’You can’t say you’re sovereign if you can’t feed yourself:’ Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in American Indian Community Gardening

DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Hoover, Elizabeth. 2017. “’You can’t say you’re sovereign if you can’t feed yourself:’ Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in American Indian Community Gardening” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 41(3): 31-70. DOI 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover This is the final submission copy to the journal, which I recognize that many people don’t have access to because of a pay wall. The word document below contains the text of article, please contact me directly at Elizabeth_M_Hoover@brown.edu for more information “You Can’t Say You’re Sovereign If You Can’t Feed Yourself”: Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty in American Indian Community Gardening Elizabeth Hoover A sign at the entrance to the long narrow driveway proclaimed that this space was home to Tsyunhehkwa, “Life Sustenance,” a certified organic farm and program of the Oneida Nation.1 The shuttle turned down the driveway, past the small yellow farmhouse that comprises the farm’s office, and pulled up in front of the large red barn. Climbing down the shuttle steps, representatives from tribal projects in California, Saskatchewan, Cherokee Nation, Navajo Nation, and various Ojibway communities from across the Great Lakes region, were promptly greeted by Don, one of the farm’s employees. Each of these representatives had traveled from their own corner of Indian country to the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin for the Food Sovereignty Summit, hosted by Oneida as well as the First Nations Development Institute and the Intertribal Agriculture Council. Along with Ted and Jeff, Don took them through the barn filled with braids of white corn hanging from the rafters; past the pastures filled with chickens and grass-fed cows; through acres of Iroquois white corn; through the greenhouse and chicken-processing facility; and lastly, everyone reboarded the shuttle for a tour of the tribal cannery. In addition to these tribal representatives, hundreds of other indigenous gardeners, farmers, ranchers, seed savers, fishermen, foragers, hunters, community organizers, educators, and 1  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover chefs also attended the summit, all seeking to better connect with others in the movement and to envision what food sovereignty could look like in their communities. Taken up by activists and academics alike, food sovereignty has now become a rallying cry for both established tribal programs and grassroots projects across Indian country. However, what is meant by the term often varies considerably. This essay will place the term within specific notions of America Indian sovereignty, as well as the context of the broader food sovereignty literature. Exploring in detail how Native American community farmers and gardeners describe and define food sovereignty as both concept and method, this article also examines how these definitions are being operationalized in pursuing community goals of promoting health and reclaiming and maintaining tribal culture. [H1] Global Food Sovereignty The term “food sovereignty” was first defined in 1996 by La Via Campesina, an international group of peasant and small-scale farmers who sought to articulate a common response to neoliberalism and the dominant market economy and to defend their rights to land and seeds.2 The term was refined and brought to the world stage at the 2007 Forum for Food Sovereignty in Selingue, Mali, during which five hundred delegates from over eighty countries adopted the Declaration of Nyeleni. According to this declaration, “Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”3 The declaration goes on to highlight (1) the importance of putting food producers and consumers, rather than corporations, at the heart of food systems policies; (2) the need to include the next generation in food production, as well as empowering food producers and artisans; (3) the importance of environmental, social and economic 2  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover sustainability; and (4) the need for transparent trade, as well as equality between genders, racial groups and social classes.4 Everyone in the food chain is positioned as a potentially powerful actor.5 The food sovereignty movement has grown out of, and pushed back against, efforts towards and definitions of food security, a concept that activists and scholars have criticized as simply addressing only an adequacy of food supply without specifying the means of food acquisition. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, food security describes “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”6 This definition does not specify how, where, and by whom the food that all people should have access to is produced, contributing to a focus on food-related policies that seek to maximize food production while giving inadequate attention to who will benefit from where and how that food is produced. Accordingly, efforts toward developing global “food security” have promoted the concentration of food production and increased liberalization of agricultural trade, both of which have benefitted multinational agribusiness corporations. To neglect the source of food promotes the dumping of agricultural commodities below market prices and the use of genetically modified seeds and other expensive agricultural inputs. This has devastated domestic agricultural systems—undermining the economic position of small farmers and reinforcing power differentials by promoting multinational corporations, rather than putting resources back into the hands of those who would produce food for themselves.7 In the specific context of North American food security studies, indigenous scholars argue that a focus only on the supply end of food procurement does not adequately address the food conditions, histories, and relationships of indigenous peoples, even if the intention is to document and address hunger in individual households.8 3  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover The food sovereignty movement, on the other hand, seeks to address issues of hunger, environmentally unsustainable production, economic inequality, and issues of social justice on a political level. Food sovereignty seeks to democratize food production, distribution, and consumption and to shift “the focus from the right to access food to the right to produce it.”9 This is seen as an alternative to neoliberal economic development and industrial agriculture, which devastate the livelihoods of peasant and small-scale farmers10 and contribute to economic and environmental crises.11 Furthermore, as Menser points out, food sovereignty is not only a reaction against neoliberalism, but also “a project for the democratization of the food system that also aims to restructure the state and remake the global economy.”12 He reasons that food sovereignty “is not just about ‘farmers and food’ but the nature of work, the scope of politics, and the meaning of social and ecological sustainability; it is about participatory democracy, dignity, solidarity, and social inclusion.”13 Local food activists, then, may inadvertently legitimize the power of corporations in the food system if they choose “green capitalism” as their primary tool, i.e. exercising consumer purchasing power through boycotts and certification programs. On the other hand, Madeleine Fairbairn asserts , food sovereignty advocates target political bodies, focusing on the power relations that led to the formation of the food regime. In this way, “the intensely political language used by food sovereignty advocates makes it very difficult for their demands to be assimilated by corporations and therefore increase the strength of their challenge to the status quo.”14 Through the support of more environmentally sustainable production and the support of smaller producers, the food sovereignty movement also seeks to address what Philip McMichael has labeled the “triple crisis”: (1) displaced local food production for almost half of humanity; (2) deepening fossil fuel dependency in an age of “peak oil”; and that (3) roughly a quarter of the 4  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change come from industrial agriculture.15 Yet the imperative of food sovereignty is not to simply add social justice components to an environmentally sustainable food system: rather, it conceives of social justice as the foundation from which a food system must be built, in a process working to correct historical and structural injustices.16 The production, consumption and distribution of culturally appropriate food should be accomplished while strengthening community, livelihoods and environmental sustainability.17 The food sovereignty movement highlights the social connections inherent in the production and consumption of food, demanding that we not treat it as just a commodity.18 To achieve this social justice, food sovereignty has been described as a “rights based political framework,” built on a language of rights both to the tangible, such as land and seeds, and ideological concepts, such as the ability to define one’s own culturally appropriate food systems.19 Priscilla Claeys sees the possibility that food sovereignty itself, “as a collective right could become, in the future, a new human right.”20 But while the concept of a universal human right is generally considered beneficial to all, Asfia Gulrukh Kamal and colleagues have pointed out that laws establishing a right to food sovereignty could be used to undermine cultural distinctions prized by some groups, and those rights that have been established to protect those distinctions.21 Jeff Corntassel has also criticized the framing of rights as legal entitlements, claiming that this discourse has deemphasized the cultural responsibilities that indigenous people have to their families and the natural world. ”22 While the term sovereignty conventionally refers to the sovereignty of the state over its territory and its right to impart policies without external interference, the food sovereignty movement focuses on food sovereignty as a “right of the peoples,” adopting a pluralistic concept that attributes sovereignty not only to state actors, but also to and non-state actors, such as cultural and ethnic 5  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover communities.23 For communities who experience nested layers of sovereignty, this can be complicated.—the nation- state might seek to be sovereign over food production and distribution without the interference of multinational entities, interpreting “food sovereignty” in a way that is, “attractive to national governments advocating for strong state regulation of food chains.”24 Therefore, the movement’s focus on “peoples” is “not just a semantic move to make food sovereignty feel inclusive; it indicates a focus on collective action to assert and maintain political autonomy at multiple scales,”25 since, particularly in colonized societies, peoples’ and countries’ rights are not necessarily the same thing.26 In many indigenous communities, food sovereignty is a continuation of anticolonial struggles; the politics employed by indigenous people engaged in the food sovereignty movement are “not only a politics moored in both space and place, but a politics developed as part of longer struggles against exploitation and colonization of that place.”27 For indigenous communities that experience nested layers of sovereignty, food sovereignty as a term and concept can take on different layers of meaning, from the broader peasant struggle or from that in urban communities.28 As sovereign nations (or “domestic dependents” as Native American tribes were described by Chief Justice John Marshall in the precedent-setting The Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia case (1831)), Native Americans tribes have been working to integrate the struggle for food sovereignty into broader efforts of self-determination.29 [H1] Loss of Food Sovereignty in Indian Country In considering how to apply the concept of food sovereignty to Native American communities’ efforts to regain control over and rebuild their food systems, it is important to consider the series of factors that, as a function of colonization, have worked to disrupt indigenous food systems over the past four centuries. In many cases, this interruption was intentional. In examining American history, 6  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Potawatomi philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte argues that while “many settler actions are tacit or involve ignorant moralizing narratives, when it comes to food sovereignty, U.S. settlers deliberately endorsed actions of erasure to undermine Indigenous collective self-determination.”30 This was done as a function of “erasing the capacities that the societies that were already there—Indigenous societies—rely on for the sake of exercising their own collective self-determination