Enacting Treaty Rights through Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Foods on the Wind River Indian Reservation

Abstract

Despite great loss in gathering and consumption of traditional foods among Indigenous communities, there is great hope for reclaiming and preserving knowledge. The Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering (RSAFG) is a community group leading grassroots efforts on the Wind River reservation to reclaim Shoshone ancestral foods and promote food sovereignty. The story of the RSAFG promotes equitable, decolonized, and community empowered methods of reclaiming Indigenous foods by sharing three of RSAFG’s acts of decolonization: 1) enacting treaty rights through gathering traditional plants, 2) demanding equitable partnerships in community-based research, and 3) sharing the story through radical authorship via layered narratives.

A pesar de la gran pérdida en la recolección y el consumo de alimentos tradicionales entre las comunidades indígenas, existe una gran esperanza para recuperar y preservar el conocimiento. El Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering (RSAFG) es un grupo comunitario que lidera los esfuerzos de base en la reserva wind river para recuperar los alimentos ancestrales shoshone y promover la soberanía alimentaria. La historia de la RSAFG promueve métodos equitativos, descolonizados y empoderados por la comunidad para recuperar los alimentos indígenas al compartir tres de los actos de descolonización de RSAFG: 1) promulgar los derechos de los tratados mediante la recolección de plantas tradicionales, 2) exigir asociaciones equitativas en la investigación basada en la comunidad, y 3) compartir la historia a través de la autoría radical a través de narrativas en capas.

Introduction

“I was taught plants are our first teachers, teaching us how to be in right relationship. Reciprocity central…keeps relationships in balance. You do not take more than you give as it depletes not only plants but all relationships. To gather plants is to reconnect and restore this ancestral knowledge. Gathering is a radical act of decolonization, self-determination, and sovereignty. It enacts treaty rights. And the only way we keep treaty and sovereign rights is to use it. To be self-determined as we work with university partners. Instead of academia coming in to control and extract as they had historically done, as a community, we said, no. In support of ancestral knowledge and land, we used treaty and sovereign rights to protect what belongs to us.”

LO

The story of the Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering (RSAFG) group is written and shared in this paper with hopes of promoting equitable, decolonized, and community empowered methods of reclaiming indigenous foods. The RSAFG is a community group leading grassroots efforts to reclaim Shoshone ancestral foods and promote food sovereignty. The Shoshone people have treaty rights to land that is rich in resources like food and medicines. They have known and utilized these resources for thousands of years. These are ancestral lands. The work of reclaiming, of enacting ceremony before gathering together, processing and preserving plants and animal foods, and sharing Shoshone foods with community members strengthens self-determination and treaty rights. The purpose of this paper is to share three of RSAFG’s acts of decolonization: 1) enacting treaty rights through gathering traditional plants, 2) demanding equitable partnerships in community-based research, and 3) sharing the story itself through radical authorship via layered narratives.

“As a White academic, representing an academic institution with a history of knowledge extraction, I think the success of the group’s work truly shows the willingness of Indigenous communities to forgive. This is not something I recognized on my own – it was pointed out by someone in the group. I’m grateful for the power of forgiveness and the willingness of community members to offer it to me. I am a researcher, external to the community. Community members had no reason to trust me and many reasons to distrust me and my intentions. Even if I thought my intentions were honorable, I created harm by not always fully understanding Indigenous methodology and my own White privilege.”

JK

Few research efforts and partnerships with academic institutions, focused on the impact of loss of traditional food practices and resulting health outcomes, truly encompass and are led by community efforts to restore traditional food ways. Often, research relationships “privilege mainstream scholar voices and ways of knowing” (Jäger et al., 2019, p. 48). True partnership and methodology, including Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), offer potential for reclaiming traditional foods. PAR and CBPR have been identified as consistent with Indigenous values and widely used by Indigenous researchers (Banna & Bersamin, 2018; Wilson, 2008). The work of the RSAFG, in collaboration with academic partners, to learn more about ancestral foods and their impact on health through a grant-funded research project, highlights the potential of CBPR to reclaim ancestral foods.

