier this month to coincide with the city's annual Indian Summer

Festival, one of the midwest's largest Native American cultural festivals.

 

The summit, which was sponsored by First Nations Development

Institute, based in Fredericksburg, drew 160 attendees from

food-related nonprofit organizations focused not just on Native

cuisine but on building sustainable food systems on tribal land.

 

It also emphasized the need to combat diabetes and childhood obesity

among Native Americans. According to a recent study, an estimated 40

percent of Native American youth are overweight. And the National

Diabetes Information Clearinghouse reports that American Indians and

Alaska Natives are 2.6 times more likely to develop diabetes than

non-Hispanic whites and have a greater chance of contracting kidney

and cardiovascular diseases.

 

Like many population groups in the United States today, many Native

Americans have abandoned the diet of their ancestors.

 

Bea Medicine, a Native American anthropologist, says that traditional

food staples of Indian tribes -- wild game, berries, roots, teas and

indigenous vegetables -- were high in protein and low in fat. That's a

switch from the modern Native American diet, which is high in fat and

refined starches and sugars.

 

Kibbe Conti, a registered dietician and nutritionist who helps tribes

nationwide develop nutritional models based on their traditional food

supplies, explains how the native people's diet has changed

dramatically over the past 200 years.

 

" It started when Indian people were no longer free to live off the

land, " said Conti, an Oglala Sioux. After the tribes were placed on

reservations, they were fed government rations of processed food. Much

of reservation lands could not be farmed. The shift from hunting,

gathering and farming to a cash economy in the early 1900s forced

family members to leave home in search of work.

 

Native people kept some traditional foods in their diet, such as

Indian corn, squash, wild game and waterfowl, but relied heavily on

buying processed foods.

 

Today, many tribal members exist on a steady diet of government

commodities, featuring cheese, canned meat and packaged food, lard and

powdered milk, according to Conti. Those in isolated areas have few

choices and pay more for groceries. Some shop in remote convenience

stores lacking a selection of fresh and nutritional food.

 

Conti's work and the native food movement fall in line with a global

food movement by the International Indian Treaty Council, which works

with the United Nations on issues of indigenous rights, traditions and

sacred lands.

 

The council promotes peoples' efforts to regain control of natural

resources on ancestral lands and to practice their right to control

food sources on their land.

 

" There's no better way to know a people than through their food, " said

Loretta Barrett Oden, a Potawatomi chef from Oklahoma who worked with

the food staff at the conference to serve Native American-inspired

creations such as bison, wild rice and black bean salad, sage grits,

and maize crepes with sautéed fruit.

 

To achieve this end, Conti is working with tribes to help them develop

specific, historically based nutrition models to replace the existing

U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans (the

" food pyramid " ) . And the summit offered information on applying for

grants to fund the food system projects.

 

Conti considers the food movement the final piece in native peoples'

return to wholeness. She said Native Americans have persevered in

issues of treaty rights, and have relied on their traditions and

spirituality to combat many social issues. Food is their final frontier.

 

Karen Lincoln Michel is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer, a past

president of the Native American Journalists Association and a member

of Wisconsin's Ho-Chunk Nation.

 

© 2004 The Washington Post Company