over their cultures, economies, health, and political order.”31 This societal destruction includes a range of actions, from deliberately destroying food in acts of war to interfering with the transfer of food- related knowledge from one generation to the next. Scorched-earth battle tactics utilized against Native people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sought to destroy food supplies and the land from which it came in order to make Native people reliant on the American government.32 Indigenous communities have been pushed to marginalized territories, and in many cases the treaty-making system alienated tribes from their land.33 Land bases were further diminished through the allotment system that allocated communal land to individuals and families. During the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite tribes’ successful histories of fishing and gathering, federal policies instead encouraged Native people on many reservations to farm on marginal lands. While some tribal communities were traditionally farmers, to others that were not, such as Plains tribes and other communities across North America, the US and Canadian governments introduced farming projects in order to disrupt hunting cultures and expand the agricultural frontier while assimilating indigenous livelihoods--even as non-Indians often usurped the best farmland.34 During this era, many Native youth were also sent to boarding schools, where they were often undernourished.35 In these schools, youth were encouraged to forget their tribal connections and were forced to take on staples of a standard diet that embodied Anglo ideals of food ways. These 7  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover meals centered around starches and dairy, a significant shift for students previously used to diets based on fresh and dried meats, fruits, and vegetables.36 Following this era, urban relocation programs in the 1950s brought Native people from rural reservations to urban centers for employment opportunities, but this move often left families food insecure and distant from traditional food sources.37 Environmental change has also impacted access to traditional foods, through both climate change and intentional reshaping of the landscape. For example, damming the Missouri River in the 1940s and 1950s resulted in Native peoples in the Dakotas losing most of their arable land on the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek, and Fort Berthold reservations.38 Similar dams built across the Northeast39 and the Northwest have disrupted fisheries and flooded indigenous homelands.40 In addition, industrial contamination has impacted fishing in places like the Akwesasne Mohawk community on the New York/Canadian border,41 and for the Coast Salish Swinomish community in Washington State.42 In the polar regions, persistent organic pollutants have made consuming the usual amounts of traditional foods hazardous to human health.43 In the Arctic climate change has led to declining sea ice, forced community relocations, shifts in plant and animal populations around North America, changes in river flow impacting water availability for crops, and a broadening of the range of disease organisms.44 All of these changes over the past century have impacted indigenous food systems. As was agreed upon in many treaties, to make up for the loss of hunting, fishing, and agricultural lands, during the nineteenth century food rations were distributed on many Indian reservations to stave off the starvation and malnutrition that would have resulted from disrupted indigenous food systems. These rations consisted of foods that were foreign to Indian people: beef, bacon, four, coffee, salt, and sugar.45 The US federal government’s practice of providing food to 8  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover American Indian communities has continued to the present day, now administered by the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). This federal program provides United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) procured foods to low-income households living on Indian reservations or in designated areas in Oklahoma.46 While the USDA has been working to improve the quality of foods available to communities through this program, including making more fresh foods available, historically these programs have done little to reinforce the relational aspects that traditional food systems relied upon-- including the relationships developed and maintained between people as part of food procurement and processing, as well as the relationships between humans and the non-human communities who become food. Recent FDPIR efforts have included buffalo meat, blue cornmeal, wild rice, and frozen wild sockeye salmon in the offerings, but including more regionally relevant foods has been slowed because a food must be available in quantities for all eligible participants in the United States. The FDPIR Food Package Working Group is currently working to resolve this conflict.47 The disruption of traditional food systems has led to a number of health and social problems in indigenous communities. American Indians have higher levels of food insecurity when compared to the US average.48 In 2008, 23 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) households were food insecure, compared to 15 percent of all US households.49 Historically, indigenous societies sometimes contended with seasonal and weather-related fluctuations of food sources and availability. But while hunger is still a problem in some households, it is the increased consumption of processed foods that have contributed to an elevation in diet-related health issues among Native peoples. AI/AN children have approximately twice the levels of food insecurity, obesity, and type II diabetes relative to the average for all US children of similar ages.50 Diabetes was first documented among Native Americans around the mid-twentieth century;51 currently, American Indian/Alaska Native adults 9  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover (16.1%) are more likely than black adults (12.6%), Hispanic adults (11.8%), Asian adults (8.4%), or white adults (7.1%) to have ever been told they had diabetes. These rates vary by region, from 5.5 percent among Alaska Native adults to 33.5 percent among American Indian adults in southern Arizona.52 Not only physical health problems resulted from the disruption of traditional food systems. As the availability of foods has declined, so too have the stories, language, cultural practices, interpersonal relationships, and outdoor activities implicated in those food systems. A tribal community’s capacity for “collective continuance” and “comprehensive aims at robust living”53 are hindered when the relationships that are part of traditional food cultures and economies are disrupted. Tristan Reader and Terrol Johnson, who worked together to form the community organization Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA), describe how “the endangerment of Tohono O’odham symbolic culture followed directly the decline in material culture. People did not stop planting the fields because the ceremonies were dying out; the ceremonies began to die out when people stopped planting their fields. After all, if you never plant crops, the importance of rain is diminished.”54 [H1] Tribal Sovereignty Each of the disruptions and abuses described above was an attack on the sovereignty of indigenous communities. But defining what exactly we mean by “sovereignty” for Native communities has proven challenging. When I asked Anishnaabe (Ojibway) scholar, activist, community organizer, and economist Winona LaDuke to give me her definition of food sovereignty, her response highlighted part of the debate for many indigenous people around the term “sovereignty.” LaDuke replied, “What is food sovereignty? You know I’m going to be honest with you, I actually have problems 10  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover with the word sovereignty, because sovereignty is a definition that comes from a European governance system based on monarchy and empire. And I’m really not interested in monarchy and empire. They have no resilience, they have really nothing to do with who we are.”55 Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred has noted that the concept of sovereignty originated in Europe, and denoted a single divine ruler. Alfred describes sovereignty as “an exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion of power,” and wonders why more people have not questioned how a European idea and term became so central to the political agenda of Native peoples.56 But Joanne Barker has argued that there is no fixed meaning for what sovereignty is, as it is embedded within the specific social relations in which the term is invoked and given meeting, determined by political agendas and cultural perspectives. She argues that in its links to concepts of self-determination and self-government, sovereignty insists on the recognition of rights to political institutions that are historically and culturally located.57 Contemporary understandings of sovereignty have included understandings that nations are autonomous and independent, self-governing, and generally free of external interference.58 Tribal sovereignty has come to include the authority of tribal governments to engage in a range of activities, including determining citizenship, regulating on-reservation commercial activities, varying levels of criminal jurisdiction, natural resource management, providing child welfare, social services, and more. Moreover, sovereignty serves as the legal framework for most American Indian rights claims.59 Even with this general understanding of what we mean by “sovereignty,” other scholars have critiqued the use of the term, as there is not a clear consensus on its precise meaning, or how to achieve it, and it has been applied to a multitude of uses and issues. Jace Weaver has stated that sovereignty has perhaps become a retronym, a word that has lost its original meaning 11  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover through so many different usages that it can no longer be employed without an adjectival modifier. It may now be necessary to refer to “multiple sovereignties” and to distinguish among them—political, cultural, territorial, economic, intellectual, and the like.60 Some might argue that the term “food sovereignty” could be added to this assortment of multiple sovereignties. Similarly, Lakota philosopher Vine Deloria Jr. has argued, “Today the definition of sovereignty covers multitude of sins, having lost its political moorings, and now is adrift on the currents of individual fancy.”61 On the other hand, taking up Deloria’s criticisms, Chickasaw scholar Amanda Cobb explains that “the terms or definitions of tribal sovereignty have real, tangible consequences in the everyday experiences of Native Americans. It is through these terms and definitions that Native nations experience limitation on their abilities to exercise sovereignty and live as they choose.”62 She feels that we should not reject the term in favor of more user-friendly terms (she gives the example of “self-determination” or “cultural autonomy”), but instead, because the term sovereignty has such powerful and legal consequences in American courtrooms as well as in the international community, “we must use the term sovereignty and the discourse surrounding it as a critical tool to strengthen tribal cultural, political, and economic autonomy.”63 Along this vein, advocates have operationalized the term food sovereignty as a means of trying to leverage this cultural, political, and economic autonomy for the purposes of revitalizing food systems. [H1] Indigenous Food Sovereignty In the context of the very specific meanings of the term “sovereignty” for many indigenous people, and specifically Native American and First Nations communities, as well as because of the very specific cultural connections to land, and political relationships to settler-colonial governments, scholars and activists have worked to specifically define an indigenous food sovereignty.64 These 12  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover definitions are constructed within a framework that recognizes the social, cultural, and economic relationships that underlie community food-sharing. They seek to stress the importance of communal culture, decolonization, and self-determination, as well as the inclusion of fishing, hunting, and gathering--rather than just agriculture--as key elements of a food sovereignty approach.65 Put simply, indigenous food sovereignty “refers to a re-connection to land-based food and political systems,”66 and seeks to uphold “sacred responsibilities to nurture relationships with our land, culture, spirituality, and future generations.”67 Whyte describes that the “indigenous food systems” at the center of these definitions “refer to specific collective capacities of particular indigenous peoples to cultivate and tend, produce, distribute, and consume their own foods, recirculate refuse, and acquire trusted foods and ingredients from other