(bright music) - [Narrator] Roots race and culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBs Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat jazz music) - Hey everybody, and welcome to Roots Race and Culture where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences.

I'm Danor Gerald.

- And I'm Lonzo Liggins.

Today we're gonna be talking about a growing movement within indigenous communities.

Activism involving the food we all eat.

According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs there's no universal definition for food sovereignty but it can be described as the ability of communities to determine the quantity and quality of the food they consume by controlling how their food is produced and distributed.

From food insecurity and ancestral land disputes and the importance of preserving the resources in our community, food sovereignty is more than food.

Joining us today are two of those activists with an indigenous perspective on the topic.

Welcome guys.

- Thank you for joining us.

Please introduce yourself for our guests.

- Thank you.

Well, I'm Reagan Wytsalucy.

I live in southeastern Utah.

I'm of Navajo descent and I currently work with Utah State University Extension and I practice predominantly in horticulture, which is a lot of the focus that I have in my job.

Working in my communities and teaching horticulture, coming back to the land is, that's the primary focus of of where I have established my life in the direction and the passions that I have.

- [Danor] Wonderful.

- Nice.

- Wonderful.

- How about you, Karlos?

- Hey, good morning everybody.

I'm Karlos Baca.

I am both Dene and Southern Ute.

I am a co-founder of the I-Collective, which is an indigenous food activist group that is international.

We have members from Oaxaca, the First Nations.

I'm the lead writer of a gathering basket, which is our our traditional food multimedia cookbook, which looks at indigenous food ways through the, through the lens of colonization and, and warfare against our food systems.

As well as a farmer here at Fourth World Farm, here in southwest Colorado and the founder of Taste Native Cuisine which is traditional foods, I guess catering business, you could say.

- You're a chef, right, Karlos?

- I, I prefer not to use that terminology, but yeah.

(Danor and Lonzo laughing) - Awesome.

- Well cool, man.

- Well, first of all how would you define indigenous food sovereignty?

Let's start with you, Reagan.

What does it mean to you?

- For me, it's that a community can have a food system, a food chain sup, a supply chain, I guess you would say and that we would be self-sufficient and utilizing what is known to us, what is available to us to support our communities.

That's, that to me is food sovereignty.

- So some independence it sounds like.

- Yes, very much so.

- Okay.

- What about you, Karlos?

How would you define it?

- There's a lot of, a lot of depth in that conversation, so.

You have to look really, really inward and have this understanding of like, the true power of colonization on our, on our people is that, you know homelands that we've been in for, you know tens of thousands of years and have provided for us for that entirety of time.

We're still fortunate enough here in the southwest in particular, to still be in these homelands.

And even that being the case, people go hungry on the lands that have provided for them for, for that long.

So, you know, it really goes to, you have to speak towards reclamation of knowledge you know, reclamation of, of self, and really, I don't like the word decolonization, I like re-indigenization is a little bit more important of a conversation, but you know, those, you, you put those on top of systems like the USDA who enforces their rules on indigenous ways, right?

In indigenous food ways.

And that takes away a lot of of the power of the people to step back into that place.

So it's a lot to that, to that story.

- Yeah, we're gonna spend some time covering that today, so thank you for helping us see that perspective.

So let's kind of roll it back a little bit in time.

What was a typical food diet like prior to colonization?

Can you give us a little bit of insight, Reagan?

- Yeah, Karlos can probably give a very colorful picture.

You know, being a chef.

My experience as a horticulturalist and then learning about some of, some of the knowledge.

Unfortunately, when I grew up I didn't have a strong background of, of my parents or my elders teaching me a lot of, you know, what our basic food sources were.

So I started to actually learn about who I was when I started to go through school and get a, get an education in agriculture.

And so my whole education and evolving is around the farming aspect of, of our people.

And so what that cuisine started to look like was obviously we have corn, beans, and squash.

That's the three sisters very commonly known and, and described in those terms.

Growing practices are very different between tribes though.

So it's not that these seeds are planted in the, in the same hole, like is very widely known when the three sisters story is told, but actually we had cornfields.

And the most traditional aspect of, if we look at just the Navajo people and how we farmed is that we had our cornfields in an open area, and those were generally flood irrigated spaces.

And then amongst them would potentially be very volunteer growing squash, melons, beans, and then along some of these where if, if, if you're very familiar to the geography of Lake Powell area and southern Utah and the canyon spaces, imagine you take away all the water.

A lot of our farming areas for Navajo actually dwell in these slot canyon spaces.

And so- - And now they're, they're nothing but water there.