“We wanted to make sure the community voices in this way [through story circles and personal conversation/correspondence] are heard. And we realized how actually deeply important it is to get the academics’ voices in on this narrative as well, not just have the academic voices in one part of the paper versus community voices in another part. [It is important] to have everybody talking about these things together on the same playing field. So often academics ask community members that they are partnering with to be vulnerable and to share how something felt or how things were and they never ask that of themselves.”

AW

The story of the work of the RSAFG group is a community story. Shoshone Ancestral Land is the lead author of this work, to honor the land as belonging to itself with intelligence, the significant relationship Shoshone people have with the land while “actively protecting the source of our knowledge – Indigenous land” (Simpson, 2014, p. 22). We share the story here, through many different voices, to honor the contributions of many. The enacting of treaty rights, the relationship building, and the grassroots efforts of the group occur on ancestral Shoshone lands. Most of the technical writing of this paper occurs in the southeastern part of present-day Wyoming on “ancestral and traditional lands of the Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indigenous peoples along with other Native tribes who call the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains home” (Associated Students of the University of Wyoming, 2020). We offer this story, grounded in Indigenous methodology of being accountable to relationships as described by Wilson (2008) and Indigenous feminism theory, actively working to dismantle systems of colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and racism (Arvin et al., 2013). We also share this work, striving for a lens of “standing with” instead of “giving back” in the act of working together (community and academic partners) to reclaim and explore the impact of ancestral foods (Tall Bear, 2014, p. 4). With the critical perspective offered by Indigenous methodology and Indigenous feminism theories, we share this story of community-based partnership and participatory research in a “layered account” to step away from the typical academic format and decolonize the writing, honoring the work we do together and the journey our work has taken us on. This paper is the “creation of collaborative writing and organizing practices in which Indigenous and settler scholars work side by side” to decolonize the sharing of the story (de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018, p. 7). At the heart of the work of the RSAFG group are mainstays of Indigenous methodology including processes guided by Indigenous ethics, respect and embracing of Indigenous knowledge, and support for the community (Jäger et al., 2019; Wilson, 2008). Our hope is to authentically share work driven by the community.

Loss of Indigenous foods and knowledge

The United States (US) is home to over one thousand Indigenous communities of American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native people, with just under 580 groups being federally recognized as tribes (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2020). For tens of thousands of years, Indigenous communities survived and thrived on foods they gathered, hunted and cultivated. Over the past few hundred years, imperialism, settler-colonization, war and massacres, bison slaughter, boarding schools, and conscription to reservations have decimated traditional food ways and, today, have yielded enormous health disparities between Indigenous and White communities in the US. Consumption of traditional foods plummeted and now very few native people consume diets similar to what their ancestors consumed (Baldes, 2016; Fazzino, 2008, Krohn & Segrest, 2010; Sharma et al., 2008; Talahongva, 2018; Park et al., 2016; Mihesuah, 2003).

Prior to the 1860’s, Shoshone people lived in and around the Great Basin/Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for thousands of years. In 1863, Shoshone leaders signed the Fort Bridger Treaty which defined their territory to approximately 44 million acres in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. In 1868, after extensive gold prospecting and the infiltration of many white settlers, Shoshone leaders signed the second Fort Bridger Treaty, which outlined a reservation with less than one-tenth of the lands that were part of the 1863 treaty (Wyoming State Historical Society, 2018). This formed the boundaries of the current Wind River reservation, and promoted the idea that the Shoshone would be “independent citizen farmers” (Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum, n.d.). Access to traditional plants and food sources was restricted as the Shoshone people were constrained to reservation lands and forced to become farmers. The buffalo was slaughtered to near extinction, further decimating food, cultural, and daily resources. Knowledge was lost when children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools where speaking their language and practicing their ceremonies was illegal and punishable. Indigenous language and cultural ceremonies were criminalized as a way to force assimilation.

