Elder Voices: Wisdom about Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems from the Holders of Knowledge

ABSTRACT

This compilation includes the stories of 5 Native American and First Nation elders, in which they share their wisdom, experience, and opinions on Indigenous food systems and health. Each of these elders participated in the Fourth Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition, held in September 2019 at Mystic Lake Center on land of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Prior Lake, Minnesota.

This is a commentary in which 5 Indigenous elders share their wisdom, experience, and opinions on Indigenous food systems and health.

Introduction

At the Fourth Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition (15–18 September, 2019, Mystic Lake Center, Prior Lake, Minnesota), attendees were honored to hear from a number of tribal elders who shared their stories and knowledge about food and health issues in their particular Native American and First Nations communities. For 4 of the elders (Flanagan, Kassi, Nuvayestewa, and Warne), oral interviews were transcribed, shortened, edited as little as possible, and approved for publication by them. These interviews focused on their personal life stories, experiences, and ancestral wisdom. The fifth elder (Frizzell) contributed a written piece highlighting her experience, knowledge, and advice regarding research being undertaken by academic institutions with Indigenous communities.

The themes that run through these commentaries include the intergenerational transfer of knowledge; education through storytelling and song; the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things; and the values of generosity, honor, respect, humility, and gratitude. The elders speak of the importance of spirituality; relationships; personal and collective responsibility; understanding and grounding yourself in your family, community, language, and culture; Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together in mutual respect; and the need for tribes to drive collaborations with non-Indigenous people, including research collaborations. We thank these 5 elders for sharing their wisdom and knowledge of traditional customs. Importantly, these traditions emphasize individual and collective responsibilities to work toward both individual and community wellness. This knowledge is sorely needed for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities to develop the resilience needed to successfully face current challenges related to food and health, as well as those related to all aspects of the environment and our spiritual, mental, emotional, social, and physical health. These stories illustrate the deep meaning and current relevance of Indigenous traditions.

Mindy S. Kurzer, PhD, Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute, University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN, USA.

Hope Flanagan (Seneca), Community Outreach and Cultural Teacher, Dream of Wild Health, Minneapolis, MN, USA

My name is Hope Flanagan, and I'm called Little Wind Woman. My clan is Snapping Turtle and I'm from Tonawanda reservation, from The Six Nations People. I've been employed by Dream of Wild Health (DOWH) for 11 summers, working in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Native community. DOWH is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a farm in Hugo, Minnesota (https://dreamofwildhealth.org/). The mission of DOWH is to restore health and well-being in the Native community by recovering knowledge of and access to healthy Indigenous foods, medicines, and lifeways.

At DOWH, I've been teaching Native children about being aware of and finding the plants that were given to us, both the wild plants and the enslaved plants. The wild plants are the ones you find growing wherever they want to grow, as in the Creator's garden, and the enslaved plants are the ones you would find in a garden or farm. This is our 21st year at DOWH, where we have a 30-acre farm in Hugo, Minnesota. We teach kids how to grow and cook their own food, and we work with the Indigenous Food Network (IFN) to make sure that the food we grow goes back to members of the Native community in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. The IFN is a coalition of Native-led community organizations in Minneapolis that work together to rebuild a sovereign food system by identifying and leveraging organizational and community assets (https://dreamofwildhealth.org/indigenous-food-network). The work of the IFN builds on the cultural knowledge of community members and uses an intertribal and multigenerational approach.

I've always had an elder-teacher, and I serve that role for young people. It's so important for young people to know our traditional ways. As the languages and cultural knowledge become more difficult to reach, young people need to realize that elders are there to be of service to them, and the youth are there to help the elders. It's practical and really helpful. Part of my responsibility at DOWH is to get the kids started in that direction, and I do see it happen. It's also important to know the language, because when you learn the language you become more immersed in the culture. The language and culture are so interwoven that if we know the language, we can't mistake what we're supposed to be doing here on this earth, or what our responsibilities are while we're here.

When I was young my mom and sister and I would go picking together. We were always looking for food sources. It was not an uncommon sight to see Native families out gathering. We would gather things like hazelnuts, wild grapes, and blackberries. I remember seeing Native families alongside the road and wondering what plants were ready to be picked. I was told by my mom to always be helpful to elders, so as I got older, I started helping elder ladies. Oftentimes they were Ojibwe elder ladies, and they'd ask for certain plants. Sometimes they would need plants that they'd had a dream about, or for a particular ceremony, or healing, and my job was to fetch the plant. I would take it upon myself to be helpful, to bring them to pick it themselves or to show them where it was, or else to bring it to them. As I got into my early 20s, that became more of a particular responsibility of mine, to fetch the plants or show the elders how to find them, for food, medicine, utility, and of course always for breath. That's something I still do, to this day.