populations.” He specifies that the concept of “collective capacities” describes an “an ecological system, of interacting humans, nonhuman beings (animals, plants, etc) and entities (spiritual, inanimate, etc.) and landscapes (climate regions, boreal zones, etc.) that are conceptualized and operate purposefully to facilitate a collective’s (such as an indigenous people’s) adaptation to metascale forces.”68 As described above, indigenous communities’ abilities to adapt to these forces was intentionally and unintentionally disrupted through the establishment of settler-colonial nations. As Karla Rae Rudolph and Stephane McLachlan describe, “An indigenous food sovereignty framework explicitly connects the health of food with the health of the land and identifies a history of social injustice as having radically reduced indigenous food sovereignty in colonized nations.”69 The concept of indigenous food sovereignty is not just focused on rights to land and food and the ability to control a production system, but also responsibilities to them, which encompasses culturally, ecologically and spiritually appropriate relationships with elements of those systems. This 13  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover entails emphasizing reciprocal relationships with aspects of the landscape and the entities on it, “rather than asserting rights over particular resources as a means of controlling production and access.”70 Secwepemc scholar Dawn Morrison describes indigenous food sovereignty as a framework for exploring the right conditions for “reclaiming the social, political, and personal health we once experienced prior to colonization. But the framework itself does not resolve where the responsibility for it lies.”71 The responsibility lies with indigenous people to participate in traditional food-related activities on a daily basis, build coalitions with friends and allies, and assert and insist on the utilization of indigenous values, ethics, and principles in making decisions that impact “forest and rangeland, fisheries, environment, agriculture, community development and health.”72 Because of this focus on cultural relevancy and specific relationships to food systems, cultural restoration is imperative for indigenous food sovereignty, “generally more so than to non-indigenous food sovereignty.”73 While some of the previous arguments about the use of the term “sovereignty” also could apply to the struggle of defining and enacting indigenous food sovereignty, indigenous people are defining the term to their advantage, as Cobb points out.74 In their work with the O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, Kamal and colleagues describe how the way in which this community uses the term food sovereignty, neither “food” nor “sovereignty” retains their classical meanings. Food, which is often framed as “consumable commodities,” is instead framed under its cultural meaning as the bond between people, health, and land. Sovereignty, rather than being perceived as control over land, water, or wildlife, was instead framed by this community as a relationship with these entities that allows for the mutual benefit of all parties.75 Usefully summarizing the overall discussion of indigenous food sovereignty, Dawn Morrison and the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty developed four principles: (1) the 14  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover recognition that the right to food is sacred, and food sovereignty is achieved by upholding sacred responsibilities to nurture relationships with the land, plants, and animals that provide food; (2) day- to-day participation in indigenous food-related action at all of the individual, family, community and regional level is fundamental to maintaining indigenous food sovereignty; (3) self-determination, or the ability of communities and families to respond to the needs for culturally relevant foods and the freedom to make decisions over the amount and quality of food hunted, fish, gathered, grown, and eaten; and (4) legislation and policy support to reconcile indigenous food and cultural values with colonialist laws, policies, and mainstream economic activities.76 As the debate about how to define food sovereignty generally-- and indigenous food sovereignty specifically-- developed in the literature, this research project was undertaken to learn more about how actual practitioners in indigenous community-based food projects were defining and operationalizing food sovereignty on the ground. I also sought to understand how concepts of food sovereignty informed and motivated their ongoing work to maintain and restore traditional food systems and promote better health in their communities. [H1] Methods I first became involved in conversations around food sovereignty through volunteering with the Akwesasne Mohawk community-based organization Kanenhi:io Ionkwaienthon:hakie (We Are Planting Good Seeds), with which I have been involved since 2007. Located in a community that has been contending with environmental contamination and an overall diminishment of farming and gardening, the goal of Kanenhi:io is to boost local food production by helping Mohawk people have access to land, equipment, funds, and a community of fellow gardeners .77 Conversations with fellow project participants on how to increase community involvement and access to funds then led me to 15  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover take part in twenty-five different food sovereignty summits and indigenous farming conferences, hosted by tribal nations such as the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, community groups such as the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and organizations including the First Nations Development Institute, the Intertribal Agriculture Council, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (see fig. 1). In an effort to learn more about the indigenous community-based farming and gardening projects I was hearing about during these conferences, during the summer of 2014 I drove twenty- thousand miles around the United States to visit thirty-nine of these projects in person (see fig. 2). INSERT FIGURES 1 AND 2 ABOUT HERE In the process, I conducted fifty-two formal interviews, and recorded thirty-four conversations and farm tours.78 Of the fifty-two formal interviews conducted, forty-six were with individuals who identify as Native American, and six were with project staff who do not identify as Native, but have been working closely for a number of years with the Native communities who hired them to run these projects. Interviews were transcribed, and then coded in NVivo 8, based on themes presented in the interview questions and those that arose organically through the interviews.79 I also wrote a blog post about each of the communities I visited, which featured the story of each project and accompanying photographs.80 Project participants were asked to approve each post to ensure that they were being portrayed in a manner they felt was appropriate. The blog served two purposes: it gave these projects a web presence, which was then later helpful for some in acquiring additional funding and recognition, but it also helped each of these community organizations to learn more about each other. Among the questions that I asked during these interviews--including asking participants to describe the history of their projects, some of their successes and challenges, and advice they would 16  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover give to new indigenous food projects--I asked each interviewee to define food sovereignty and to describe how this term or concept fit into their own work or was utilized in their own communities. The results section below breaks down elements of the definitions they provided to me, puts them in conversation with each other, and highlights where aspects of these definitions converge and diverge with other food sovereignty definitions. [H1] Results When participants were asked to define food sovereignty, their answers coalesced into a number of themes raised by the authors above—namely, the importance of food to cultural identity; relationships to the environment, food sources, and other people; and the need for independence to make choices around how to define food systems and what exactly to eat, at tribal and community levels as well as on an individual level. Additionally, the importance of access to food, land, and information was raised, as well as the role of the tribe in providing them. Participants also focused on the issue of control—over what they put in their mouths, what seeds are planted, and how their tribes should take back control of their land and food systems from outside influence. Participants further raised the importance of education, improving health, and focusing on the youth and future generations. Heritage seeds—most passed down through generations of indigenous gardeners, with some reacquired from seed banks or ally seed savers—were often discussed as the foundation of the movement and as living relatives to be protected from patent or modification, but also seen as tools for education and reclaiming health. To conclude this article, I discuss the assertion made by many of the participants that in order for tribes to properly assert that they are fully sovereign, they need to work towards achieving food 17  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover sovereignty first. With that in mind, food sovereignty was seen by many not as a final state that could be achieved, but rather characterized as a process, as a method, and as a movement. [H2] Health Driving much of their work on issues related to food sovereignty, and some of the main motivators that participants described for taking part in community-based projects, included concern about poor health in their community, anxiety about the grave health statistics described previously, and a desire to try to rectify this situation. Food sovereignty was described as a necessary tool to solve existing health problems, as well as to promote better health in the future. Traditional foods in many communities have become less available, and commodity foods and processed, packaged foods have become more available, contributing to poor health. As Julie Garreau (Lakota), director of the Cheyenne River Youth Project, explained for so long we ate those foods that weren’t good for us, and we didn’t know… We struggle with diabetes, it’s just rampant in our communities so we just need to change our diet … Because in the end, if you don’t have a healthy population, you don’t have anything. They’re not going to get to school, they’re not going to have long, healthy lives, they’re not going to be able to raise their children. You need healthy people. And who doesn’t want a healthy nation? We want that for us. As parents and grandparents, we want our kids to have long, productive lives. So food is a part of it.”81 These concerns motivated Garreau to incorporate a garden and kitchen into her youth program. Similarly, Dan Powless (Ojibway) described the purpose of the Bad River Gitiganing project as “to regain the health that we need. We’ve got a lot of health problems, nutrition problems on reservations 18  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover and things like that, so I think that’s the first thing we’re looking at is health of the people … the main focus that we kind of think of is the health first.” George Toya (Jemez Pueblo), who runs the garden for Nambe Pueblo, also connected diet change to health problems and saw it as part of his mission to work towards gradually reversing the situation. Our diet has changed so much and the evidence is in the health of the people. They’re not as healthy as they used to be even a few generations ago. It’s really changed. If it took that long to change us, it might take that long for us to get back to that point where we’re healthy people again and this is kind of our attempt to do that. Being sovereign is not just about being a totally isolated nation, it’s about being able to really feed— make your people well, and feed them again.82 This, he recognized, was not going to happen quickly, but is an important goal to work towards. For Kenny Perkins (Mohawk) from Kanenhi:io, good health for himself as well as future generations will result from working towards food sovereignty: I believe that food sovereignty means that we’re able to feed ourselves and by feeding ourselves we know what’s going into our body. And when we know what’s going into our body and we’re healthy, we are able to make better decisions, especially for those future generations that’s coming up. And if we can show them the right way the first time, they won’t know any other way. And so in turn, they’ll become healthy.83 Speaking to an audience full of Native gardeners, foragers, chefs, and others interested in food in 2013, Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot) advocated that when we follow our traditional diets we’re healthier people. Our immune systems can stand up to the seasons. One hundred years ago diabetes and heart disease were