One may not think of food as being vital to the sovereignty of a culture, but on Wednesday, April 19 in the Warch Campus Center Cinema, three Indigenous speakers introduced a Lawrentian audience to the importance of food sovereignty to their communities and Indigenous people as a whole.
The event was opened by Jill Beck NEH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Professor Gregory Hitch, who introduced the speakers to an audience of about 40, both students and staff.
The first speaker was Assistant Director of the Office of Environmental Resource Management, United South of Eastern Tribes Lea Zeise of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Ziese started with an anecdote of why Indigenous food sovereignty is important to her. In the fall of 1822, her ancestors were forced to make a choice after migrating from their original land in New York state and resettling in Wisconsin: would they eat the seeds they brought along, or brave the winter and save them for planting come spring? It was a difficult decision, but, in the end, they chose to save the seeds.
“That’s the legacy that we have to carry forward,” said Ziese. “[We have to think] not just about this year, not just about this winter, but what’s going to be here for our children [and] our children’s children that we don’t even see yet. We’re picking up that responsibility with the work that we’re doing now.”
Carrying on her ancestors’ legacy is a large part of Ziese’s work in food sovereignty. Her involvement in food sovereignty is largely an effort to revitalize their teachings in contemporary settings. Began under trying circumstances, she and members of her community were having trouble growing enough white corn on their individual plots of land to feed their families. They ended up all coming together and growing the corn in communal plots like their ancestors did. By following the method, ten families worked together and grew 1,500 pounds of corn—far more than they had ever grown in their own backyards combined.
Nowadays, Ziese and her community continue to grow corn in the ancestral way—16,000 pounds this year, she reported—and build relationships beyond the field with others involved in food production, such as basket weavers and food preparers, as well as with other tribes they are reestablishing trade routes with.
After Zeise was Francisco Alegria, a chef hailing from the Menominee tribe as well as claiming Mexican Indigenous heritage. Although he has been cooking for almost two decades, Alegria did not become involved with Indigenous food sovereignty efforts until he went to a seed trade event where a chef spoke about the movement. With a new inspiration, he began a catering company using ingredients from Indigenous producers to promote regular, more contemporary consumption of Indigenous food, both traditional and modernized.
“We don’t just want these foods at ceremonies and gatherings,” Alegria said. “We want them on a Tuesday. We want them on a Wednesday […] we want to make it the norm.”
In addition to revitalizing traditional Indigenous foods within his tribe, Alegria is also a nutritional educator who hosts cooking demonstrations for low-budget families. He feels that all his efforts are an integral part of the togetherness needed to reclaim food sovereignty.
“I feel that we respect those people who put in all that work by […] [completing] the full circle of knowledge, from the seed to the crop to the table,” Alegria said.
The final guest was Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities at Syracuse University Dr. Mariaelena Huambachano of the Quechua people of Peru. Her thesis was similar to that of both speakers before her: Indigenous food sovereignty means community collaboration, as well as combining ancestral teachings and present practices to reach goals.
“Food, for us, is about holding stories,” Huambachano declared. “When we talk about our beautiful corn, our beautiful potatoes and sweet potatoes, our wild rice, we’re not just talking about these specific crops. We’re talking about […] ancestral knowledge. We’re talking about the people that tend to those beautiful crops. We’re talking about Indigenous innovations […] in the process of growing food together.”
Huambachano believed, in addition to Ziese’s and Alegria’s claims about the movement, that respect of the nonliving relatives is vital to Indigenous food sovereignty; only when the land is healthy can the body and soul truly be healthy. She said the Quechua have a “cultural responsibility” to the nonliving relatives—such as the land, water and air—as they too are part of the spiritual world and therefore have the right to respect. Respectful treatment of the land is the key to keeping the land accessible to future generations.
For the conclusion, heralded by a large round of applause, all three speakers joined up in the front of the cinema and welcomed questions as a panel. They worked together to answer the audience’s questions, each offering a unique perspective.