- Yeah, yeah, a lot of them are but still in the upper areas we do still have a lot of those traditional farmsteads that, that fortunately have not been engulfed underneath the water.

And so we have peaches, we have orchards, we have walnuts, there's, there's a lot of nut crops that are native to North America that we would harvest from.

There's wild plums.

There's just an abundance of, of food.

From my experience as a, as a horticulturalist in learning about the farming aspect, there's grapes, there's, there's so much of variety, apricots, we can keep going on, you know.

- That sounds very similar to what we grew in Mississippi where I grew up actually.

(Danor and Lonzo laughing) - It's very similar to our diets today, right?

You know, we, we had wild potatoes we would go and harvest.

They're very small.

They don't look like the potatoes that you get in the grocery store.

Same thing with the peaches, which, which I've been very known to being a promoter and a preserver of that traditional crop.

But they don't look like the, your peaches in the grocery store, they're very small like the size of an apricot, typically white fleshed.

Some can be yellow fleshed, very pale color.

They're not vibrant and bright, but they're very nutritious for us and they're very easy to process and preserve.

- So things have changed a lot since colonization, sounds like (laughs).

- Yes.

- Do you want add to that Karlos?

Like what food was like prior to colonization?

- Yeah, you know, I mean, that's been, that's been my life study and you know, luckily I've been privileged enough that my grandparents still practiced a lot of, of those food and medicine ways in that traditional ethnobotany.

So I always compare it to like, I always make a joke, right?

You can go to Whole Foods, right?

And, and you have this vast array of things and that's the same in nature, right?

The shifting in that terminology would be though, the pun, I guess the pun in it is that we had a Whole Foods diet.

(group laughing) You know, like, like literally, you know?

And, and so we have this, you know, not only do you have that aspect of, of traditional farming I will say, like for myself, I have, I have knowledge of well over 300 plants that are, are food and medicine just here in the, in the Four Corners region.

And there are others like the Dene Ethnobotanist, Arnold Clifford, who has numerous plants named after him, actually really amazing who knows literal thousands upon thousands.

So, you know, I can, I can go outside at any, any given time and everything is pretty, is practically food or medicine.

And that is what our tradition is, you know like that's the depth of it.

- Yeah, I would love to get into that, like, especially a little later on the show, but let's, let's fast forward a little bit to today.

Can you guys explain some of the current food challenges that are coming up with you guys and in your community today?

- Yeah.

- We'll start with you, Reagan.

- Okay, so currently, because, because of some of the colonization implications that have happened, it's that our people and all Native American tribes were being forced to assimilate to colonization practices.

And that included farming practices.

It's written in our treaties that, you know we have to develop and start practicing modern farming practices, what's okay with, with the colonization.

So right there we're already transitioning from, from day one into this assimilation of, you know being what was appropriate to them in their eyes.

- Well and, and based on what Karlos says that, that sounds to me, Karlos, like it's not just a change in diet but it's a change in culture.

I mean, how do you, how do you respond to that?

- Yeah, I mean that, that removal of like, what is indigenous?

- Yeah.

- You know?

Like indigenous is, is being of a place and that's, that's knowledge of your entire ecosystem and understanding the place that you play in it.

And so as soon as you start knocking those things out, you know, as soon as you, you get trans you know, and for the reservation system, you know, the reservations before they were reservations for the most part were prisoner of war camps.

And in those camps, you know you got what was given to the people, right?

And so that's rancid flour and things like this that, that are not part of the traditional food way.

And, you know, we can look around our communities today and see the health effects of that nonstop.

You know, it's an, it's an ever, ever growing challenge.

So it's, it's real, you know,?

Colonization does its job very well.

- Wow, so are there any lost foods?

I know your expertise is in agriculture and horticulture.

Have there any, are there any indigenous foods that were part of your diet that, that no longer exist?

- I would say they're in existence, but in very rare cases.

And it goes back to the family roots.

The families that are actually trying to keep those traditional practices and pass those down.

And so when it comes to the families that have lost that and my family can be a, a pretty good example you know, we, we, my parents followed the path of assimilating very well to modern practices.

You know, having, working with the economy, having a job, having a business, you know, we, we settle into that, working and living in, in a society with convenience like an urban community, rather than living in the traditional lands that their grandparents lived in, that they grew food, that they gathered their food.

And so that dynamic in the difference of, of families that don't have that that traditional aspect anymore, it comes down to we no longer know how to use land.

We no longer know where to go and collect our traditional medicines or the plants that make traditional dyes like the moccasin, the color for the moccasin.

- Oh, beautiful by the way.

You, you are, you're, this outfit is amazing.

- We were talking about that before.

Love it.

