- Food sovereignty.

It's the right to have healthy, culturally appropriate food created in ethical and sustainable methods.

And it's something indigenous communities have been fighting for since colonization.

Today we talk with the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi.

We're working to move that needle forward.

(upbeat music) Well it is great to see you again and thank you so much for joining us here on "Mutually Inclusive."

Today's show is gonna look a little different.

We are so excited to have special guests in the studio from the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi.

They are Tribal Council Vice Chair Dorie Rios and Food Sovereignty Coordinator Nickole Keith.

So thank you both lovely ladies for being in today.

How's it going?

- Good, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Good, well we wanted to have you in because of the amazing work that you're doing with food sovereignty.

We heard just a little bit ago a very basic definition of that.

But I'm interested in hearing your own definition of food sovereignty, especially as it relates to the indigenous community.

- I'm gonna be completely honest.

I'm learning every single day.

From the beginning of doing this, I was kind of focused on what we do have and what we do have is our wild rice and our maple syrup.

But it's so much more than that.

And it's bringing back those ceremonies and us educating our members on what we did lose, and learning how to harvest and hunt and fish and gather and collect our seeds.

It's, like I said, it's every day.

Every day there's a new gift that is present.

- Absolutely, and I appreciate your answer saying you're still learning every day because aren't we all.

What has been some of the most rewarding things that you've learned throughout this process?

I'd love to hear from both of you.

- I believe the participation rate has been really overwhelming.

Practicing some of our old ways, reintroducing those old ways, and providing the support to the visionaries, whether that was through our ancestors who passed it on, passed it down through visionaries like Nickole and the entire culture department reintroducing those ways prior to contact the foods that we sustained ourselves with, and then the foods that were introduced that cause such devastation.

- [Kylie] Yeah, and I understand diabetes is a real issue and you're pretty passionate about that, right, Nickole?

- Yes.

We lost a lot of elders due to poor diet.

And it had resulted in a host of different conditions, including diabetes.

And after serving as an elder specialist and going through those deaths, I resigned from that position for a year.

I took a whole year off, I went into intensive therapy, and I came out and that was during COVID and I was seeing myself on social media actually doing recipes and showing people how to cook and different things like that.

And then this position came open and it was like throughout my experience with the tribe and dealing with food and dealing with those deaths, I wanted to be hands-on in that change.

I wanted to promote change and that's my initiative, that's my goal, that's everything.

And dealing with my mom's own health scare earlier this year, we assume that she's eating good and having three meals a day, but she's still in that mindset of the poor man's diet.

And been handed down different recipes and things that are not indigenous to us, that includes flour and those oils.

And she was able to kind of change her course, her diet.

We started pre-planning her meals, and within a couple months, she was totally off all her diabetes medicine.

And just with that, it was like we have the power to change people's mindsets.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm so happy to hear that about your mom.

This can be such a heavy topic sometimes to talk about, but what I really appreciate about the work that you are doing is you're elevating that conversation and really engaging ways with some of the videos that you've created to share with some of your younger generations, maybe even people outside your community.

Can you talk with me, Nickole, a bit about those videos and kind of what you are showing to folks?

- [Nickole] So what I'm showing is how to use different things and not these foreign products.

And we can wipe out diabetes, we can wipe out cardiovascular problems, we can wipe out all kinds of different things.

- And I know you said sugar's a big one, and you do have a really powerful video about maple syrup.

Dorie, can you tell me about what that's called and really how it came about?

- The Potawatomi translation for maple syrup is zisbakwet.

It is the sugary or sweet substance that runs from the trees.

And that is typically processed, it depends on the temperature.

It can be a lot trickier in Michigan.

It has to be a certain temperature for so many nights.

And we typically do a ceremony in February and then we collect the sap through, there's community members that volunteer.

Our tribal youth program is involved.

And then we have dedicated staff for it.

We have a system on the reservation, the sap is collected and then boiled down into the final product.

And then we also celebrate by having an event called Flapjack Friday where we share flapjacks and try to incorporate some healthier version of food there also.

We share the zisbakwet or the maple syrup with our surrounding communities also as well as our tribal members.

- Wonderful.

And I am so excited.