Despite treaty rights from the 1863 and 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty, gathering of traditional plants on reservation lands or on their ancestral lands among the Shoshone people has decreased. Knowledge of the plants, where they are, when and how they should be collected, and how to preserve them has been impacted by settler-colonization, and current dietary intake reflects westernized dietary patterns, including high sugar, refined carbohydrates, high fat meats, and dairy (Statovci et al., 2017). The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) or “commodity food program” began in 1973 and served to reinforce westernized dietary patterns by providing foods that were drastically different than ancestral foods to displaced Indigenous people who were no longer able to hunt and gather their ancestral foods (Byker Shanks et al., 2016).

Settler-colonization also occurred (and continues) through academic partnerships and research. Partnerships with academic institutions and tribal communities have a painful history which continues to this day. History “ushered scholars into Indigenous communities” who distrust academics and scientists because of historical exploitation and poor treatment of people, material, and Mother Earth’s resources (Tuck, 2009, p. 410). Often, academics and researchers come into communities to gather data and perform research “on” Indigenous people instead of “with” and “for” (Wilson, 2008). Once the data has been collected, academics leave and results are not often communicated in a valuable and understandable way to community members who invested their time and trust in it. In Indigenous communities, there is perception that Indigenous people are some of the most researched people in the world (Tuck, 2009; Wilson, 2008). However, this research does not usually have an Indigenous voice within it, it makes Indigenous partners invisible or underseen, and communities are often left out of the academic’s perceived benefits (Tuck, 2009; Wilson, 2008). Additionally, many research projects have centered on and benefited from portraying tribal communities as damaged and depleted and these damage-centered narratives (addiction, illness, poverty) “can be directly tied to 400-plus years of occupation of Native lands, genocide, and colonization” (Tuck, 2009, p. 415).

Importance of reclaiming Indigenous foods

“Plants teach in a universal language: food” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 125)

“I feel this [gathering and learning about ancestral foods] is very important to understand traditional foods [and how they] provide natural healing and spiritual connection. It’s important to learn the healing properties to help with our personal issues. Today’s food are very unhealthy in the processing, and the disconnection to how foods can help.”

DM

“Food is the first medicine” and Indigenous people, living in relationship with Mother Earth, were skilled at identifying the abundant food and medicines available (Barreiro, 2016, p. 1). The skills and the food and medicines are still there, and many tribal communities are working to preserve and reclaim that knowledge. Ancestral foods gathered by Shoshone people are still abundant as part of the current landscape, but not always visible to modern eyes.

Traditional foods are at “the core of Indigenous cultures and economies” (Damman et al., 2008, p. 138). Traditional plants as foods and medicines were honored, often with their own ceremony or song, and are a significant cultural factor, including their influence in promoting individual, community, and cultural wellbeing (Loring & Gerlach 2009; Gurney et al., 2015; Mihesuah, 2015; Zittlau, 2012). Gathering and growing food is/was a way of life that provided sustenance as well as a rich culture (Krohn & Segrest, 2010; Talahongva, 2018; Kuhnlein & Receveur, 1996). Tribal elders have shared that gathering and harvesting of foods was not only an important food source but also contributed to other parts of life such as physical activity, social interactions, and spiritual connection (Colby et al, 2012). As the use and availability of traditional foods decreased, so did the ceremonies, songs, stories, language, and practices that went along with them (Gurney et al., 2015). Loss of this traditional food knowledge is not just a loss to the specific tribe but a loss of knowledge to all people (Kuhnlein & Receveur, 1996).

“We, Eastern Shoshone and other tribes, celebrate our way of life in a circle given by grandfather creator god (dauh ma upndt, the most high one above us). The plants, animals and us all have circles inside and outside of ourselves. For example, our eyes, mouth, ear holes, veins and more are circles (round). The stem, petal, and roots are a circle (round). Our inherent rights have always been to take care of the natural world. This was shared with me by my wise great grandfather. He said ‘we must always gather the plants to honor them and creator god. If we don’t gather the plants they will disappear. Never to return until he knows we will honor them this way’. Song, love, and good thought can be felt by the plants and their families when we are harvesting them. That’s why we leave some plant behind for all other life forms coming behind us. They are hungry too. Creator god created these plants to honor us and make our bodies strong and healthy. All plant locations are sacred which makes our treaty rights more sovereign.”