I was always told to eat as much wild food as possible. When I was young, I learned that it was necessary to put down an offering of tobacco for everything you picked, for every animal that you killed, for every plant that you put in your body. You were always saying thank you and were always being mindful about how the plant was growing: was it healthy, was it strong, did it grow next to its relatives or other plants that supported its biology? When we started cultivating plants, we made a pact with the plants. When they gave up their wildness and became enslaved as domesticated plants, we made a promise that we would provide healthy soil, healthy water, and healthy growing spaces. They gave up their freedom, so they're not growing next to the plants that they used to grow next to. We must give them the best that we can, so that they can give their gifts.

It's our responsibility to do the best we can to give back to the living beings that are all around us. For example, you don't ever take a plant without putting down an offering first. Mother Earth is a living being that has gifted us food, water, breaths, everything. Our way of being is dependent on this mother who has given to us so fully and completely. The plants don't need us. According to our stories, we were the last ones to get here, and the most foolish ones. We need to pay attention to our elders the plants and the animals to find out how to live in a good way on this planet.

Our relationship to the plants and animals around us definitely affects our health. Harvesting a mono-crop takes so much from the soil that the next crop is not going to have as much food value in it; if you plant a genetically modified crop, and then till that back in the soil, you could be toxifying the soil; if you add fertilizer, but it's not a balanced fertilizer, it's going to be washed off into our rivers and streams and destroy our water system; if you put in neonicotinoids that kill the insects and the birds, then you're throwing the system off balance; if you're using pesticides or herbicides, our water, air, food, and everything around us become surrounded with small amounts of poison. So of course, we're going to see health concerns. We've got to think about keeping that soil as charged up as possible with life and respect, to receive the gift that the plant actually has to give. The earth, the soil, and the water are all interconnected. Just like the language itself, it's in a circle, so we have to look at the whole circle, not just the individual parts.

Habitat destruction and overpopulation have been problems. It can be difficult to get a lot of these Native foods. It's hard to get to access to some of these wild foods due to habitat destruction. I was saddened to see that on some reservations you have to get a tribal permit to pick plants, because of the challenges the plants are having growing out in the woods because of climate and other habitat changes.

In my view, this earth isn't a vacation; we have work to do while we're here. In fact, one of those elder ladies would always say, “I'm here on this earth because I have something to learn or something to teach.” This isn't a time to just sit back and become distracted by a cell phone or laptop or an addiction or drugs or alcohol or sex or whatever, they're all the same. I'm going to do my work here and try to help the ones around me.

When I was young, you thought early about how to help put food on the table. You knew you were all working together as a family to the same end, and that you all had a responsibility. When I was little, children had to help raise the food and get the food. As soon as you were able to walk around and identify berries, you'd go out and help pick. Little bitty ones would be out there picking or fishing. When I was 3 years old, they would wrap up a drop line around my hand and I would jig for fish. By the time you were 10 you'd better know how to prepare meat. It's different now because you can't give a 10-year-old a knife, but when I was 10, my job was to clean the fish. I recently listened to a Lakota elder lady who said that one of the things society is missing is that kids today don't have responsibilities, so they don't feel like they're needed. They feel like they don't have a purpose. Back in our day, you'd better be getting firewood, or you'd better be checking the fence or whatever needed to be tended to. Kids had important responsibilities.

My advice for youth is to always be grateful for the fact that we have food, breath, and life. We have companions like birds and chipmunks and squirrels, and we have other living beings that are with us on this journey on the planet. As we show our gratitude, and as we do our best to fight for them to have their place, we will have more health ourselves. As we make more space for those around us, we'll have more life.

Also, be mindful of what you put into your bodies. Check your water, check your foods, and be mindful that you are a being on this earth. Don't forget that another being right next to that corn plant is just as alive as you are, or that cherry tree is just as alive as you are. Don't lose sight of the fact that we're all in this together. Thank them and be grateful always. Put your thank-yous down for this opportunity to do the best you can in this world, and be conscientious about what you're doing. Don't abandon your culture, and don't abandon your language. There are so many gifts that are embedded in the culture and the language.

The pathway forward to ensure optimal nutrition and health for Native people must include an awareness of our old cultural ways. Through language and culture, you can see that you need some kind of balance or everybody loses out. My work is to champion the plants and the trees and the animals and to try to get people to wake up to the idea that this is all part of a big circle. We can't just think we're the only ones. We have to remember that every living being needs clean air, space to live, and clean food. You might have heard of forest bathing, where you're out in the woods and you feel that sense of peace because all those other living beings are there with you: the trees, the plants, the animals, and the insects. They're there, and they're remembering their original instructions. We as humans had original instructions, and we need to go back to our old Indigenous teachings of how to survive on this land, getting away from the mentality that humans are the only beings on this planet that matter.

Linda Bane Frizzell, PhD (Eastern Cherokee and Lakota), University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN, USA

My name is Waubi Gwane Yaash, my English name is Dr. Linda Bane Frizzell. I am Eastern Cherokee and Lakota, and my clan is Bird. I am grateful to have had opportunities for a broad range of professional preparations in both medicine and education, dedicated to improvement of quality of life across the life span. Currently I am an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, where we developed an American Indian Graduate Minor and a Regents Certificate for American Indian Public Health and Wellness.