- So yeah, I mean, just, just some examples of what is this plant that makes this dye?

A lot of us don't know and there's not very many of us, that many of our people left that do know, or that have even seen it.

My dad growing up, he says "I know the plant that my dad used to make moccasins and he's the one that made the first moccasins for me", and he still has them.

And so the aspect of when we get into the food it's the same circumstance.

Now, it's processed food because we, we are relying on grocery stores, which there's only, I believe only 13 grocery stores across the entire Navajo nation, which is the size of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

- Oh my goodness.

- So you look at that demographic and think people have to travel very far to get food.

So we're relying on that rather than growing and collecting since we were isolated to a certain land boundary in a lot of cases for tribal communities, that's very small, maybe 5% of where their traditional tribal boundaries actually were.

And so when you look at the aspect of how we gather and if we go outside and want to, you know, say we, we need to find this medicine because someone's ill with something so we know where to go and source that.

Now we've gone to restricted boundaries maybe that plant is outside of our boundaries.

- So you can't get to it.

- So that we can't get to it.

- Oh, my goodness.

- So are there foods or plants that you guys avoid that are forbidden you know, that you just wouldn't go near, Karlos?

(Karlos and Reagan laughing) - No.

You know, I mean there's a lot of plants that have been demonized by you know, through the, through the church in particular.

- Like what?

Give us an example.

- Oh, so like anything with, with it would be considered a hallucinate you know, hallucinatory thing.

So any mushrooms, things like that.

But they, now that you come into a problem with that is that some of those, those things are actually foods as well.

You know, they weren't, they weren't just medicine things.

They're brought, you can process them into, to another, another being, you know, and, and they become sustenance.

So, and then you look to another, another example of that there, particularly in Utah, you know, the, the the sego lilies being your, your state flower.

And they, those were a food that saved the Mormon people.

The indigenous people showed them this and they, they showed it to them.

And then now, it becomes your, your state flower and now it becomes a protected species.

Now you're not supposed to use it.

- Oh wow.

- And so something like that can pull away, you know, from the indigenous food system.

You know, and so there, there's, there's many, many fronts of attacking that in, in in food warfare on our peoples for sure.

- Yeah, that's amazing.

- Well, you know what we want to talk about, 'cause both of you are really good at native plant gardens.

I know, Karlos, you, we had spoken about this and Reagan that's one of your specialties, right?

Native plant farming and- - Developing, developing that as a specialty, yeah.

- So what would, like if people at home wanted to sort of be a part of this and be an active participant in, in, in trying to be a solution to this problem how could we start our own native plant garden?

We start with you Reagan.

- So when we talk about native plant garden I think there's a lot of different ways that we can look at this.

It could be, you know, looking at natural pollinator plants.

It could be food plants.

I think it kind of goes with what is your overall gain and outlook?

What do you wanna aspire?

How do you want to help the environment?

And I think first and foremost, because of the drought I would say pollinator habitat 100% is a go for.

Because if we have, in Utah we have a monoculture landscaping system.

And right now, Utah's actually trying to transition away from that, but very- - What is, what is- - Monoculture.

So it like, like one species type landscape.

- [Lonzo] Oh gotcha.

- [Danor] Right, right.

- So we put that aspect and then maybe we throw in some trees for shade.

So that's, that's been the traditional Utah landscape for, since the establishment of Utah, basically, you know?

And that's what everybody aspires to.

So if you have a neighbor, it's, yeah, it's like you have a neighbor maybe that, that doesn't take care of their lawn.

The biggest outcry with neighbors that do and have the perfect turf without a dandelion in it.

And you have a neighbor that has whole mead dandelions and it's, you need to take care of your weeds.

But what is dandelion?

It's a food, it's a medicine, you know?

And so- - So what would be an example of plants that would be, what's the word you used?

- Pollinator.

- Pollinators.

- Pollinators.

So we wanna attract bees, butterflies, could be some type of bird species, you know.

And so if you go to your nursery there's gotta be, you know, there's, there, usually there's, there's some form of a list that like your local nursery can help you with.

- Oh, cool.

- We're fortunate.

I think down in southeast Utah where we have some nurseries from that are experienced in the Colorado plateau.

So they're more looking at the drought tolerant species and not the water wise, the water lover species, which up here in northern Utah, a lot of nurseries actually do carry a lot more species that love the water.

So when we look at the aspect of, well we wanna conserve water but we want to keep the soil from running off and eroding.

We wanna make sure that there's some life, you know?

- There's a lot of depth to this.

- Yeah, there's, there's so much.

I mean, we can, we can keep going into so many layers.