JL

Indigenous diets are healthy, higher in many nutrients and, through gathering and processing, promote physical activity and connection to the earth (Damman et al., 2008; Schulz, 1999; Bersamin et al., 2008). Indigenous people who still consume their ancestral foods are healthier, more culturally connected, and more food secure (Schulz, 1999; Bersamin et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2019; Walch & Bersamin, 2019). For many years, many Indigenous communities have been working to reclaim and restore past foodways and, along with traditional foods, their health and their sovereignty. Food sovereignty is more than just the right to healthy food and the right to define one’s own food and agricultural systems, including production and markets. It also includes culturally appropriate foods. Indigenous food sovereignty is a pathway for many tribes in reclaiming, restoring and healing the past, as present health is regained toward a tribal self-determined future.

“Although reclaiming ancestral foods is hard work, much easier to go to the store, it’s not just about feeding the body it’s also physical exercise. It’s about healing the past so we can go on in a good way. Because when you think about the way food has been used to genocide us--weaponized to destroy our health, our connection to the land, each other, our culture and the way we lived--regenerating food knowledge and food practices becomes a way to heal from these multiple harms.”

LO

“The relationship with food is equally as important as the numbers, the calories or milligrams of nutrients. [We’ve] lost that relationship where food comes from, how it comes to be, how it’s used, the respect that the food and the environment really deserves. Often when I’m counselling patients, and somebody says ‘if we ate the way we used to eat’, I think yeah! How can I help you get there?”

CC

Methods

Gathering to enact treaty rights

“We have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 318)

“We prayed to Mother Earth before we gathered. We gave thanks for giving us the plants for food. We burned cedar and offered tobacco. Before I joined the RSAFG group, the only plants I felt comfortable gathering was the local berries. I grew up picking chokecherries so I knew when to harvest them and how to process them. I knew about bitterroot and wild mint. It was interesting that the wild onion brought back memories of when I was young. I used to be able to smell it in the field and I would pick it and eat it. I think the land is appreciative of the fact that we are gathering again. It will flourish and every time we go back there will be more and more to share with everybody that wants to learn and gather.”

CM

For many years, Shoshone elders had been talking about ways to reclaim and restore ancestral foods that intersect with so many other important tribal issues and needs. In the fall of 2016, tribal elders put into practice the advice of the Tohono O’odham, who had worked to reclaim ancestral foods, when tribal members, along with a non-Indigenous ethnobotanist and a nutrition researcher, got together and sat in circle around a table. On the table were plants, tea and tinctures brought in from both tribal members and scientists. Since that first gathering, the group has grown and shared time together every month to share traditional recipes, stories and other food knowledge. Through collective thought and discussion, the group picked a name that represented the work they were doing: Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering (RSAFG).

“One moment that meant a great deal during gathering was when I attended and gathered some root out in the Red Desert area, and knowing our ancestors had gathered in the same location was humbling. I could feel a strong presence of the past and felt a very overwhelming feeling while gathering plants that provided so much over the generations.”

DM

Every month, since the first gathering in 2016, RSAFG activities include a community get-together and an advisory meeting. Community gatherings focus on sharing stories, knowledge of traditional plants and foods, gathering plants that were part of a Shoshone diet, and processing and preserving plants together. Most gatherings are held at a local building with a kitchen for preparing and sharing food. We also meet and travel together to locations both within 1868 treaty reservation borders and on ancestral Shoshone lands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for digging roots, picking berries, and gathering plant leaves and stems. Figure 1 provides examples of community events led by the RSAFG.

Figure 1.

Example community events that have been part of the work of the Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering group.

“There is a sacredness in gathering. To be part of the land like that and the continuum of how many ancestors did this same thing on this same land for hundreds and hundreds of years before. To be in the company of others and doing something we used to do together is meaningful in a way that is hard to express. And the plants still here—how thankful I am for that.”