nonexistent in our 19  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover communities. We know what we need to do to be able to solve our health crisis. Telling people what to eat is not the root cause of our problem; it’s access to our traditional foods. Preventable diseases rise when we don’t have access to traditional foods.84 She carried this thought into our interview in July 2014, continuing, “the reason why we have a lot of diabetes and heart disease in our community is because we’ve been taken away from our traditional food system and have experienced the effects of a superimposed diet on people. When I talk to my leaders they know and they preach about how if we ate our traditional foods we wouldn’t be sick.”85 For these reasons, Segrest and others working on similar projects are promoting a shift in diet specifically to culturally important health foods. [H2] Culturally Appropriate Foods Grim public health statistics reflect the impacts to physical health that are caused by disrupted food sources. But it is also important to note the impacts of these disruptions to cultural and spiritual health, which are reliant on important cultural connections to food. It is notable that many of the projects I visited are not just trying to grow just any nutritious food—in many cases, they are seeking to restore culturally relevant food. Guaranteed access to “culturally appropriate foods” is a central tenet of the most basic definition of food sovereignty. This phrase was reflected in many of the definitions provided by participants. For example, Diane Wilson (Dakota), director of the Dream of Wild Health program, defines food sovereignty as “having access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food.” She later went on to describe that “part of this cultural recovery process” that many tribes as well as urban Indian communities are undertaking, “is the idea that you have control over your own food.”86 Dream of Wild Health seeks to provide that access and control to urban Native youth and their families through internships at their farm as well as cooking classes.87 20  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Similarly, Scott Shoemaker (Miami) defines food sovereignty as “the ability to seed your own community with cultural appropriate foods.”88 As a curator of an indigenous seed collection at the Minnesota Museum of Science, he worked to do that through collaborations with nearly a dozen indigenous community projects who partnered to form the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, who are now growing out seeds from that collection and sharing them with other community members.89 Even if these foods are already available, Tom Cook (Mohawk) who directed the Slim Buttes Agricultural Project on Pine Ridge for over two decades, described food sovereignty as “the expansion of local, culturally produced food stuffs.”90 These culturally appropriate foods are seen as serving as more than just nourishment for the physical body. Roberto Nutlouis (Navajo), who runs food and farming projects through the Black Mesa Water Coalition, explains that “corn isn’t just corn for our people, it has so much spiritual significance. It’s a biological and spiritual nourishment to our people.”91 Nutlouis works with youth to maintain fields of Navajo heritage corn, using traditional dry land farming methods, and then uses that corn to feed youth and elders. Several cultural programs in Native communities focus on food as an important vehicle for delivering cultural information. Kenny Perkins recalled that a major focus of the Ase Tsi Tewaton Akwesasne Cultural Restoration Program was to restore traditional foodways disrupted by environmental contamination. On the opposite coast, in the state of Washington, Romajean Thomas (Muckleshoot) described a “cultural sovereignty” class they held at Muckleshoot Tribal College that focuses on food culture. “Food sovereignty is really at the root of cultural sovereignty. It’s what our treaties are for and what our ancestors fought for.”92 Similarly, Bob Shimek (Ojibway), the current director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in the Ojibway community of White Earth in Minnesota, is focused on 21  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover using Ojibway food systems as the vehicle for cultural restoration and revitalization. Those little creation stories that come with each one of our relatives, whether they be the fish or the birds or the plants or the insects or the frogs or turtles or whatever, so many of those have a little story about how they got here. Inside those words that tell that story, that’s where the true meaning and value of our culture is stored in, our languages that tell those stories. So that’s the effort I’m making right now—it’s to not only keep building on our physical health, improving our physical health by teaching people not only about gardening and small scale farming but also all the wild plants, the wild foods that are out there, and packaging those up in the historical, cultural, and spiritual context which is part of the original understanding in terms of our role here on this turtle island…. Food sovereignty means that we’re taking care of that cultural and spiritual relationship with our food.93 In this way, food sovereignty is not just a goal in and of itself, but a tool to achieve other aspects of cultural restoration that are connected to health and language. The Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative in Oklahoma partners with the Euchee language immersion program every summer, helping the students to plant a garden at the school. Stephanie Berryhill (Mvskoke Creek), who worked as a youth programs coordinator for MFSI, asserted that “Language is the most critical marker of the health, and the cultural health of the community. It’s an important mark of the sovereignty of each of our Indigenous nations.” As we stood and watched half-a-dozen girls from the summer program tuck corn seeds into freshly tilled soil, Richard Grounds (Yuchi/Seminole), the director of the Euchee language program, described the garden as the perfect place to learn and practice language “because you’re physically doing what’s being said that helps you to remember and learn and associate the meaning with the activity and that has all that repetition built in. So we can view the language in a natural way”; and in addition, have food to show for it. 22  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Food was also described as a core and necessary component of culture. Cassius Spears Sr. (Narragansett), who is heading up the Narragansett Food Sovereignty Initiative, described that food “is to me what identifies your culture, your traditions, basically who you are. And it brings people together, it’s like the kitchen of the house,” playing on the image of the kitchen as not just the place where food is prepared, but also the central gathering place in many homes, the place where people often receive wisdom from elder women culture-bearers. For Spears Sr., food is the central hearth, the foundation, of culture and overall tribal sovereignty, the same way a kitchen is to a home.94 Without this core component of food, indigenous cultures are compromised. Valerie Segrest explains, “When our foods cease to exist so do we as a people. They’re there to remind us who we are and where we come from.” She goes on to describe how tribal “creation stories tell us that we are to commit ourselves to ceremonies around food. Food is our greatest teacher—without a spoken word.” On the other hand, she describes that “culture repression” impedes her community’s ability to access teachings from fish, trees, and other elements from their environment in the Pacific Northwest. Access to traditional foods and the practice of ceremony around those foods is necessary for the continued survival, and growth, of Coast Salish tribal culture.95 Alan Bacock (Paiute) from the Big Pine Paiute permaculture project in California described what happened when indigenous people were denied access to traditional foods: “we saw through our history that when we lacked the ability to provide food for our people is when our culture started to decline … if we were able to maintain our local food control, we would still have a strong cultural identity, strong cultural heritage.”96 For these reasons, the reconstruction of traditional food systems is seen as imperative to cultural restoration and health. [H2] Relationships 23  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover These cultural practices are in many ways centered on relationships—with food and with other tribal members around food— as opposed to considering food simply as a commodity. Jeremy McClain (Ojibway), formerly with the Bad River Gitiganing project, described “that symbiotic relationship with your environment. To me that’s food sovereignty, if you take care of your environment it will take care of you.” Within that context, he also mentioned the importance of the different Anishnaabe nations maintaining relationships with each other, and different programs and departments within the tribal government establishing relationships in order to foster the success of food sovereignty projects.97 Similarly, Lannesse Baker (Ojibway) with the Mashkiiki Gitigan project in Minneapolis, described food sovereignty as being “about that relationship we have with food and our ability to feed ourselves and sustain ourselves.” Because she works with urban indigenous populations, she described the importance of projects like Mashkiiki Gitigan in “facilitating that relationship to the earth and the environment and food-- the healthy foods, the original foods.”98 Some foods were described as actual relatives with whom positive relationships needed to be maintained. After we returned from a four-day bahidaj (saguaro cactus fruit) picking camp hosted by Tohono O’odham Community Action, Terrol Dew Johnson (Tohono O’odham) described how “the raw food that was harvested this weekend, in our traditional songs is referred to as being a little girl, a person, a woman.” He went on to tell the story about a little girl who was neglected by her mother and despite the help of different birds and animals, became so sad she sunk into the ground and grew into a cactus bud.99 As will be described in greater detail below, seed keepers I interviewed repeatedly highlighted the importance of “relationships” to seeds, as opposed to ownership of them. Clayton Brascoupe (Mohawk), director of the Traditional Native American Farming Association, repeatedly described seeds as “our living relatives,” who need to be cared for and protected from people who would treat them as commodities. 24  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover These relationships between human communities and the other communities that make up a tribal nation’s food system are reflected in what Mariaelena Huambachano describes as indigenous “good living” philosophies through which food sovereignty and food security should be framed, because these philosophies do “not solely focus on economic growth but rather place an emphasis on indigenous peoples’ tenets of duality, equilibrium and reciprocity in order to enjoy and preserve the bounties of Pachamama to safeguard food security.” She goes on to argue that these philosophies “offer models for promoting biodiversity, social equity and economic growth without agrochemicals, and preserving Mother Earth.”100 Maintaining these philosophies, specifically the Anishnaabe concept of Mino Bimadiziiwin, was described as the key to a healthy productive community. Winona LaDuke describes, The Creator gave us instructions. Mino Bimadiziiwin, about how to lead a good life. And the Creator gave us this land Oma akiing here upon which to live. Our instructions were to take care of each other, take care of all of our relatives, whether they had wings or fins or roots or paws. To be respectful, and to live that life. That's what I want to do. In that life, we feed ourselves— our food does not come from Walmart, our food does not come from fast food, we are not engaged in an industrial era. We are people that live from the gifts here.101 Food sovereignty is the process of nurturing the proper relationships with food elements. As Bob Shimek (Ojibway), current director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project described, Food sovereignty also means that we’re taking care of that cultural and spiritual relationship with our food. This is not by any means a one-way thing. I mean it’s not like we can just go out there and keep taking and taking from all that which was put here for us without properly taking care of that land and those relatives of ours that were put here for our use, benefit, and enjoyment. So I think the true measure of food 25  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover sovereignty is when you have that reciprocal relationship where Anishinaabeg is thriving as are all our plant, animal, bird, fish relatives, etc. That’s food sovereignty when it’s all lock-stepping together in what we call Mino Bimadiziiwin, the good life.102 This good life