First off, I want an invite to the Flapjack Friday please.

But I'm so excited because we actually have a sneak peek of that video.

So please take a look at a little bit of this heritage.

(upbeat music) (metal pounding) - So we out here collecting syrup.

This is syrup season.

I remember times coming out here when I first started and tapping the trees and quiet as it is now.

After getting them all tapped, you can sit here, you can hear that tink, the sound of the sap going into the buckets.

On these maple trees when the fall comes, all the leaves usually don't fall off.

So you can know that by looking at the trees that still has the leaves left, those are maple trees.

And this is a maple leaf.

And this is a maple tree right here.

You can tell by the bark of it, it looks kind of smooth from a distance.

(drill running) Does tapping hurt the trees?

No, it doesn't.

We never tap the same hole twice.

As you can see, this bucket is low.

Last year we tapped it up a little higher, and same as that side right there.

So we tap three or five inches away from the hole that was drilled the following year.

And once we're done collecting and the season's over with, the tree produces like a cork and it shuts itself off and it heals.

So when we come back the following year, the tap, you can see where it was a hole there, but it's solid again, like it's been filled.

And that's what the maples do.

On a good tree, you could get five gallons off a tree, and other trees you might get two and a half gallons.

How I can tell that is when I first drill the tree and when the sap comes out immediately, I know that's gonna be a good producing tree of sap.

And those trees that when you drill and it takes a minute for the sap to come out, those trees are the ones that's not really gonna produce a lot.

But for the most part, they all produce what they're supposed to produce.

And we get the product at the end.

I forgot how many years ago it's been, but when they first started doing it, they was cooking it just on a stove.

And it was interesting to know that the syrup comes from the trees that's out here, so that's what drew me to it.

And I started collecting, volunteering, collecting, and watching the cooking process.

It was amazing just to watch the whole process.

Grabbing the sap out the trees, which looks like water when it comes out.

And as you get to cooking it, it turns into syrup.

And that in itself is, you know, I would've never known that that's what syrup comes from.

This is pure syrup.

There's no additives or none of that.

It's cooked here, it's collected here, and it's cooked here, and I'm a part of that, and it's my job, and I love what I do.

This is the Sugar Shack.

That's where it happens at right here, the magic.

(upbeat music) This is me coming from a collection and the process it takes to get it out of the tanks that we put it in, the 65 gallon tanks.

That's the filter we use to filter the bugs out just in case there is bugs.

This is a full gray hose that we use and that's what we use to suck it out of there, out of the holding tank into the other holding tank.

We use a regular water pump to pump it out.

This is the holding tank.

That holding tank is just over 65.

It's about a 100 gallon tank.

I put this work in, do what I do best, cooking up.

You gotta love it.

This right here is the hose that's connected to the holding tank outside.

And this right here is like a float.

So if those tanks get full inside, it'll automatically cut itself off.

As you see, it's a real simple gravity-fed system we got here, gravity does all the work.

It's the switch I'm cutting it on.

This is a whole day process when you're cooking it like this, this doesn't cook it to serve.

This right here cooks it to concentrate.

And this gauge right here measures concentrate.

It gets to 127 degrees and that's when it's ready.

I always look in there to make sure the pan is not burning.

You can tell from the way it's boiling.

And this one right here, when it's boiling hard, it foams up.

And when it foams up, I got a little magic bottle of stuff that I put in there that makes the foaming go down, which is cooking oil.

It makes the foam go down and it goes back to a normal oil.

I've been doing this so long that I can sit there and I can tell when it's foaming up just from the sound of it.

I'm writing down the temperature, the temperature of the first draw, the date, the time.

Now it's just a waiting game.

And when it's ready, when it's at that sweet spot, you can just turn it just a little bit and just let it trickle out of it like that.

We call that the sweet spot where it runs and it stay at that temperature that it needs to be, 127.

And to get that five liters right there that I fill up.

In this season I got all together 28 five liter containers like that, which I think equals like 15 gallons of syrup once it's done cooked.

But we cook all the concentrate off and we store it in the freezer, the refrigerator, until the last process of cooking it to syrup.

This is concentrate right there.

So the end of the season when we know it's the end of the season, going around checking the buckets, and the sap looks cloudy, you can't see the end of the buckets.