As an elder I have been asked to provide thoughts about research parameters in “Indian Country,” stressing the importance of obtaining direction from tribal officials, including providing a forum for communication and collaboration with tribal government, as well as involvement of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) researchers, and to provide suggestions for dissemination of research information to tribes and AI/AN communities.

Sadly, my experience is that the public's understanding of AI/ANs is shameful. The general public has no idea about AI/ANs’ historical trauma, discrimination, forced assimilation, victimization by crime and violence, oppression, or understanding of historical misinformation. Often, I have personally heard comments such as, “What is the big deal, there are no American Indians left,” or “I need a medical license to practice on a reservation?,” and if a crime has been committed against an AI/AN, often the perpetrator's response is, “What's the problem, it's only an Indian.”

Given all the bigotry and ignorance of the general public, it is crucial to understand that any research, evaluation, assessment, or collaboration done with AI/ANs can be controlled by tribal government guidelines. Researchers must understand the importance and uniqueness of doing research with tribal governments. As sovereign nations, American Indian federally recognized tribes are responsible for the overall health and well-being of their populations, as well as controlling research and evaluation activities; and development of formal collaborations.

Today there are 574 federally recognized tribal governments, each of which has their own constitution. A tribal government's highest elected official (e.g., Chairman, Chairwoman, Principal Chief, President, or Governor) carries the same rank recognition as the President of the United States. This reality is difficult for the public to comprehend, resulting in little respect or understanding of tribal governments. Few people understand that 1) tribes have a direct government-to-government relationship with the federal government; 2) AI/ANs are identified as a political group—NOT a racial group; and 3) tribal governments are not governed by states. In fact, some reservations have physical boundaries that cross state boundaries, whereas others may have historical populations that now are divided by international boundaries, such as the US, Canada, and Mexico borders. In addition, some tribes do not have physical boundaries, but jurisdictional boundaries that may extend across many counties within a state.

A duly elected tribal government is responsible for all functions and activities of the tribe. Tribes have an inherent and legal responsibility to protect members/citizens’ privacy, tribal affairs, businesses, traditional values and customs, spirituality, and interpretations of research findings. Included in tribal responsibilities is the ability to develop and maintain policies to protect the integrity of operations and guard against predatory and harmful use of data against the population they serve. This is an absolute and nonnegotiable function of a tribe to ensure the present and continued viability of all future generations.

A prime example of a breach of personal data was the Havasupai Indian Tribe Case. In a court ruling on 20 April, 2010, Arizona State University (ASU) agreed to pay $700,000 to 41 members of the Havasupai Indian Tribe to settle legal claims that university researchers improperly used tribal members’ blood samples in genetic research. The lawsuit stemmed from a 1990 diabetes study, in which ASU researchers collected >200 tribal blood samples. Consent was given by the tribe, because the researchers implied that they were “researching diabetes issues.” The researchers then used the samples in multiple unrelated studies, sharing them with other investigators for studies such as evaluation of the genetic basis of schizophrenia, inbreeding, and evolutionary-genetics.

Historically, there are numerous other examples of unethical research violations including taking and misuse of human specimens, degradation of subjects’ spirits, and use of researchers’ agendas to promote themselves. Although many present-day tribal governments do not support noncollaborative research, the challenges for tribal governments remain with regard to data sharing and ownership, and research input and guidance from tribal officials. To deal with this, many tribal governments are establishing their own institutional review boards (IRBs) to further protect their populations and ensure all research is reviewed based on tribal values and protections.

The gathering of information and its subsequent use has been inherently political and at the mercy of the agenda of individual researchers—not the stakeholders. Historically, AI/ANs have not been consulted about what they want, what information should be collected, who should gather the information, who should maintain it, and who should have access to it. Even more concerning is the practice by researchers who use tribal communities to test their hypotheses. The information gathered may or may not have been relevant to priorities or concerns of the stakeholders, but rather personal agendas from “outside” researchers. Researchers have a history of essentially pre-empting meaningful community involvement by presenting complicated or completed research designs, often already funded, for community approval, rather than collaborating with the community from the start to design the application for funding. It is important to be aware that communities may not necessarily be interested in “testing a hypothesis,” rather the community may prefer a more pragmatic analysis that is more about frequencies of participation, identification of needs, or basic information for informed decision making.

Ownership of, control of, access to, and possession of data collected from tribal populations are controlled solely by each respective tribe. This data control is not dependent on the source of research funding and applies to all research, evaluations, assessments, monitoring and surveillance, surveys, videos, cultural knowledge, and presentations. Basically, all aspects of information/data collection are controlled by the tribe, including its development and management.

Currently, tribes are developing and using data sharing agreements (DSAs) for researchers to ensure the tribe has control (in writing) of what, who, when, methods, duration, and involvement of stakeholders in the research project. Often researchers who have used a DSA find that the format is similar to a contract for services/activities that clearly defines responsibilities, timelines, methods, justification of need for research, and an explanation of the expected benefits to the community.