LO

“To be sitting on the desert ground surrounded by a group of ethnic Shoshone, all of us digging up biscuitroots, later to be made into bread, is very exciting to an ethnobotanist, which is my function in this group. But, to be doing it on unoccupied public land in the heart of the original 1863 treaty reservation lands, the ground littered with ancient stone tools obviously constructed to peel the bark off these biscuitroots, is one of the highlights of my life!”

JM

“To be part of the prayer and ceremony before gathering plants together was so meaningful, to show appreciation and respect for the source of what was to be gathered.”

CC

“Learning was a huge part of the work of the group. But the thing I really take from all the times that we gathered and processed food together is the relationships. The value of just being able to be out there gathering, sharing time together digging roots, cleaning the plants, telling stories.”

JK

In partnership with the University of Wyoming (UW), a National Institutes for Health IDeA Networks for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Program pilot grant was secured in 2018 to study the effects of Shoshone ancestral foods on health, identity, culture and well-being. Project funding supports learning from tribal elders about Shoshone foods, gathering traditional plants and animals, and providing a traditional Shoshone diet to community members.

Community based research

“There is a barrier of language and meaning between science and traditional knowledge, different ways of knowing, different ways of communicating” (Kimmerer, 2013, p. 154).

Collaboration with academic partners requires the group to navigate and actively work against the typical role of mainstream science which tends to diminish Indigenous ways of knowing (Jäger et al., 2019). The process of the RSAFG and academic partners working together to set up the research is shared here. Detailed methods and results of the research itself will be shared elsewhere, in future publications governed by the RSAFG and the Data Use & Sharing Agreement developed by the group.

The work of the RSAFG, as part of the INBRE-funded project, is CBPR. In efforts to be consistent with Indigenous methodology, community and academic partners focus on the priorities of the community, how the data can best serve the community, and protecting any information that is culturally sacred. Figure 2 shows an Indigenous ethics model for CBPR in tribal communities.

Figure 2.

Indigenous ethics model. Used with permission from Parker M, Pearson C, Donald C, Fisher C, 2019.

Relationships are at the core of the group’s work. Our first steps together, when meeting in a circle and sharing teas, plants, tinctures, and time, began the process of building and sustaining those relationships. While many of us do not always recognize how our work incorporated CBPR and an Indigenous framework and ethics, the activities described here share the connection and process of community engagement.

Time and Trust

• Relationships and trust develop between community members and academic partners through regular monthly meetings and plant gathering events; through time, laughter, and sharing of stories and knowledge.

• Trust is also built by including community members (beyond the guidance from the RSAFG advisory group) in the research process. Community members interested in the research process were hired as part of the INBRE-funded project. Community researchers work to share information with the community, recruit participants, gather and process plants and foods, and collect data.

Community Approval

• The RSAFG advisory group guides activities and approves steps for seeking grant funding to support their work of reclaiming ancestral foods. Together with academic partners, approvals from the tribal business council and dual Institutional Review Board (IRB) through the Rocky Mountain Tribal IRB (RMT-IRB) and UW were granted.

Culture

• Activities of the RSAFG are held in the community and include culturally respectful methods of gathering and processing plants and animal foods. Non-Indigenous partners are trained on how to gather respectfully, and each plant gathering event begins with prayer, asking for consent, and giving an offering, in respect and gratitude.

• The focus of the research project includes what the RSAFG is interested in learning. This includes impacts on health such as overall wellness, resilience, and cultural connectedness, in addition to blood measurements and biometrics.

Vulnerability

• Respect for community members and ethical considerations for making sure the project is equitable and honors community members’ participation is part of each step. We pursued and received IRB approvals but more importantly, we work hard to protect the culturally valuable information the group is learning and pursuing. This involves working collaboratively and seeking guidance from Indigenous scholars and leaders in data sovereignty to protect and preserve knowledge.

• Through our layered account shared here, we work to be vulnerable together, by sharing and processing each step as a group and trying to honor the voices that contribute to this work.