So I just dump it all out.

I don't care how full it is, it's not worth cooking, plus it has like a little spoiled smell to it.

And then another sign is ants will be all around the spire.

So I usually just dump everything out and take the spire out the tree.

I usually just tap it and just vibrates out.

After we do all that, I take all the buckets back to the Sugar Shack and wash them out and get them ready for the next season.

Now it's time to do the last step, to cook the concentrate down to syrup.

And this is the process that it's like makes everything worth it, you know?

All this is concentrate right here.

Everything that we collected and cooked down to concentrate.

And I usually throw seven to nine liters into the pan.

And I remember we used to cook the whole process in this pan right here and on the stove, the same little kind of stove.

And it'd take 24 hours just to, I forgot how many gallons they used to make.

But didn't nobody have a problem with it because it's just the tradition that was passed down from when they was doing it on the copper kettle to the stove right here.

Everything is advanced now, so it's not as hard as it was back then.

And normally when I put those on, I make sure the fire is even all the way around so it burns evenly.

The back burners tend to be higher than the front burner.

So they set it different.

(upbeat music) That's that first boil right there, this right here, I start to check the temperature on this.

And this right here is a hydrometer.

This right here measures sugar.

So once you get to 60 degrees on that thermometer, it's syrup, and as I check it, it keeps going up, it'll float.

The first time I did it, it went straight to the bottom.

This time it's gonna float, you know you're getting close.

That first red line is where I want to be at.

And it's almost there.

Hydrometer, that's what it's called.

Hydrometer, hydrometer.

So it does the work for you.

Back in the day they had to test it by the consistency of it.

But this right here, it's at the red mark, it's sugar, it's syrup.

But back in the day you used to have to look for the consistency of it.

And that's syrup right there.

You sit there and just everything that you did from the beginning to end, it's like this is the reward right here.

This sweet stuff right here.

And this is the filtering system.

So like I said, the first filter I told you about on the holding containers, this is the other filter system.

I use three of them.

The reason why I use them, syrup has sugar sand.

As you're pouring the syrup in there, it collects on those filters.

And that's why you use three filters because it'll stop running and I could take it out and go to the next filter.

As for the bottles, those have to be... That's the sugar sand right there, what I was saying.

And the filter catches that.

I'll say at the first two or three pitchers, that first filter usually comes out, then I have two more filters to use.

So by the end of the pan I'm down to one filter and it filters it all out.

And this is what we get at last.

This is what it's all about right here.

That's syrup.

There was nothing added to that.

That's all out the tree.

Straight out the rest.

Put that sticker on it, it's done.

(gentle upbeat music) - Well that was an amazing video.

I think it's always fun to see how things are made, but I really appreciate the way that you've taken time to highlight the cultural traditions and the culinary practices with it.

I'd love to hear from both of you just what you hope to see in the future with your tribe and really how far this food sovereignty initiative is gonna go.

- I think it's gonna go very far.

This is just the beginning.

And it's so important because one elder who has since walked on, she repeatedly told me, don't forget the old ways.

And that is our original ways.

And I hope that I haven't forgotten that.

And I'll continue on that mission as long as I can and pass it down to those that are younger than I am.

And hopefully that vision continues.

- And for you, Nickole?

- She's so wise.

- She said pass it down to others and she kind of did (indistinct) you're getting the baton afterwards.

- Everything that I've done or have done or have learned, I owe it all to my older sister.

Her number one fear is that people won't pass it down, won't get the old ways.

But I just want her to know that I'm doing it not only for her, but for my mom that actually lived on a reservation, that we do pay attention.

And those little ones do pay attention.

And that shouldn't be your biggest worry.

- Absolutely.

Well you guys are doing amazing work.

I know your community's really proud and just excited for all of the movement that's been happening.

And like you said, we learn more every single day.

And so if you would like to continue to learn more, be sure to follow the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi with this info on screen.

You can find also this "Mutually Inclusive" episode and others on our website and YouTube page.

But please don't forget to follow on social media to be connected to the latest and greatest news and community events here in West Michigan.

Thank you so much for watching, and we will see you next week here on "Mutually Inclusive."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)