Looking to the old ways

[Guest guest]

Looking to the old ways

 

 

By KAREN HERZOG, Bismarck Tribune

(This is the first of two parts on American Indian

food and culture. The

second part runs next Wednesday.)

 

" The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on,

and buffalo, deer,

antelope and other game. But you have come here; you

are taking my land

from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard

for us to live ...

and again you say, why do you not become civilised? We

do not want your

civilisation! We would live as our fathers did, and

their fathers before

them. " -- Crazy Horse, Lakota warrior and leader.

 

" We used to be some of the fittest and strongest

people, until we were

stripped of our heritage, which is living off the

land, " said Shelbert

Chasing Crow, a student at United Tribes Technical

College in Bismarck

and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux.

 

" We need to get back to how we used to live, " he said.

 

Chasing Crow was a student in the " Diabetes and Mother

Earth " class at

UTTC taught by Wanda Agnew, a licensed registered

dietitian and director

and instructor of UTTC's nutrition and food service

program. For their

final class project this spring, students reported on

interviews they

conducted with American Indian elders about " the old

ways " of hunting,

fishing and gardening.

 

On the last day of class, Agnew asked her students --

" how many of you

have been directly impacted in your family by

diabetes? "

 

Scanning the raised hands, she noted, " 100 percent, "

the same as her

other classes.

 

In North Dakota, American Indians develop type 2 (or

" adult onset " )

diabetes at triple the rate of the rest of the state's

population, said

Sherri Paxon, director of the division for chronic

disease at the North

Dakota State Health Department.

 

Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death among

American Indians,

and a strong contributor to the number one killer --

heart disease.

Diabetics also can develop neuropathy -- nerve damage

-- leading to

blindness or amputation, Agnew said. The rate of

gestational diabetes,

which sets on in pregnancy and usually goes away after

delivery, also is

significantly higher in American Indian mothers than

in white mothers,

studies say.

 

Agnew's class aims to educate students about diabetes

so they can take

that knowledge home to their families.

 

Diabetes' high rate among American Indians probably

has several causes,

Paxon said, but studies point to a fast, and drastic,

change of diet in

the past 100 years, Paxon said.

 

Before Europeans came, native people lived on lean

meats such as

buffalo, game, birds and fish, traditional garden

vegetables, including

corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and natural-growing

fruits and berries.

They lived active lives -- hunting, gathering and

gardening.

 

" The Native Americans are hit harder and faster than

the rest of us (by

diabetes) because they are only two generations away

from the 'old way'

based on game animals and fish, " said student Dawn

Lambert as part of

her report.

 

Lambert's aunt, Carol Ann Schroeder, of Havre, Mont.,

told her that

these active hunters and gardeners, confined on

reservations, subsisted

on government commodity foods, high in salt and

carbohydrates.

 

Some of the elders interviewed blame those commodities

for the

prevalence of diseases such as diabetes. Though

commodities actually

were offered by the government as " a very weak

apology " for the havoc

wreaked on the Indian way of life, Agnew said, the

foods weren't the

traditional healthy ones tribes had lived on for

thousands of years.

 

JoAnn Larvie's aunt, Delores Larson, of the

Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux,

told her, " We need to ... bring our gardens back, our

hunting and

fishing. "

 

Nursing student Terry Trottier interviewed elders on

Standing Rock about

health problems. What they brought up most often was

the loss of the

buffalo, Trottier said: " The grand beast was a way of

life for our

people, and its demise led to ours. " That had much to

do with the spread

of diabetes " like wildfire on our reservations, " he

said.

 

" It's time to go back, " to the sweat lodge, the sun

dance, sobriety, he

said.

 

" All chronic diseases have a mental health component, "

as well, Paxon

said. Where poverty is widespread and access to

medical care is

difficult, depression and fatalism spread. People may

just give up, she

said.

 

Education is key in breaking the cycle, Paxon said.

Even if people

develop type 2 diabetes, the later they get it, the

less damage it will

do to their bodies. Amputations and dialysis often can

be avoided if the

condition is caught soon enough, she said.

 

In prediabetics, even a moderate weight loss and an

extra 150 minutes of

exercise a week may hold back the onset of type 2,

Paxon said.