(rhythmic music) - I carry any offering that I want to give back to that plant that I'm taking from.

I like to communicate with it and let them know, thank you for allowing me to harvest this bounty so that I can feed my people.

You give a little bit of that offering, that's gonna go into the ground, decompose, and it's gonna be fed to that plant.

You're kind of building that relationship and it becomes a circulatory thing.

- That's what we are designed to do- is be active in our food system.

It's just ancestrally our inheritance.

Food sovereignty spans conservation efforts.

It spans climate change efforts.

It's regenerative Ag.

It's all of that stuff all native people are doing across the country.

When America needs help saving their food system, native people know how to fix it.

I truly believe that the answers lie in Indian Country.

(upbeat music) - Today we're going to find a few things that are gonna be part of the dishes that I'll be making.

We have a beautiful salmonberry right here that runs wild through the Pacific Northwest.

It's so sweet and it packs in so many nutrients.

It's the heartbeat of our people.

- Going to a grocery store where you're picking up a pint of blueberries, and paying for them, and leaving.

Like that's a very transactional experience.

But when you harvest those things, and then gift them to your community, you're part of transformation.

You're part of a collective.

You're part of being an active citizen in your community too.

Food sovereignty is people making conscious efforts and choices every single day; through feeding themselves to maintain a food system that our ancestors have tended, and taken care of, and perfected.

When captain Vancouver first arrived in the Puget Sound, he wrote in his journal that he'd never seen a land so untouched by man before.

But what he didn't know was that he was looking at very well-maintained forest gardens, and ancient shellfish gardens, and huckleberry meadows, and Camus Prairie's- things that have been cultivated and taken care of for thousands of years.

Our treaties were negotiated with food in mind.

Our ancestors in their crazy awesome wisdom wrote some of the most powerful environmental legislation of this land, and in it; access to food, all the roots, berries, elk, salmon, even the fir trees were negotiated as part of that.

And that's because Coast Salish people understand that we are defined and shaped by our foods.

After that, for more than six decades, up to 90% of our children were taken from their homes to these boarding schools, not able to express their own given identity at all, but also being fed army rations during that time.

And so over a course of several generations, our taste buds were actually altered to prefer processed foods, refined flours, poorly processed meat and salt.

- When you're displaced, you lose all access to those ingredients that you have depended on.

You start creating a staple that you're used to, but your biology says that it's not good for you.

- I got into this work because I was watching my elders pass away from complications of nutrition related, completely preventable diseases.

Diabetes was non-existent here pre-contact.

There isn't even a word for diabetes in most indigenous languages.

It is a symptom of being severed from a traditional food system.

- I believe that the food renaissance right now with native cuisine has a lot to do with how many industries have made people sick in this country.

- What's really important about food sovereignty is that they understand that there is a political element to it.

(calm guitar music) Then there's also this indigenous knowledge that is at our fingertips today.

You know, our ancestors sacrificed for that knowledge to be passed on and to be practiced, to eat healthy and to understand like where that food comes from.

Everything from sourcing it, to preparing it, to eating it.

It's all part of ceremony.

- Today I'm gonna be creating a dish that represents the canoe journey.

What I wanted to convey is the foundation of the canoe itself, the wood, but I wanted to represent the smoked salmon right there as an oar.

You gotta tell that origin story properly, where it was cultivated and how it was prepared.

At least give the identity that it was Duwamish or, or Muckleshoot, or Pacific Northwest contemporary.

It has the traditional elements of the ingredients that have been thriving for thousands of years.

- We live in a time when our access is threatened because of all the barriers to accessing our food; loss of land, loss of rights, lack of transmitting knowledge, all of those things.

For my community, food justice and environmental justice are not separate.

We should all have access to healthy food.

It's a human right.

We should all have access to a healthy environment.

And when the land is healthy and the waters are healthy, they're inextricably intertwined.

You have to have a healthy environment to have healthy people.

And you also have to have access to good food.

- This is a food waste system that we're connected to on a very spiritual level; mental, emotional, and physical.

And all of those combined, you know, is considered what we call the medicine wheel of life.

We're all connected.

It's the natural order of things.

- [Narrator] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Port of Seattle.