Dissemination

• The RSAFG and academic partners hold community events to share about the project and invite participants. We invite participants directly, and through flyers, website, and road signage. We share information through tribal newsletters, billboards on key roads on the reservation, and other news outlets to share the work of the group. All of these are guided and approved by the RSAFG advisory.

• We work together to share outcomes of the work in ways that benefit the community. This includes dissemination in non-academic formats like a photo and recipe book, traditional plant database, and papers written with decolonized methodology.

• All information shared is governed by the Data Use & Sharing Agreement, developed by the group.

Ethics

• Throughout all the work of the RSAFG and academic partners, our intent is to “do good” by doing something that is guided by community members. Part of doing good and maintaining ethics, beyond the tribal and IRB approvals, includes meeting project outcomes for the INBRE-funded project with continuous guidance and oversight by the RSAFG advisory group.

Story sharing methods

The criteria of authorship stems from a westernized academic approach which does not represent Indigenous methodology or practices. In this story, some authors are named, we were co-researchers who worked together on this project, and it is an important part of relational accountability to do so (Wilson, 2008). Shoshone Ancestral Land is the primary source of knowledge and lead author on the paper, to “decenter colonial frames of knowledge” and honor the lived experience of Indigenous peoples connection to the land, and “everyday practices – practices lived in place” (de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018, p. 9).

In efforts to decolonize the writing, and share the true voice of community member co-authors, we held story circles, reached out for individual conversations, and invited written comments and thoughts. All authors reviewed the final paper, either electronically or by mail to ensure accuracy in the presentation of their story and specific comments. Two story circles were held virtually, due to pandemic health guidance, and each focused on different aspects of the group’s work together including 1) the importance of the work of the RSAFG, protecting the data, and working with academic partners, and 2) gathering, processing, and preserving ancestral plants and animals together and sharing those foods with community members as part of the research project. Some that could not, or chose not, to participate in story circles shared their written or spoken story in separate communications. The RSAFG advisory guided the writing and the process of gathering voices from others. We worked to ensure voices of the group were telling the story. Most authors contributed through story circle, interview, or discussion. There are others who were integral in building this work and are important to include as authors, even if no specific comments from them are shared in the paper. Many others, who walked with us, gathered and ate the plants together, and formed relationships, are not named as authors but embraced as part of this story.

Results & Discussion

Resistance - Gathering ancestral foods to reclaim culture and enact treaty rights

“We have Eastern Shoshone rights, given through the 1863 and 1868 Treaty with the USA. The RSAFG is upholding these treaty rights by hunting our natural foods on our homelands.”

JL

The work of the RSAFG brings the community together, with new faces each time the group gathers, and processes and preserves food such as biscuitroot, bitterroot, sego lilies and wild game. Learning about, gathering, processing, and preserving Shoshone foods and documenting those activities as a way to preserve the knowledge of these ancestral foods continues through the work of the RSAFG.

Advisory meetings guide the work of the group, including protecting and preserving knowledge, pursuing funding, oversight of grant-funded projects, and developing trust and respectful partnerships. People that participate as part of the advisory group include community members, food sovereignty advocates, tribal health leaders, Indian Health Services nutrition experts, ethnobotanists, and academic partners. From the beginning, the RSAFG advisory group has been an open group. Some community members, who initiated the start of the RSAFG, guided the work through the advisory meetings. Other community members came for gathering and processing plants together later, and wanted to stay for advisory meetings to learn more and share thoughts and guidance. If community members want to be part of the advisory group and join those meetings, they are, and have always been, welcome to do so.

Resistance – CBPR and Data Sovereignty

“We want to have full control of our data sharing agreement. Why? Because of colonization that’s been happening since Euro-American set foot on our Turtle Island. US has continued to think their laws. They think they know what would be best for us even today. Our mother earth felt and knows the mass murders down at the Bear River massacres, which killed men, women and children because we were succeeding to live better than the Mormon people. Euro-Americans think whoever gets their first, it’s theirs. That’s not our Indian way of life. This study of our native plants belong to us the Eastern Shoshone Tribe. This aspect of hunting our native plants makes our treaty stronger. If our data is controlled by colleges or Euro-Americans it get exploited.”