When community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods were first introduced, there was little change in research methods. The research was not driven by the community, rather it was driven by the researchers’ own issue topic using methods and procedures, and their quest to publish or satisfy their agendas. In recent years, use of a “true” model of CBPR has been successful, where the stakeholders are the “drivers” of issues, methods, and procedure development, and define the expected results. If an advisory board is part of the research design, I recommend that membership should never be <51% community members. Control of the research process by community stakeholders helps to ensure the activities are culturally respectful, interventions are validated from a cultural understanding, and measurement of results is reliable.

In conclusion, it is critical that researchers understand tribal governments and their governmental requirements. Researchers must accept the responsibility of cultural humility and guidance from tribal government and their tribal Officials (nonelected individuals that are designated by a tribal government) for all research collaborations. Researchers need to ensure there is adequate time to learn, practice cultural humility, and not assume they are the experts of the targeted community/ies. Any research done without tribal approval has a high potential to be invalid. Any university IRB process must collaborate with tribal governments before any consideration for approval is granted. The use of DSAs has improved the reliability and validity of research projects. These agreements define the research methods, procedures, and protocols for collaborating requirements based on each tribe's culture and subcultures. Specifically, DSAs provide tribal governments control of data, products, time frames, and, most importantly, control of how the data are shared with others.

Lastly, it is vital to understand the diversity of and historical tribal relationships between tribes, as well as the uniqueness of each of the 574 federally recognized tribes. Often the public has little understanding of the factual history of AI/ANs. In my experience, there remains a gross misunderstanding of accurate history and a reliance on historical myths in how to approach tribal governments, display cultural humility, and understand community knowledge. There are no 2 tribal communities that are exactly the same. Researchers must understand this and be respectful and listen to tribal Officials, multiple interest groups, and multiple community stakeholders, which all demand cultural humility practices by researchers. The risk of misinterpretation by researchers is high if time is not taken to ask questions, compose surveys, and analyze qualitative data with stakeholders, including elders.

Norma Kassi (Vuntut Gwich'in First Nation), Advisor to the Canadian Indigenous Leadership Initiative and Co-Director, Canadian Mountain Network, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada

My name is Gwahatlati, the one who gives away their last cup of tea. I am a citizen of the Vuntut Gwich'in First Nation (People of the Lakes) and a member of the Wolf Clan. I was born into a very traditional lifestyle on the land in Old Crow Flats, America's second-biggest wetlands, situated in the high Arctic on top of the Yukon Territory, Canada. My grandfather, my mother, and the land were the bearers of the ancient scientific and ecological knowledge that was passed on to me at a very young age. I was raised by my grandfather to learn about my homelands, their biodiversity and ecosystems—to be close to every plant, insect, animal, and bird species around us. I was taught to appreciate how closely connected we are and to treat these species with the highest respect, higher than myself. I was never to hurt anything. This knowledge has woven into my life's work.

Many of us at my age have lived very close to the land, and most of our foods have come from our traditional territories. During my lifetime, we have seen some great challenges to our traditional food supply. The caribou herd is the lifeblood of our people, including those across northern Alaska and the Northwest Territories. It remains at serious risk owing to US government demands to open the sacred caribou calving grounds that lie within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northeastern Alaska to oil and gas development. Our people will do everything we can to protect this sacred place where life begins. It is my duty, our collective duty for future generations. This caribou herd is the very last large herd left on the planet.

In the 1990s, we became very concerned about the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants in our food chain and people. The Northern Aboriginal Organizations in Canada rallied together to bring much needed information, research, and education on these contaminants directly to our people. We worked collaboratively with academia to initiate and conduct dietary studies and community-based research in all parts of the northern regions, to keep our people informed of the risks and benefits of consuming our sacred traditional foods. We took control and led the knowledge mobilization and dissemination for our communities.

The most serious threat right now is climate change and its effects on our traditional foods. Indigenous Peoples are at the front line of climate change, but the whole world is going to change. We must develop sustainable food and medicine strategies for our future. How are we going to replace the declining food sources within our region, like caribou, moose, salmon, and buffalo? How can we conserve them as long as we possibly can? These are the hard questions that we are working on now.

We have to work with our communities to create solutions for this uncertain future. We must educate our youth and build their resiliency. We must teach them about the future. They need to learn how to grow food in a way that's going to be different. They need to learn how to conserve water in a way that's going to be challenging. To maintain healthy communities as long as we possibly can. It can be done.

The solutions are to work in love, kindness, respect, and creativity, with our families, our communities, and our nations. We need to revitalize and to share food, like we always have, to bring back that social economy as well, and to work together. We're a circular people, not a linear people. We know that we live in a circle in which we share. No one is above or below us. This includes other people, other species, the land that we live on, and the water. We are equal in that circle and connected. It's far different than the linear system where people go out and get educated, take care of themselves, put their elders away, and making lots of money is the ultimate goal; some don't seem to care what happens to the rest. We try to work with people outside of the circle, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who work within our community, to make it a larger circle. If you drop a pebble in the water, that circle grows from the center. That is how most of our solutions as Indigenous Peoples will include the outside world.