philosophy encapsulates the harmony that is established when, as participants have described above, symbiosis has been maintained through respectful relationships between humans and the other communities that contribute to their food systems. [H2] Independence Many of the participants equated food sovereignty with a level of independence from outside forces when it came to sourcing food—on an individual level, as a community, and as a sovereignty tribal nation. The notion of being able to feed yourself was at the root of an individual’s responsibility towards broader food sovereignty; as Milo Yellowhair (Lakota) from the Slim Buttes Agricultural Project reflected “sovereignty is an issue that’s rooted in the ability to feed one’s self.” Woodrow White (Ho-Chunk) from the Whirling Thunder garden project described food sovereignty as “you can grow lock, stock, and barrel all of your own food… if you can feed yourself that’s a giant step. No dependency out there. That’s the sovereignty you’re talking about and there’s not that many of us to take care of our own.” Looking around at the collection of individual garden boxes that comprised the community garden he had helped establish, Woodrow went on to describe how once individuals become independent, they could then contribute to feeding an entire community. For others, it was the ability to rely on their fellow community members rather than outside companies for inputs in running the local food system that constituted the necessary independence for food sovereignty. Angelo McHorse (Taos Pueblo), who ran the Red Willow farm at Taos Pueblo, defined food sovereignty as, “you don’t have to depend on any companies for your seed or your 26  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover fertilizer, even big tractors or oil much less. We have all our own ditches, we have all our own seed. We have all our own energy— your own hands.” Similarly, Jayson Romero (Cochiti Pueblo) who apprentices young farmers through the Cochiti Youth Experience defines food sovereignty as “not having to go outside of ourselves to get the things that we need and use.” Looking out over his field of knee-high corn plants sprouting up out of the sand, he described all of the special occasions that require traditional Pueblo corn. Food sovereignty, he decided, would be accomplished when “the ladies here do not have to go anywhere else to find the stuff that they need,” because farmers were able to provide all of the corn necessary for these occasions. Sitting in his adobe home in his wife’s community of Tesuque Pueblo, Clayton Brascoupe (Mohawk) also showed me pictures of his cornfields, maintained by his entire family. He described that their community will have achieved food sovereignty when “we have the ability to provide for ourselves, our children, our neighbors, within our community.” Part of defining food sovereignty entailed not only having individual members of the community rely on each other rather than multinational corporations, but also specifically the ability of the tribal community to provide for its members. Grace Ann Byrd (Nisqually) who works for the Nisqually Community Garden, defines food sovereignty as “being able to provide for your own people, to work the land, to have that garden stand…. So being able to provide for our own… we like to provide for our own people because that’s what I believe is sovereignty, is providing for the tribal members, the community members that reside here, and our elders in the diabetes program.” A third level of independence described by participants was on a tribal level—the tribe, as both a community and a government becoming less dependent on outside entities to provide food for their constituents. As Jeremy McClain (Ojibway) described, food sovereignty is “reducing our tribe’s dependence on the mainstream food production system and distribution.” Chuck Hoskins, the 27  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Cherokee Nation Secretary of State, described food sovereignty as “Cherokees producing for themselves, producing food for our families and for our people. Not being dependent on outside state influences.” Amos Hinton (Ponca) who started an agriculture program for his tribe, explained Food sovereignty is the ability to take care of yourself without input from outside forces. If I as a department head can produce all of the food for my tribe that they need, then not only are we food sovereign, we are indeed sovereign. You look at a tribe who says; “we are a sovereign nation.” Where do you get your food from? Do you buy it from an outside source? If you buy it from somebody else, then you are not a sovereign nation, because you’re dependent on somebody else for your food. To me, if you’re growing all of your own food, then you are a sovereign nation. At one time all Native American tribes were sovereign nations. They are not now.103 Within these levels of independence, participants recognized that in many cases the support of tribal government in working towards food sovereignty went a long way towards supporting food sovereignty for individuals and for the community as a whole. [H2] Economics The focus on more equitable economic systems, which comprises much of the focus of global food sovereignty definitions, also surfaced in these participants’ definitions, not only in the context of keeping food dollars within the community to support tribal food producers, but also in efforts to make these nonprofit organizations sustainable. Winona LaDuke (Ojibway) described a survey of the White Earth reservation, conducted by the White Earth Land Recovery Project, that found that their 28  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover community was spending one-quarter of its economy on food, a majority of which was being spent off-reservation. She has since expressed her determination to direct more of those food dollars to support on-reservation food producers.104 Stephanie Berryhill (Mvskoke Creek) from MFSI reflected on the quantity of food being served out of the tribe’s casino, all of which is “purchased from outside vendors when we should be producing it ourselves. We should be providing jobs and keeping this money in our communities.”105 To remedy situations like this, some of the participants are developing payment systems or buying practices that seek to keep food dollars within Native communities. Director Garreau made arrangements so the Cheyenne River Youth Project now accepts EBT cards at their little store and farmers market, as a way of directing federal government dollars provided to community members towards supporting local food producers. Lilian Hill (Hopi) described her efforts to help create markets for farmers and local producers, in order to support them as well as promote the sale of healthy food. Hopi Tutswa Permaculture, which Hill runs, partnered with the Hopi Food Co-op, Natwani Coalition, and the Hopi Special Diabetes Program to create the Hopi Farmers Market on Second Mesa, which provides an opportunity for food producers and consumers to connect directly. The market “provides a venue for local farmers and gardeners to sell or exchange their fresh, seasonal produce directly with the Hopi community,” and in a feature unusual to most farmers’ markets, but in line with a traditional Hopi economy, encourages “community members to bring fresh produce, vegetables, crafts, home prepared foods, and crafts to trade/barter/exchange with farmers’ market vendors.”106 Native chefs and restaurant owners have also become involved in promoting Native food producers. Sean Sherman (Lakota), the chef behind The Sioux Chef enterprise, described his efforts to “really try to use as many Native producers as possible—so keeping a lot of these food dollars 29  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover within the Native communities will be a thing in making these food systems sustainable for everyone—the famers, the wild rice harvesters, the people foraging and just gathering stuff that can be sold, or people raising animals.”107 Similarly, in a conversation in his Denver-based restaurant Tocabe, chef Ben Jacobs (Osage) described his buying practices as “Native first,” purchasing first from indigenous food producers even if they are outside of Colorado, and purchasing second from local non-Native food producers.108 Because the majority of the participants I spoke with worked for nonprofit organizations centered on food, they described the struggle to make their projects more economically self- sufficient. Dianne Wilson’s goal is to make the Dream of Wild Health “farm ultimately become economically independent” through their farmers’ market and other programs, rather than relying solely on grants and gifts.109 Romajean Thomas similarly reflected on the struggle to find the necessary funds to keep their community-based programs running. “It’s a sustainability question. How do we keep funds coming in?”110 Many other projects expressed similar concerns about how to keep the necessary staff to run these projects promoting food sovereignty, without negatively impacting the livelihoods of those staff. For example, at the time of their interview two project co- directors had not been paid in several months, but continued coming to work—sacrificing their own personal economic well being in order to keep their organization afloat.111 But in addition to conventional monetary exchanges--and beyond the notion that projects and communities should be economically independent and supply all of their own food to be considered “truly food sovereign”--participants also highlighted the important role of trade, historically and in the present. For example, in their research with indigenous communities in what is now called British Columbia, Turner and Loewen describe how archaeologists have documented extensive trade networks that specifically brought plant products to the Pacific Northwest, in order to obtain plants 30  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover which are not available or difficult to access locally and also to access products that require specialized skills. They argue that few if any environments provide all of the resources a group needs at any given time, and so trade has long been used to counter instabilities in resource supply, and to provide variety. With this in mind, they note that rather than building a strictly localized food system as an alternative to the global industrial system (the language of the local food movement), indigenous communities are in many ways seeking to protect traditional food practices and networks.112 Similarly, Scott Shoemaker stated that he prefers the term “interdependence” to “independence,” arguing that tribal communities have always relied on trade and reciprocity.113 Josh Sargent (Mohawk) with the group Kanenhi:io worked to unpack what his fellow group members mean by “food sovereignty” and “what we mean when we say ‘independence,’” positing that “I know we’re not going to go 100% because honestly no one ever has. Trade has always been a trait that humans do, they don’t live in bubbles.” He describes the need for people to “at least make your own basic needs, you have to be able to do that,” to be considered sovereign, but beyond that he sees trade as having always been important.114 This sentiment was also embodied in a call to reconnect or reestablish trade routes between Native communities as a form of economic and cultural support and revitalization. Seed keeper Rowen White (Mohawk) directs the Sierra Seeds cooperative and currently serves as the chair of the board for Seed Savers Exchange. She believes that seed keeping and seed exchanges are part of planning for the future: “I think also in times of global climate change, we will be reestablishing trade routes, we will be connecting with other tribes and other people because I think that was always happening in the first place, corn went from this tribe to this other tribe and we mixed it with ours and made something new.”115 Similarly, Pati Martinson (Lakota), in describing what constituents are asking for from the still-developing Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA), mentioned that “people have said they’re really 31  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover interested in bringing back those trade routes. And part of that could be a big economic development, community development, piece as well.”116 Dan Cornelius (Oneida) and the Intertribal Agriculture Council worked to enact this, beginning the Mobile Farmers Market “Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip” in 2014 that collected, purchased and exchanged food stuffs from tribal communities across the United States.117 The market continues, with a brick-and-mortar store recently opened in Madison, Wisconsin, stocked with food products and other nonfood items that are traded for food from across Indian country. [H2] Access Many of the food sovereignty definitions centered around terms of access—to food, land, and knowledge. Darlene Fairbanks from the Little Earth housing project in Minneapolis defined it simply as “Just having access to healthy food,” a description