So it's like, what do you want?

And, and that's where my expertise comes in, is do you wanna be the person to give back?

And the best way I always say is that pollinator habitat then we can go into native gardens with food.

Do you want food into this?

Do you wanna benefit from this too?

So some of these pollinator plants, we can do medicines, we can learn how to source from those, but then also give back to the natural, you know, the wildlife, the natural environment.

- [Lonzo] That's great.

- And then, and then yeah, adding that layer of food because the local food native plants, we can have established gardens.

We can talk about water wise gardens, we can talk about heirloom crops.

There's so much we can just talk about here, so.

- Karlos, you wanna chime in?

- Yeah, is there anything that maybe restaurants or things can do to help with this cause?

- No, I think that they're, I teach a lot, right?

And I, and I, I teach a lot of, of younger, you know grade school through high school youth.

And I think, I think the important aspect for me to get across is that it's okay to go ahead and plant things, right?

It's okay to do that and to learn about those things but what's your relationship to the plant?

And so actually cultivating a, a relationship to a single plant.

Find that plant, you know, that's, that's that's native that maybe your grandma remembers or one of your relatives that has a cultural connection, right?

And then learn about that plant.

Sit with that plant, talk to that plant.

You know, there, there's a different understand, you know, who's talking about pollination, right?

Like talk, learn who pollinates it, who visits it and those kind of things.

Because those are the establishments that help us reconnect and, and get that, that knowledge base back.

You know, like here, here at the farm, that's, that's the whole of what I do.

You know, it's, it's a farm in, in terms I guess.

We grow crops, we grow and we grow all pre-colonial, indigenous, you know crops that a lot of them are repatriated crops.

Things that have been out of community and out of this region for, you know, a hundred years, some of them.

And you know, and, and there's this other, these, these concepts you have to like look at.

There's like that sedentary agriculture, right?

And then I always say there's, there's not really terminology for a lot of the stuff that, that I work with.

So, and like the Ute way I, I speak about like, cultivation and motion, right?

So was it people that, that traversed the mountain range, you know?

And it went as far down as, you know, into Apache territory like almost down into Hopi territory, but then all the way up in, towards the Idaho and Montana, right?

Like this huge, massive space within these mountains.

And the cultivation was constantly in motion, you know, so the, the plants and the foods and all of these things were, were being moved along with the people.

And that's the same thing that we're doing here because this, you know, this space was completely decimated.

It was deforested.

The, the Spaniards moved the waterways in this region when they were here.

And then the Mormons came behind them and, and cut out the the remaining trees and they brought in more cattle and more, you know, and, and and this land base has been pretty destroyed.

And so- - Wow.

- You know- - We wanna, we want talk more about this a little later.

Do you wanna stick around for our podcast?

Because we're, we're gonna, we're gonna stick, have you guys stick around and talk to you a little bit more about this stuff.

'Cause we're about to wrap up here.

But we want to get your final thoughts and see- - What would be your, what would be the one takeaway you would want someone to have in 30 seconds?

What can someone do that's important to remember?

- I think it's, it's very important to learn history.

I think the common term is, you know, you don't want history to repeat itself.

We know what's happened but it's also kind of giving credit to, you know, this is the land that we all live in now.

So we've, we've been taught to understand you know, colonization history, everybody has.

It's very expected.

But what about the First Nations history?

And getting to know that we're not, we're not all the same.

We we're all from different tribes.

We have different practices.

Our moccasins can be different between tribes.

And same thing with hairstyles, our way of living, it could be our food because of our, where we're regionally located.

And so when we talk about going back to maybe, you know, local sustainability, food sovereignty, it's what is available to you locally?

That has, like we kind of touched on, created the culture, created the environment.

We know how people have moved around because of food waste.

And so understanding the food, where it comes from, what that was, it's a foundation of not just knowing your history and who you are or knowing someone else's history and who they are but it's also a foundation of security and knowing what's available to you.

- [Danor] That is- - All right, Karlos, one minute.

What do you, what would you like people to take away from this?

- I think just, just be introspective, you know?

When you look at your life and you look at what you are doing with it, what part are you playing in like continued colonization and continued destruction of, of the planet, you know, of people.

And you can look here in the four corners and in, in the, at the industries at the mining, at the uranium, destruction of the waterways, destruction of Salt Lake, you know?

- [Danor] Yeah.

- Thank you.

- Thank you you so much.

We appreciate you guys giving us a, a holistic perspective.

And thank you guys for joining us.

That's all the time we have for this week on Roots Race and Culture.

We thank you for joining us and we will see you again next time.

- [Narrator] Roots Race and Culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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