This is going to take a real collaborative effort, in particular with institutions that are somewhat Indigenized and understand our needs for the future. We must work together quickly, as academic institutions and Indigenous people, so that we ensure that Indigenous knowledge can lead toward conservation and protection. Institutions, centers of learning, teaching, and educating, need to change and embrace Indigenous knowledge, protocols, and engage within ethical spaces. I can see a movement toward that now by the younger generations—I'm quite encouraged.

The education system is difficult because when our young people come out of university, a lot of them don't know what to do with the knowledge they've obtained because it's not relevant for Indigenous people. I encourage young people to go out there and educate themselves on the needs of our future that are relevant to their communities, their people, and the planet. This could be nursing, medicine, environmental law, farming, or becoming an expert in species that are important to their communities. It's very important that young people then go back to our communities with this knowledge. And it's time for non-Indigenous people to join our circles and work with us.

This is because Indigenous people are now saying “no more research about us without us.” We need to figure out our needs together, and then proceed in research that is relevant, done with respect, and has reciprocity and relationships that are built for the long term. Science has many tools and it has created many, many good things, as well as bad things. If we are going to survive, we need to work together at the very onset. Nonacademics are beginning to look at that, especially younger people. In Canada, we're moving in that direction with the Canadian Mountain Network, where we're going to be embracing 2-eyed seeing. This is the braiding of knowledge systems in research, meaning Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together to study things that are relevant for their particular places or communities. The Indigenous people in the United States are moving forward at these levels. I'm so proud of that. I attended the Conference on Native American Nutrition in Minnesota. That was an incredible conference. It's exactly the kind of thing we need to do to make the circle wider.

One example of how collaboration can work was when I was called in to do a food security strategy in one of our northern communities. The work was entirely guided by the community, they determined what they wanted us to do. We did the research, and we taught the youth what research is and how to ask questions, and they became the researchers. The hard questions were: how are we going to survive into the future? What was it like for your grandma when she was young? What should we do now through these challenging times? What should we do with our endangered species? We came up with those kinds of questions with them, and they asked their elders.

We brought in an expert who educated the youth, and we took the youth down to Western University and the University of Waterloo. We brought them home to report back to their people and we put them on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio where they reported what they had learned. The entire community was informed. They also were able to check their own fish samples for mercury contamination. The mercury concentrations were quite low, so they were excited to break that news to their people back home. And now those youth are looking at places where they can go to colleges and universities. That kind of research starts at the community base, and then we bring in academics, young people who are beginning their studies or trying to get their PhDs. These young academics are very interested in Indigenous knowledge and with these experiences they grow to understand and gain a diversity of knowledge. Our science takes an ecosystems approach, everything is interconnected. We don't just study one thing. Earth, air, wind, and fire. Emotional, spiritual, mental, and the physical. Engage a diversity of peoples. The Circle of Life.

My advice to youth is that they need to acquire a really good understanding of their own history and relationship with their communities. They also need to understand the history of colonization. Non-Indigenous youth can make efforts to understand this as well. Youth need to get to know their countries and where they came from, and to get to know Indigenous Peoples and the history of our lives. Then they can create big priorities for the future. What is going to help you, your family, and your nation going forward? How do we maintain healthy and vibrant communities? How do we grow food, move into green energy, and, importantly, how do we collaborate in those areas? Always work together in kindness and respect and share with one another. Also, look at the 7 generations ahead. Look at that together, and be able to walk there, because that is something that we are going to need.

Living on the land in −70 below weather in the Arctic, and also the hottest summers, we watched all the beautiful birds migrating from all over the world. I was the firstborn, and I had to provide for my family at a very young age. That's the kind of resiliency that I was honored to be given. We are chosen and guided to do what we do. Our destiny is laid out for us. My grandfather, before he went on to the spirit world, told me, “This is what you're going to do in your life. You're going to protect our caribou, protect our land, you're going to talk on the radio.” And I try to educate the young people to do what's best for their collective future. It's my turn.

Leon Nuvayestewa, Sr. (Hopi), Retired Health Director/Administrator for the Hopi Tribe, Polacca, AZ, USA

My name is Leon Nuvayestewa senior. I am retired after 47 years helping to design a health and human services structure for the Hopi tribe. All of the health programs I worked on included prevention education which utilized some Hopi cultural knowledge. For example, our Head Start, elderly, and diabetes programs include meals with Native foods. I have been involved in farming and growing crops since my childhood days, both on irrigated land and dry farming. For the elderly groups, I occasionally meet with them in our 11 villages and encourage them to teach our grandchildren about Hopi foods and gardening to give them hands-on experience with growing their own food, and to teach them life skills. Currently, one of my priorities is expanding my effort to establish a network of people who are seeking better nutritious foods for their families and community.