JL

The RSAFG works hard to preserve and protect traditional knowledge. It is important to reclaim that knowledge, and protect it, so that the knowledge cannot be co-opted, commodified and sold for the benefit of others outside the community. One of the major results of this work is a Data Use & Sharing Agreement between the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Business Council (ESBC) and UW. This work highlights the resistance of the community to knowledge extraction, and their commitment to data ownership and sovereignty. Indigenous data sovereignty addresses the “inherent and inalienable rights and interest of Indigenous people relating to the collection, ownership and application of data about their people, lifeways, and territories” (Kukutai & Taylor, 2016). This includes ensuring that research and information gathering for and about Indigenous nations and people are “utilized to advance Indigenous aspirations for collective and individual well-being” (US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, 2016). Data sovereignty includes the data itself, how the data is collected and accessed, where and how it is safely stored, and intellectual property.

“[The work of the RSAFG group on the Data Use & Sharing Agreement] was warrior. The community stood up and stopped the extraction. Resisting by essentially saying ‘you’ve trespassed enough and you’ve taken enough’. This has never been done before—where the community truly led in a research project. We created a strong agreement that everybody agreed to. There was a sense of empowerment, like we did something good and we did it in a good way. And that has deepened kinship and trust between all of us.”

LO

While RSAFG advisory members and academic partners were not well versed in all the global work in regard to data sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, discussion and work on the Agreement prioritized the need for protection of data and rights of the tribe and community members. The work and the goals of the RSAFG align with the main tenets of data sovereignty, and guidance from the RMT-IRB supported the development of a legal agreement to protect and preserve Indigenous knowledge. RSAFG advisory members and academic partners worked for over a year to develop a Data Use & Sharing Agreement between the ESBC and UW to govern data use. This work included reaching out to Indigenous scholars, legal experts, and those working specifically with data sovereignty for Indigenous peoples through the United Nations. This work also inspired the Tribe to write policy in protection of tribal lands and ancestral foods.

“Everybody worked together and we accomplished something that’s good for the people on the reservation and going forward for other documents.”

CM

Our intent, as a collaborative group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics, is to work together to learn about and gather traditional foods and explore the impact of Shoshone ancestral foods on health, resilience, and cultural connectedness. This intent is guided by the RSAFG and supported by academic partnership. The efforts described here encompass CBPR methodology and Indigenous ethics. We imagine this work as by and for the Shoshone people. As Coombes, Johnson, and Howitt (2014) describe, in relationship to community-based research with Indigenous communities, “ethics becomes method; data becomes life; landscape becomes author, participants become family” (p. 850). With this lens, it is unsurprising that what we learn is shared and reinforced by the land and our relationships are the highlight, especially to other Indigenous peoples and scholars as “research by and for Indigenous peoples is a ceremony that brings relationships together” (Wilson, 2008, p. 8). When we view this work as ceremony that changes our life, including the land as our guide and storyteller, and the relationships as family, we can better understand the impact it has on all of us, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous (Wilson, 2008).

Resistance – decolonizing the written story

Our work is built on relationships. Relationships with the land and each other, with the plants and animals that feed us, the water that nourishes us, and the beauty that surrounds us. Although some of us, especially the non-Indigenous academics, did not always recognize these relationships for what they were at the beginning, we were still part of them and benefitting from them all along. These relationships are the true backbone of this collaborative work.

Collaborative work and sharing the writing together, community and academic partners and Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, is happening more often and actively seeks to process and address settler-colonialism, decolonization and Indigenous resurgence (de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018; Holmes et al., 2015; Hunt & Holmes, 2015; de Leeuw et al., 2012). We are changed by this work, and continue to walk alongside each other, with deeper understanding and appreciation for how we can work together. This work is a way of resisting imperialism and settler-colonization that began over 400 years ago and continue today. While this story is not shared orally here, perhaps this written story of Indigenous community members coming together to reclaim traditional plants and foods is “writing as an act of reciprocity with the living land” (Kimmerer, 2018, p. 337). This story is shared here through published work, but in continued efforts supporting “Indigenous resurgence” and decolonizing academic partnerships the RSAFG is also working on curriculum and locally accessible resources for community members (such as a plant database and a photo/recipe book) (de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018, p. 8).