that was echoed by several others.118 Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), director of the Cultural Conservancy, framed her definition of food sovereignty around terms of access at the individual, community, and political levels. On an individual level, she notes, “we don’t always have control over what we have access to,” limited by factors like affordability and availability of foods, “but what we put in our mouths we really do.”119 Jeff Metoxen from Tsyunhehkwa similarly pointed out that their project can grow and package white corn and other traditional foods, but it is up to individuals “whether you decide to access it.”120 Nelson then went on to describe, “on a community level, it’s a community’s ability to determine the foods that they have access to, and that they can utilize for the health and well-being of the whole, so it’s really about access and sharing.” And then on a political level, “Indian nations really have a legal obligation to their citizenship about what foods they grown and make accessible for their larger nations.”121 32  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Barriers to accessing healthy, culturally appropriate food include the cost of these foods for those who have to purchase them, and access to land for those trying to grow their own. As Lannesse Baker at the Mashkiikii Gitigan garden in Minneapolis reports, “people talk within the urban community about a lot of challenges related to access to healthy food, whether there are barriers to access because of affordability issues or challenges with transportation.”122 Similarly, Keith Glidewell (Paiute) of the Bishop Paiute Tribe defines the challenges to food sovereignty, even with “access to food funds.” as “having food availability. Is there food within the reservation that can be accessed?... Can you afford to buy it?” Especially in a resort town like Bishop, California, “they gouge us for everything here. So that’s my main thing, is it available, is it affordable?”123 Similarly, Amos Hinton of the Ponca tribe in Oklahoma described, “Our average household income is $7,000 a year. You can tell them all day long to eat healthy, but they can’t afford it.”124 Access to land was cited as another challenge in achieving food sovereignty, whether for farmland, or land for hunting and harvesting wild foods— something for example, that the Muckleshoot tribe is looking to address through the recent purchase of 96,000 acres of land from a timber company.125 Stephanie Berryhill describes how some Mvskoke Creek tribal members moved to urban areas “because of access to jobs,” but their families lost land in the process. Berryhill cites lack of “access to land” as a major factor in limiting the nation’s ability to be food sovereign. To address this “means that we promote policy, and ultimately tribal laws that will enable citizens to have access to land to grow food.”126 Otherwise, as Lori Watso from the Shakopee Mdewaketon Sioux describes, “if there comes a time where we don’t have access to clean food, or any food, what difference does everything else that you’ve built—it doesn’t matter … if we’re able to develop or reach a point of food sovereignty, we’ll be ok.”127 Access to land was seen as imperative in many cases to accessing sufficient culturally relevant food. 33  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover [H2] Decisions and Choices Having the freedom to make decisions about food and the ability to make good choices were both cited as an integral part of what it meant to have food sovereignty. Julie Garreau outlined food sovereignty as “being able to decide what we eat, grow what we want.”128 Similarly, Zach Paige, who works with the White Earth Land Recovery Project, described food sovereignty as a “form of freedom because you are able to grow what you like to grow and eat what you like to eat.”129 But once that level of choice has been made available, others highlighted the need they felt to help people to want to choose healthy options. Stephanie Berryhill described her line of work with the MFSI as “on the most basic level, advocating for people to choose healthier foods to eat.”130 Similarly, Segrest named food sovereignty to be a tool she used in her role as a nutritionist and a “great way of helping people to understand that food choices are their responsibility and it’s their inherent right to choose what they want to eat … food sovereignty is a method of making food choices … it’s about helping people, empowering people to make that choice for themselves.”131 At the same time as some interviewees described food sovereignty as providing choices, Don Charnon (Oneida) at Tsyunhehkwa described food sovereignty as being supported by the choices people make: If you really want to exercise food sovereignty, you need to make decisions toward it. You need to make decisions toward it, and by making those decisions you support those entities that grow or make or produce the kind of food that you believe and want in your system, for your family, for your community. So unless you choose to invest in those food places where you consider worthy or acceptable or good places to get food, then they’ll disappear.132 34  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover The ability to choose to eat healthy foods needs to be made available to community members, and then they in turn need to take it upon themselves to make those choices to continue to support these types of initiatives. [H2] Control Part of the issue around independence and access centered on notions of control—by individuals over what enters their bodies, by tribes over their own food destiny, and the political power associated with controlling a food system. Several participants recognized the power behind who or what controls your food source, both currently and historically. As Amos Hinton described in recounting his tribe’s history of relocations and rations, “If you think about your tribe’s history you have been controlled for a very long time by food…. If you don’t raise your own food someone else is controlling your destiny.”133 Diane Wilson (Dakota) integrates this message into the curriculum of the Dream of Wild Health program; “Part of this cultural recovery process is the idea that you have control over your own food. One of the things we talk about here is if you want to control people, control their food.”134 Similarly, Christina Elias, who runs the Mashkiikii Gitigan garden in Minneapolis, leads discussions in the garden about “controlling people through controlling their food source … when you’re that far away from your food source you’re being completely controlled. You have no independence and no power in your life.” She calls attempts at regulating seed libraries “desperate attempts at controlling us.”135 For Milo Yellowhair (Lakota), it was the realization that “food can be, and is, used as a weapon,” that led him to get involved in the Slim Buttes Agricultural Project, in an effort to create an independent food source for his community.136 Indigenous food projects are seeking to shift the locus of control over food towards individuals as well as tribal communities. This shifting of control was reflected in participants’ 35  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover definitions of food sovereignty. On an individual level, for example, Melissa Nelson described the need for individuals to take responsibility for the control they do have over what goes into their bodies: “It’s one of the few things as human beings that we actually have absolute control over. We don’t always have control over what we have access to, but what we put in our mouths we really do. So to me, food sovereignty at the individual level is how we treat our bodies and our landscapes and what we put in our bodies, controlling the foods and waters and beverages that we intake.”137 The sentiments expressed above around being able to “feed oneself” also speaks to the desire for individual control over food sources. On a tribal level, participants described food sovereignty as only becoming possible if the tribe as both a government and a community takes control of their food system. Lilian Hill (Hopi) from the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture project, declares “what food sovereignty means is for a tribal community to have more local ownership or local control over the food system.”138 Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskins defined food sovereignty as the tribe taking back control from the corporate agricultural system: “controlling our own food destiny. It doesn’t have to be charted by Monsanto, it doesn’t have to be charted by big agriculture. It can be charted by the same folks that did it generations ago and that’s the Cherokee people.”139 Similarly, Julie Garreau asserted, “Native people have to say ‘We’re going to control this.’ Tribal governments need to create policies and legislation that encourages this sort of thing.”140 Part of taking back control of a tribal community’s food system is having jurisdiction over the habitat that supports those food systems. Bob Shimek explained, “food sovereignty to me is first of all control where your food comes from. Its control of the type of food that’s grown and produced there or grows naturally there. It’s control of that habitat that’s on that particular piece of land.”141 36  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Grace Ann Byrd and Romajean Thomas both described successes of their respective tribes in getting back land under tribal jurisdiction, which gave them potential to bolster tribal food sovereignty.142 In addition to “controlling” land through political jurisdiction, the topic of protecting and sustaining land was seen as integral to food sovereignty. Michael Dahl (Ojibway) from White Earth described how the fight against pipelines that he had been participating in with Honor the Earth was not just about resisting the pipelines themselves, but a fight to maintain a healthy way of living. “Right now our rice and our sugar bushes and our berries, our gathering rights, are the main thing that we still have to our self-sustainability and our healthy living. So we need to protect that with our lives.”143 Mike Wiggins (Ojibway), who was chairman of the Bad River Tribe at the time of the interview, described food sovereignty as being “rooted in sustainability and the caring for Mother Earth.” Part of this for him was not only supporting sustainable gardening projects for the tribe, but also fighting to protect wild rice beds from a proposed taconite mine.144 Pati Martinson described that the goal of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA) is to help tribes protect everything related to traditional foods and that people felt that part of NAFSA’s mission should address “that food needs protection … that is part of sovereignty, a real protection for the seeds, a protection for the land, a protection for the foods, that’s a common goal that should be able to impact those policies.”145 Caitlin Krenn, who directs the Nisqually Community Garden project, described food sovereignty as not just catching and eating traditional foods like fish, “but it means actually trying to sustain the rivers again, the sound, the ocean,” the environment that supports those fish. This philosophy extended to farmland as well.146 Gayley Morgan (Tesuque Pueblo) at the Tesuque Pueblo farm defined food sovereignty in part as “just making sure your lands are worked on and taken care of. And also the water. And it goes hand-in-hand with the environment too, just the surroundings 37  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover with the environment, the birds and the bugs and the bees, everything plays a part in it. Just as long as we have a nice, healthy environment here, is also a piece of sustainable farms.”147 The importance of sustainable farming and maintaining healthy soil came up in a number of conversations about how to achieve food sovereignty. [H2] Seeds Working to restore heritage seed varieties to indigenous garden projects is seen as a primary goal of many of the projects I visited. Woodrow White (Ho-Chunk) described how “We are trying to restore and recover our indigenous seeds now. Everybody’s in a scurry. Well, how much do we have left? Who has them? Let’s get them. Do they still have germinating power? If not, we can share. I mean your tribe lives 100 miles away but hey, it grows good so we will share what we have left. We need to bring these seeds back. It’s saving the seed.”148 For Amos Hinton, part of establishing a food sovereignty project for the Ponca tribe was not just planting food, but reclaiming traditional corn varieties, gathering these varieties from seed keepers in other states and “bringing them home.”149 The foundation of gardening is seeds, and as such for many communities having adequate access to their traditional seed varieties is seen as imperative for food sovereignty. Gardeners felt a connection and obligation to these seeds and the elders and ancestors to whom these seeds connected them. Roberto Nutlouis described that “our work is not because of federal policies or tribal