An important thing I've been thinking about is: how did the Hopi people survive in those years after we came into this world? We had the first world, the second world, the third world, and now we're living in the fourth world. When the first world was established, we were all committed to living the Hopi way of life. Eventually, we became nonattentive, we were not committed to practicing our ways and religion. As a result, that world was destroyed. The second world was created, and the same thing happened again. Then, the same thing with the third world. Finally, we came to the fourth world, which is the world we live in now. The fourth world was supposed to be the perfect world. But I'm finding out that it's not a perfect world, because some things within the structure of the Hopi world have changed.

In the beginning, there was a social structure and a clan structure. The social structure and teachings were focused on building individual families and clan relationships, to such a degree that everybody was helping each other. We had >100 clans on Hopi when we established our villages. And those clans worked together to make positive things happen within their villages. The primary focus was to have a good world, for people to be happy and have food available, everybody helping each other and being good to each other.

Our Hopi traditional way of life was disrupted when non-Natives, the Spaniards, came into our land in Northern Arizona. The Hopi had been protected somewhat from that because we live in an isolated area. But when Columbus landed on the east coast, the eastern tribes were immediately bombarded by outside influences, and as a result, their lifestyles began to change. They were told that their religion was not good and that they needed to become Christian. Their religion was disrupted, their food system, then their way of life. On Hopi, they forced us to speak English in the school system and stopped us from speaking our own language. Modern-day powerful outside influences have an especially strong hold on our younger population, including probably me. I was affected by outside influences because I went to a non-Native school. Non-Native knowledge was taught to me, and at that point, my life began to change.

There are a number of challenges facing our food system. A major issue is the loss of cultural and spiritual knowledge of traditional food. Each tribe, a long time ago, had its own food system, selected primarily for maintaining the health of their population. This was supported by spiritual knowledge connected to each type of food that was eaten, how it nurtured the health of the population and prevented disease within the population. Each tribe knew what foods were best for their own population based on the genetic makeup of their bodies. This cultural knowledge of food, combined with spiritual belief systems and practices, helped to maintain our populations well and healthy in a holistic manner. Each tribe still has this knowledge, but some of the knowledge is not easily accessible. We have to seek it, dig it out, and find it.

Other challenges are the lack of wild foods, like wild berries, in our diets; the protection and retention of Native foods on our lands—those tribes that lost land when they were forcibly relocated lost that attachment to their lands and where those foods actually grew; and commercialization of Native foods, increasing the price of food so that it's not accessible for everybody. Also, because of pesticide contamination, climate change, and the declining quality of the soil, some foods are not growing like they used to. Oregano used to grow ≥1½ feet tall in Flagstaff, Arizona. It doesn't grow that tall anymore.

The pathway forward through these challenges includes the establishment of a Native food system within each community, within each tribal group. Traditional food is more than just food. It is a connection to the ancestral knowledge that holds a deeper religious meaning within the natural world. Each community can put their own food system in place. To do this, they have to identify what foods grow within their environment, to become knowledgeable about what foods used to be eaten, and to make these foods part of their food system. We all need to identify wild foods and to include them in our diets. And of course, we need to bring back the production of Native foods within each community and tribe. Some tribes are establishing gardens to do this.

It is important for Native Americans to collaborate with academia. There's a continued need for research to establish the nutritional value of all Native foods and their place in the prevention of disease. The Hopi say that food is medicine to the body. In today's world, medicinal value is usually not placed on the foods that we eat. It's also important to remember that Native Americans have a unique genetic makeup, so their traditional foods are medicine to their bodies. Right now, we're eating mostly from somebody else's food system, so our bodies are not getting the proper nutrition they need to stay healthy. Another way that academia can collaborate with Native communities is to increase our understanding of how the unique genetics of the Native American makes our bodies receptive to Native foods to keep healthy.

We must educate youth about their history, culture, and religion. For example, we have a creation story, and I'm sure that other tribes have one too. This story gives the tribe its roots. We must pass on our history and our stories to our grandchildren. The teachings of the Hopi are in line with some of the teachings that emotional intelligence training provides. I had those lessons taught to me when I was growing up. I was out there with my grandmother in her garden helping her out. We all took care of each other. Our religious ceremonies are also extremely important. Hopi established a calendar of events based on the religious events that happened throughout the year. Hopi has that, and we still use that calendar. The other part of our teaching is the universal knowledge—we knew about space, we have stories about travel in space. Native Americans have all of this available to them. If they can tap into that knowledge, they can use it to make their lives better and healthy. Hopi say that if you have a healthy population, you don't need a doctor.

One of the things that I've been pushing for many years is an entirely Hopi school where they would teach all this knowledge that I'm talking about. We have the technology. We have the tools necessary to teach our grandkids and ourselves, but not everybody is taking advantage of that. We have to coexist with everything, and that includes technology. Technology is something that we can take and use to our advantage. We can use technology to teach and help make connections between individuals and communities.

