Abstract
Communities in Indian Country across the U.S. are reconnecting to traditional and healthier food systems, often working explicitly for food sovereignty. This paper contributes to these reconnection efforts by (re)telling the story of the Northern Arapaho food system and the path we are creating toward health and our reclamation of Northern Arapaho food sovereignty. With support from my co-author, I approached data gathering and analysis in a blend of traditional native and conventional western research ways. I use the phrase "foreign intrusion" to help re-name eras in our history when our food system was altered by colonialism, forms of physical and cultural genocide, and assimilation. This "restorying" of the food system history of the Northern Arapaho people provides an indigenized frame for understanding our food system history, impacts of intrusion, and paths for reclaiming Indigenous food sovereignty. My methods include interviews with tribal members (N=16), three talking circles (N=14, 11, and 6), autoethnography, seven years of participation and observation in food sovereignty work, and document analysis, in addition to extensive literature reviews.
Highlights
By reclaiming our food sovereignty, Indigenous nations are restoring our identities, cultures, his/stories, and traditions
For all Indigenous nations, recovering our food sovereignty is integral to our self-determination, cultural reclamation, economic development, and public health
Over the last 200 years, the story of my community has been a brutally violent one. This was, at first, directly at the hands of foreign intruders and increasingly, by the long arms of the trauma they have systematically inflicted upon all Indigenous Nations in what is the U.S like all Indigenous Nations, most of our history, including our food system history, happened before this foreign intrusion
Summary
By reclaiming our food sovereignty, Indigenous nations are restoring our identities, cultures, his/stories, and traditions. Over the last 200 years, the story of my community has been a brutally violent one This was, at first, directly at the hands of foreign intruders (as I call them) and increasingly, by the long arms of the trauma they have systematically inflicted upon all Indigenous Nations in what is the U.S like all Indigenous Nations, most of our history, including our food system history, happened before this foreign intrusion. Even the small swaths of reservation land assigned to us by treaties have been further diminished through broken treaties, the Dawes Act, and simple seizure by White encroachment. These traumas and disruptions of intrusion have devastated our traditional foodways and our health (Kuhnlein & Receveur, 1996). The descendants of those who survived suffer among the worst health disparities in the U.S (Jones, 2006; Porter, Wechsler, Naschold, & Hime, 2019)
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