policies, it’s because of our deeper connections to our lands, to the seeds that we have, that our elders passed on to us, that those have to continue.”150 The concerns about “control” over aspects of the food system expressed above also extended to seed sources and a community’s ability to protect heritage seeds from multinational corporations as well as ensure a constant supply of seed for gardens. Regaining “control of our food system” was 38  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover seen to begin with control over seed sources. Stephanie Berryhill describes how her Mvskoke Creek community has “definitely lost control of traditional plants,” like the corn to make sofkey, which is now only provided to the community by a non-Native company. She spoke about the importance of “regaining control of our food system, and specifically seed sources,” so they are not reliant on the vagaries of the market for one of their traditional foods.151 Similarly, Angelo McHorse (Taos Pueblo) described that if you can keep your seed from one year to the next “well then, you have a sovereign source. Food sovereignty, you control it.”152 Sociologist Jack Kloppenburg has declared, “If there is to be food sovereignty, surely it will be facilitated and enabled by a struggle for seed sovereignty,”153 a term that arose during several of the interviews I conducted. Indigenous control over seeds comprised an integral part of the definition of seed sovereignty provided by two of the seed keepers I interviewed. Rowen White (Mohawk) directs the Sierra Seeds cooperative, currently serves as the chair of the board for Seed Savers Exchange, and is heading up an initiative to further develop indigenous seed keeping networks among Haudenosaunee communities, as well as across the Upper Midwest. Seeds are her life. As we sat in the shade by one of her fields in July of 2014, I asked her to define “seed sovereignty,” a word that she used frequently to describe the foundation of her own work, as well as the foundation of food sovereignty more generally. She replied, Seed sovereignty is to me when you have an understanding of your inherent right to save seed and pass it on to future generations, and that you are exercising it at that same time. It also means that you as a person or as a community are self-informed and dictate your relationship to seed; that says that these are seeds that really do not belong to anyone. They belong to us as a community in the commons but that we can define our relationship to that seed based upon our own values and not the values of anyone else 39  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover outside of our community.... seed sovereignty, at the heart, is really just taking back the action of saving seed and keeping it again year after year, generation after generation, so that we can have the security of knowing that we have seeds that will feed our children and our grandchildren. That we have the means by which to feed our people instead of relying on external sources.... we can take care of ourselves, that we can sort of get back to the way it was before colonization, that we can have some sort of control or say of what foods we are able to put on our table and what foods are available for people to have access to in our communities.154 How to protect what they saw as both living relatives and community intellectual property from tampering with or patenting by multinational corporations was a major concern expressed by participants working with heritage seeds. Like Rowen White, Clayton Brascoupe (Mohawk) has not only been working with heritage seeds, but also promotes ideas of seed sovereignty across Indian country. Brascoupe relocated to his wife’s community of Tesuque Pueblo four decades ago and has coordinated the Traditional Native American Farmers Association for over twenty years. As we sat at his kitchen table, surrounded by ears of corn and piles of beans from his gardens, I also asked him to define what seed sovereignty meant to him. His definition also centered on relationships with seed, as well as control over seed: [W]e refer to these as our living relatives. So, we have to have control and ability to protect our living relatives. That’s what seed sovereignty means to me. So they can’t be molested, contaminated, or imprisoned. When I say imprisoned, I mean perhaps someone will say “this is some interesting stuff,” and they grow it up for a few years and all of the sudden they say they own it. That-- the protection of our living relative, if not, then somebody else may say they own it. They’re imprisoned and you can’t go visit 40  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover and plant your relative. Also, if you have the ability to interact with your relatives through these seeds, you also have the ability to feed yourself well.155 The need to protect seeds from multinational corporations was framed in two ways: as cultural intellectual property that belonged to the entire community and all of the ancestors whose gardens had contributed to the current seed stock; and as living relatives who needed to be treated as such and protected. As Kloppenburg notes, the very nature of property is called into question when indigenous people reject the very notion of “owning” seeds, which they may see as “antagonistic towards social relations founded on cooperative, collective, multigenerational forms of knowledge production.”156 Reflecting on her interviews with both the staff of ex situ seed banks and participants in situ indigenous seed-saving projects, Sheryl D. Breen describes the difference between the perception of seeds as discrete material objects—“active storage containers of genetic material,” as opposed to viewing “seeds as responsive beings that are inherently embedded within ecological and spiritual webs of kinship,” which highlights an important epistemological difference between the two parties in negotiating the political problems of seeds as property.157 As seen above in Clayton’s definition, seeds are thought of as “living relatives” rather than property, relatives that shouldn’t be “molested, contaminated or imprisoned.” Seeds are described almost as intergenerational relatives— both as children that need nurturing and protecting, and as grandparents who contain cultural wisdom that needs guarding. Even though genetic modification and patenting were opposed for slightly different reasons, they are traced to the same common enemy—multinational agriculture corporations—and Monsanto specifically. Lilian Hill (Hopi) insisted that tribal governments need to “take up these issues of food sovereignty” and work to “protect our crops against genetically modified organism or other corporations that want to come in and patent our food crops and heirloom types of corn and things 41  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover like that.”158 Rowen White described how when she does seed workshops in Native communities “it is the one thing that people want to talk about, ‘well, how are you going to protect our seeds from Monsanto,’ or ‘how are we going to protect our seeds from patenting?’ There’s no clear answer.”159 In short, protecting seeds from modification and patenting, and ensuring access to them for community members interested in farming were seen as integral to seed sovereignty, and thus food sovereignty. [H2] Education and Youth Although the role of education in these programs—both in promoting the movement and in improving health-related statistics—is important, education has not been extensively highlighted in the broader food sovereignty literature. In reflecting on the work of the Cheyenne River Youth Project, Julie Garreau focused on the need to educate the youth as a solution for health issues: “we just need to change our diet. We just do. And we need to teach our kids now.” She went on to detail how part of that will entail teaching people how to garden and preserve food.160 People in this movement are hungry for education and knowledge as well as the food being produced. As Valerie Segrest described to an audience at the Native American Culinary Association conference in the fall of 2013, “what this food sovereignty movement is hungry for is to remember the plants, our foods, the teachings. To share those memories with people, to be active in our food systems, to get your hands in the dirt. Get your head out of a book and focus on the lessons and blessings you’re receiving.”161 At a subsequent Food Sovereignty Summit hosted by the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Segrest reiterated, “Food is our greatest teacher, without a spoken word.” She highlighted that “loss of land, loss of rights, environmental toxins and cultural repression impede our 42  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover ability to access millions of fishing teachings,” as well as those from cedar trees and other natural elements.162 Education is seen as not just a goal, but also a responsibility. Roberto Nutlouis, who directs a farm project through the Blackwater Mesa Coalition, explains that “we have the responsibility to share that information with the community, and that’s part of our community outreach.”163 Jeff Metoxen from Tsyunhehkwa described how the purpose of food sovereignty is “to share that information with your community It’s to ensure that the generations to come know this and are learning it … I feel I’ve never stopped learning. I don’t know everything there is to do with the white corn; I don’t know everything there is to do for the white corn, but we’re learning. And we’re trying to make sure we share that knowledge with our community members, especially with the youth, and hopefully you can instill in them some pursuit of the knowledge.”164 Kenny Perkins (Mohawk) noted that the apprentices that he’s teaching through the cultural restoration program are now able to go on to teach others. This is how food sovereignty and cultural restoration will be linked for the community, “the apprentices that we have now are able to go out and teach in the [Mohawk] language especially. They can go to the immersion school, the Freedom School, and teach everything there is to know about horticulture traditionally, culturally, and the new techniques and the modern ways of gardening, and be able to do it all in the [Mohawk] language.”165 Several of the projects recognized that the purpose of, and main contribution of, their project to the community was not necessarily in the ability to feed everyone, but through their ability to educate people about how to eat well and grow their own food. For example, on a tour of the Nisqually Community Garden project, Grace Ann Byrd (Nisqually) described the farm’s mission as “providing education, providing food, as well as nutrition.”166 Similarly, Don Charnon (Oneida) described one of the purposes of Tsyunhehkwa is “to be an example or a resource for people who 43  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover want to grow things.”167 Cassius Spears Sr, (Narragansett) who is working with his family to establish a community farm for the Narragansett Tribe, lamented that “a lot of the youth don’t even realize where the food comes from anymore, and the elders are getting separated from working in the soil.” His goal is to bring these two groups together so that the elders can “start to teach and work with the youth again and bring out some of them old ways and old reasons.”168 As demonstrated above, the youth are the target audience of many of these food sovereignty projects. People often spoke of “the future generations” that would need to benefit from healthy eating and saved seeds, as well as the youth they were working with who were natural audiences for this information, and who were going to be responsible for carrying it forward to those future generations. After hosting a boisterous group of about a dozen students from the tribal summer program, who had grazed their way through the bean patch and the apple trees, as well as through the wild grapes covering the fence row, Woodrow White (Ho-Chunk) from the Whirling Thunder farm project noted that kids seem naturally inclined to want to eat well and work outside. “They naturally would like to do it anyway, they just need the place and the teachers and they will take off.”169 Similarly, Romajean Thomas highlighted the natural inclination of youth to want to be involved, and the importance of including them in food gathering programs. “The youth just pick it up naturally, they’re ready to get out there, they’re not afraid of hard work. And they’re not afraid to eat right out of the environment!... So any way that we can continue to involve the youth and have them teaching the younger generations and get it back in the classroom.”170 Education is an important part of the sustainability of these projects. Amos Hinton, former director of the agricultural program for the Ponca Tribe, described to the Food Sovereignty Summit at Oneida in 2013, “If we don’t educate our children we’re not going to have anything. They’ll be no 44  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover one to carry it on.” With this in