Every tribe can still go to their own knowledge and begin to reinstitute some of these practices and beliefs. My recommendation to our youth is that they learn about their tribal cultural knowledge of foods, their ways of life, and the spiritual beliefs that are there to keep them well and happy. The task of the younger generation is to learn about their traditional foods and make it a priority to establish once again a healthy Native American population, taking advantage of that cultural knowledge that is held in each tribe. And finally, never doubt your tribal knowledge and the strength it gives you to meet the demands of today and into the future. Don't doubt that.

I'm concerned about urban Native Americans because they're not on the reservation daily. They're not here when ceremonies are being performed. There needs to be more outreach into the cities, and more education and connection when they're here on the reservation. Encouragement needs to be given to them to share that knowledge when they're in the city.

The younger generation that's going to be coming into this field of work needs to know who they are, where they came from, and what their traditional Native life was back then. They need to get that knowledge from the elders who have that knowledge, and they need to do research. I'm sure there are books out there about their tribes like we have for Hopi. They must learn from that and expand on that.

My final thought is that if you have a strong connection to your culture, then you are a strong person because you know where you came from and who you are. If you don't have that, you may not be sure about what you want to do in life, because cultural knowledge gives you direction. If you have that strong connection to your culture, you can excel in this world that we're living in and can deal with it in a positive way.

Beverly Stabber Warne, RN, MSN (Oglala Lakota), South Dakota State University College of Nursing, Rapid City, SD, USA

My name is Beverly Stabber Warne. I'm a nurse with a master's degree, and I work at South Dakota State University (SDSU) College of Nursing on the Rapid City campus. My job title is instructor/mentor/coordinator of the Native American Nursing Education Center. I have been a nurse for 57 years and much of my work has been with students. My current job is working with Native American student nurses, who are quite aware of our health disparities, and aware that the majority of our chronic health issues are preventable. We have a wonderful group of students who want to make a difference. Not only that but as Lakota people, they want to stay home and make a difference in their homeland. They know they have the power to do that. And part of my work as a mentor is to empower the students to think that way, to know that we don't have to keep the status quo. We can educate and empower ourselves and teach our people proper ways of keeping healthy—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Everything we do as nurses has something to do with nutrition, as it relates to healing the body. We know that in our Lakota perspective. Nutrition, or the food we eat, is much more than the physical components of our foods. There's a very strong spirituality embedded in everything we do, and it includes what we eat. For instance, when my son went to get his buffalo on the reservation, he did it with respect for the animal. Once it was down, he said the proper prayers and thanked the buffalo for giving its life to feed his family. This is what we did for many centuries before colonization, and that reflects the type of spirituality and cultural values that we continue to keep and practice.

It's very important to maintain these practices, to be respectful of our ancestors. We must honor them by continuing the traditions that they instituted many years ago. As contemporary Lakota people, generally, we keep that in mind at all times. Our ancestors were resilient and courageous; they established our 7 values of generosity, fortitude, wisdom, courage, honor, respect, and humility. These are the values that we keep in mind in everything we do. We maintain these practices to honor our ancestors, but we also know that living with spirituality on a daily basis is a big part of our well-being—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Many of our people didn't learn our ways for a number of reasons. These include the boarding schools and forced assimilation. The colonizers didn't want us to be collective in our thinking, they wanted us to be competitive. They wanted us to become Christians and not practice our traditional spirituality, including the ceremonies and our daily practices.

The modern world is a lot more competitive in general. You have to earn money to pay your mortgage, your car payment, your insurance, etc. Our responsibility as elders is to teach our young people to live in both worlds, the best ways they can. Traditional thinking helped us survive in the old days when we lived together and helped each other. As elders, our responsibility is to teach what we know that can still work today, so that we can become healthier—not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well.

Since becoming an elder, I've often been asked what made me strong, what gave me the inner strength to survive difficult times, racism, and genocidal policies. I believe that my strength comes from my childhood, my upbringing. I was born in 1939, on the reservation in Pine Ridge. My father was from the Kyle district, and my mother was from the Manderson district, and both sides had medicine people in our history. We were way out there on the reservation, with just the extended family.

My maternal grandfather was a very spiritual gentleman. I remember him drumming and singing at dawn and at dusk. He would start drumming at dawn, as the light began to turn in the morning, a beautiful time of the day. He would start singing the morning prayers in our language, a beautiful, descriptive language. He would sing the morning prayers, greeting and thanking the creator for another day, and thanking the creatures on earth, the plants, and all things. We learned how to appreciate everything around us as a living part of our being, as a living part of the earth.

After the prayers, my grandfather would sing a story. I remember the concepts of his teachings all those mornings and evenings because each time he sang a story about 1 of our 7 values: generosity, fortitude, wisdom, courage, honor, respect, or humility. For instance, he would sing a story about how a person showed their generosity by their actions. At dusk, he would start drumming again, as the light just started to change, and that was a signal for the children to stop whatever they were doing and go inside and listen. He would sing the evening prayers, thanking the creator for having given us a wonderful day. And then he would sing another story. That's the way I grew up and that's where I learned my values. He didn't teach us by writing and giving directions, he sang stories. Twice a day, he taught us, not by telling us directly what generosity or fortitude is, but by singing stories about it. We had to make our own conclusions based on our age and development. He taught us how to think critically, and he taught us inductive and deductive reasoning. He always ended everything by saying, “Ni Wolakota he Kiksúya po,” meaning, “Remember who you are as Lakota people.” After hearing that twice a day, 7 days a week, it became embedded in who I am. So I grew up knowing who I am.