Challenges to Indigenous Methodology (Limitations)

The project has unmasked and fleshed out ways in which academic partners and the university can better work with community members and the tribal business council in advocating for sovereignty, community participation and data-sharing.

“I had been working for the university for a long time, and we’ve had a lot of different legal documents. It was so striking to me that I hadn’t ever spent, and nobody else that we’d ever worked with, had spent any time to assess what that language [in data sharing documents] really means and how it impacts the [community] group. What it particularly means to put those words out there for what’s supposed to be a partnership with a sovereign nation. It is especially important in a case like this, where we’re talking about how we’re going to be using data and ideas and sacred knowledge of a sovereign nation. It’s something that requires a systems level change to university partners.”

AW

In practice, while trying to stay true to Indigenous methodologies, those methodologies were consistently challenged by the constraints of a partnership with academic research partners. Academic partners, while guided by the RSAFG advisory, submitted the proposal for the INBRE funded project, administered the grant, and coordinated RSAFG activities related to the grant. While these efforts may have been intended to lessen the administrative burden for community partners, they contributed to power imbalances. This imbalance calls into question a true Indigenous methodology but may also reflect a common imbalance when Indigenous communities partner with academic researchers (Jäger et al., 2019).

“In bringing legal documents to the group and managing the grant, I had to process how I had caused pain, how I had caused harm, and how I was an instrument of westernized colonialism, even if I didn’t think I was, even if I didn’t think those intentions were there.”

JK

Efforts to address the power imbalance included hiring community members through the academic institution to build community capacity for research partnerships and compensating active RSAFG members for time and effort contributed to the project (to the extent possible through the grant). The Data Use & Sharing Agreement to preserve and protect the Indigenous knowledge shared through the project was important work to promote trust between the tribe and the university. These efforts, while not complete and with room to continue to bridge the power imbalance, may serve to guide future collaboration between Indigenous communities and academic partners.

Conclusion & Next Steps

“I will be continuing on this journey and learning more about other plants and adding to the list. More people are interested in learning because I think they hear good things, I think good things will happen to people and they’ll actually see the benefits of eating the old foods that are right in front of us.”

CM

“Tribal Health is happy to partner with RSAFG project. We feel cultural components that lead to overall better wellness and health are key factors in countering the chronic illnesses Native communities face.”

DM

“There’s an abundance of food and it would be [good] to go to these places and gather some of this really good food and make it fun, as much as the fun we were having gathering roots and pine nuts and things. And get the young people involved and enjoy gathering food because it’s everywhere. The foods are still there and if you collect the plants, they actually grow better.”

JM

“I hope to continue our work to reclaim traditional foods and food sovereignty. I have benefited in so many ways by walking and working alongside the RSAFG as part of this work. I have been transformed by this work and so for me, this research truly has been life changing ceremony.”

JK

It is the hope through this collaboration of community members and academic partners, future funding can be secured in the study, benefits, and practice of reclaiming an ancestral Shoshone diet. The RSAFG group continues to work to reclaim ancestral foods, not just by learning about them but by spending time with them and preserving that knowledge for youth and future generations.

The story and work of the RSAFG is echoed in other tribal communities. While there has been great loss and decline in gathering and consumption of traditional foods, there is also great hope for reclaiming and preserving knowledge for future generations. There are many projects and ongoing efforts globally and in many tribal communities to preserve the Indigenous value of the land and food produced from the land (Hassel, 2006; Krohn & Segrest, 2010; Gurney et al., 2015; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). These projects highlight specific efforts among Indigenous communities focused on reclaiming traditional foods as part of food sovereignty efforts. Our hope is that by sharing our story, we can promote positive and respectful partnerships, led by Indigenous communities, to work towards food sovereignty and reclamation of ancestral foods.