The main issues getting in the way of nutritional health in our particular area are the consequences of poverty. On our reservation and in South Dakota, the Lakota people have a high poverty rate. When you're living in poverty, you buy the least expensive food—not necessarily the most nutritious food. You think, “My children are hungry, I need to get something on the table.” Currently there are ongoing programs for home gardens and farmers’ markets. In our program at SDSU College of Nursing, we recruit our Native students and support them through nursing school, and after graduation, each one becomes another taxpaying citizen with a good income. They pull themselves out of poverty. In the meantime, they're role models for our youngsters. And they all want to stay home and make a difference. How beautiful is that? There are changes happening that are hopeful for future generations to come.

In our program, we retain our students in part by creating a feeling of tiospahe, meaning extended family. We explain that this is our tiospahe, we are an extended family. The students immediately have a feeling of belonging. Part of our success is that we create a feeling they can come to us at any time. It's not Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. It's all the time. And that's what tiospahe is, in our way of being, as Lakota people.

As an educator, I believe that one of the most important ways to ensure the nutritional health of Native Americans is through education, not just of our student nurses, but all young people. As an elder Lakota woman, I am responsible to share my experience and knowledge, to pass on what I know. In our SDSU nursing program, we have a program called Wahanpi na Waunspe, which is soup and learn. Once a month we serve soup and salad, and we bring in a Lakota speaker to share what they know. For example, we brought in Lula Red Cloud, who discussed the classifications of plants and Lakota traditional ways: how to identify plants, where to look for the plant, and the time of the year that it will be ready to be picked. She also described how we must put something back in Mother Earth when we pull something out and then say a prayer of thanks to Mother Earth.

Other efforts need to be community-based projects to improve the larger world in which Native people live. It's up to elders, those of us who can, to respond when people recruit us to do something for the community, because it's all in the name of making lives better for future generations of Native people. An example is the work I've been doing to improve the climate for Native people here in Rapid City. Rapid City has a reputation among Native communities throughout the nation as a racist city. Currently there are community-wide efforts to make Rapid City an inclusive and better place for future generations. It's a movement, it truly is. City leadership, community leaders, and a lot of Native people are on board doing this work. For example, there are efforts by the police department and Monument Hospital to eliminate racism in their systems. Native people should not have to live with the kind of rejection, insults, and shame that they have in the past. Approximately one-third of our students in the school system are Lakota. All the children in the school system need to be taught Lakota history, language, and culture. The teachers are on board and the school superintendent is on board. There's a strong group of young Lakota Western-educated women who are stepping up and challenging the status quo. With time, the children that are attending these schools will learn to walk in both worlds, in a good way.

The wonderful things that I'm describing here in Rapid City are efforts for change so that young people can learn about who they are historically and culturally and language-wise so that they can live in both worlds. If you live on a reservation, you can live more easily in the traditional way, although TV and telephones and the way that we are educated in the school system in English may interfere. It's important to try to understand both worlds. And then you can choose how traditionally you would like to live.

Conferences, like the one at Shakopee, are absolutely needed. I met a lady at Shakopee this past September who is from Kyle, my father's community. She has a greenhouse and a farmers’ market in the summertime. There are also community gardens in the urban community here. One of my sisters lives at Lakota homes, and she has a garden every summer. One year she made her garden in the shape of a medicine wheel. It was absolutely beautiful. Efforts like that make a difference. People would see this elderly lady out there weeding her garden and would come out and help her. So that's that feeling of tiospahe, that feeling of collective thinking, of helping each other, it's a value that we need to revive in some manner. I shouldn't say revive because it's already there. It's just we don't practice it as much as we used to. Practicing it more will help all people, not just Native Americans.

Notes

The authors reported no funding received for this work.

Author disclosures: MSK received support from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community to help coordinate the Fourth Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition. All other authors report no conflicts of interest.

MSK is an editor of Current Developments in Nutrition and played no role in the journal's evaluation of this manuscript.

This article appears as part of the supplement “Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference on Native American Nutrition,” sponsored by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community's Seeds of Native Health campaign through a gift to the University of Minnesota. The guest editor of the supplement is Mindy S Kurzer. MSK is supported by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community for her role as chair of the conference planning committee and editing the proceedings. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and are not attributable to the sponsors or the publisher, Editor, or Editorial Board of Current Developments in Nutrition.

Abbreviations used: AI/AN, American Indian/Alaska Native; ASU, Arizona State University; CBPR, community-based participatory research; DOWH, Dream of Wild Health; DSA, data sharing agreement; IFN, Indigenous Food Network; IRB, institutional review board; SDSU, South Dakota State University.