mind, many of these indigenous food sovereignty projects have targeted youth as the focus of their work. [H2] Food Sovereignty as a Movement As well as being seen as a goal for projects and communities— to become food sovereign— several participants described food sovereignty as a broader movement, one that was both far reaching and gaining traction in their own communities. Melissa Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) described the “movement-building” aspect of food sovereignty, which has “many dimensions from the very person to the expansive political legislation.”171 On a local level, participants described a gradual readiness for this movement in their communities. In reflecting on how work around different aspects of food and health have coalesced for him recently, Ken Parker (Seneca) asserted, “I think people are ready for this now. It seems like it’s always been there, but now it’s a bigger movement.”172 Roberto Nutlouis described his observation that “the Native food movement is penetrating into the communities. People are more aware about it now.” He went on to describe campaigns that the Black Mesa Water Coalition had sponsored around GMOs and traditional foods, and the way their organization focused on “continued community outreach. And just pushed the knowledge out there into the communities.”173 In contrast to “the food movement” which Segrest labeled as being “a little bit elitist,” she described that for her own community and others she had worked with, “what this food sovereignty movement is hungry for is to remember the plants, our foods, the teachings.”174 Seed keeper Rowen White described her experiences “working in the last over-a-decade in the food sovereignty movement within Indian country,” including with the “seed sovereignty movement” that “rose within our communities.” This type of work was also encapsulated in Zach 45  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Paige’s description of indigenous seed alliances and a “network of growers” that is currently coming together to share seed and information, and to support each other. People who promote these projects also find community in the movement, in coming together for food sovereignty conferences and events. Julie Garreau proclaimed excitedly, “The movement is growing.” She described the interconnected tribal projects, the likeminded people who meet up at food sovereignty summits “the movement nationally…it’s a small community but it’s all over the nation.” In addition to supporting the groundswell in their own communities, many of these participants recognized themselves as a broader indigenous movement. [H2] Food Sovereignty as a Process and a Method In addition to comprising a movement, many of the participants I spoke with described food sovereignty as a goal with an extensive timeline, a process or a method, rather than a solidly defined destination that they could arrive at. Chuck Hoskins, in reflecting on food issues for the Cherokee Nation proclaimed, “Look, we didn’t get here in a generation. It took many. We didn’t get her overnight, so it won’t be fixed overnight.” Similarly, several other projects described food sovereignty as a goal. Alan Bacock from the Big Pine Paiute Tribe in California described food sovereignty as “a goal worth striving for. It’s a vision that I would like to see develop, but it’s not going to happen overnight, it’s not going to happen in a year, in two years. It’s going to take a long time to develop.” Jeff Metoxen detailed how at Tsyunhehkwa the process of working towards food sovereignty is a never-ending learning process focused on indigenous language, practices, and culture, in addition to basic knowledge about growing plants. “With food sovereignty pursuits, you’re learning more about your own culture … It’s to share that information with your community. It’s to ensure that the 46  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover generations to come know this and are learning it as well. That’s a big part. I look at that never- ending process you are going through. I feel I’ve never stopped learning … we’re pursuing our food security. We’re always pursuing our food sovereignty.”175 On the other hand, rather than describing it as a goal or a process, Valerie Segrest reasoned to an audience at the 2013 Native American Culinary Association conference that “food sovereignty is a method, getting to a place of decolonizing our diets, revitalizing our traditional food culture.”176 In her 2014 interview she further pondered, “what does food sovereignty look like? I don’t think it looks like anything. I think it’s just a way of living and making food choices.” She describes food sovereignty as another tool, another lens through which she can work as an educator, nutritionist, and community member.177 [H1] Limits and Conclusion This article has discussed perceptions of indigenous food sovereignty as described by participants in community-based farming and gardening projects that serve Native American communities. Two limitations of this particular sample for application to the broader indigenous food sovereignty movement should be noted. The first is that although some of this study’s participants also engage in other types of food-procurement activities (i.e., foraging, hunting, and fishing), this project is specifically focused on farming and gardening projects. The indigenous food sovereignty movement is also very focused on ensuring access to treaty-guaranteed fishing, gathering, and hunting sites, as well as the protection and utilization of traditional knowledge related to these activities, and in some places has been critical of a version of food sovereignty they view as agriculture-centric.178 This is due in part to the fact that while horticulture is seen as a traditional activity for some tribal communities--such as the Mohawk, Seneca, Navajo, Ponca, and Pueblo communities featured here-- 47  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover for other tribal nations, agriculture was an activity introduced as part of colonial oppression, deliberately intended to remove Native nations even farther from their traditional food procurement activities.179 And for some of these communities who include horticulture as a means to their traditional foods, culturally-specific horticulture was forcibly replaced by federal government programs aimed towards encouraging a more Western form of irrigated, mono-cropped agriculture.180 That said, in an effort in some communities to celebrate their horticultural heritage, and in others to most efficiently use available tribal land, farming and gardening are tools that have been employed to work towards food sovereignty. A second limitation of this project is that the participants included worked only in community-based projects, most of which have official nonprofit status or operate as such. I did not meet with individual farmers and ranchers who are producing food for an individual profit. Dan Cornelius (Oneida) of the Intertribal Agriculture Council works to connect Native farmers and ranchers with USDA government programs in an effort to bolster overall food production for tribal communities. He asserts, The individual producer is so overlooked in the current food sovereignty movement. These [community] programs are critical to helping provide support but we need to get more individuals and families back into production. Look at the number of producers (nearly 72,000) and sales ($3.2 billion) and casino food service—about $4.5 billion. Sure, a $40,000 grant can help run a community garden for a year and can make an impact in how communities think about food, but true rebuilding of our food systems requires thinking about supporting individual and family production on landscape levels.181 A more comprehensive examination of food sovereignty among Native American farmers will need to include the voices of individual for-profit farmers as well. 48  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover [H1] Defining Sovereignty: It’s a Process. That Requires Food. Anishnaabe legal scholar Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark has asserted that because sovereignty is “intangible” and an inherent “dynamic cultural force,” it is crucial that indigenous peoples define for themselves a vision of their own nationhood and sovereignty, as well as the practical implications that come with this term. By looking to their own epistemologies and practices, Native peoples can put forward definitions of sovereignty that are distinct from United States legal and political definitions of Native nations status that have operated to diminish Native sovereignty and self-government.182 She describes sovereignty as “deeply intertwined with a nation’s sense of self,” and constantly undergoing transformation to meet the needs of the people of these nations. Rather than limiting sovereignty to “its restrictive legal-political context,” she calls on us to see sovereignty “as a process, or a journey.” Citing Vine Deloria Jr’s proclaimation that “Sovereignty is a useful word to describe the process of growth and awareness that characterizes a group of people working toward and achieving maturity,”183 she concludes that it is through this connection to identity and self that “sovereignty becomes a process rather than a stagnant notion.”184 Cobb similarly describes the importance of thinking about sovereignty as a process rather than a final achievement: “By casting sovereignty not only in terms of process, but more particularly in narrative terms, sovereignty becomes the ongoing story of ourselves—our own continuance. Sovereignty is both the story or journey itself and what we journey towards, which is our own flourishing as self-determining peoples.”185 As described above, many study participants recognized food sovereignty not only as a movement, but also as a process, a method, and a goal. But for many of them, working towards food 49  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover sovereignty was an important part of becoming truly sovereign nations in a broader sense as well. For example, despite Winona LaDuke’s criticisms of the term discussed earlier in this article, at almost every food-related event I have heard her speak at she has reiterated that “you can’t say you’re sovereign if you can’t feed yourself.” Several of the participants repeated this aphorism to me and some elaborated upon it as a stipulation. Food sovereignty was seen either as a marker of achieved tribal sovereignty (as Jeremy McClain from the Bad River Gitiganag project described, “an ability to feed yourself is a marker of true sovereignty”),186 or as a necessary prerequisite towards which tribes should work before they can claim being sovereign. As Alan Bacock (Paiute) explained, “I would say that you can’t be sovereign if you can’t feed yourself …When we begin to use it (traditional food knowledge) again, we begin to then develop sovereignty once more. Because I don’t believe that you can have that sense of sovereignty without that food connection.”187 And as Clayton Harvey (Apache) from the White Mountain Apache Ndée Bikíyaa project described, food production is central to the identity of Native nations; “I think about sovereignty and I think about being Native American, and being who you are, and that’s growing your own food.”188 Rowen White concludes, “when we are able to control our food sources and really able to dictate our seed and our food, we have a greater sense of sovereignty as a whole.”189 When asked to define or describe the concept of food sovereignty, participants from Native American community and farming projects across the United States highlighted a number of features included by the broader food sovereignty movement: the importance of access to healthy culturally relevant food, land, and information; independence for individuals to make choices on their own consumption and for communities to define their own food systems; and desire to keep food dollars within the community. Some aspects of participants’ definitions grew specifically out of their own history with the land and the colonial entities that had impacted their communities. Participants 50  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover described the importance of tribes having the independence and control to provide the foods they see appropriate, grown in a manner that is deemed acceptable for their constituents. Relationships to the environment, food sources, and other people were highlighted, including trade relationships. The ability to sustain the land, as well as cultural lifestyles, was emphasized, and the ability to protect seeds as the living relatives necessary for the continuation of the food sovereignty movement. The importance of education, and working with Native youth was also mentioned as a specific antidote to addressing culture loss and the ensuing health problems that have made indigenous communities the subject of so many public health studies. As Whyte has pointed out, “concepts of food sovereignty can come across as so many impossible ideals of community food self-sufficiency and cultural autonomy.”190 Importantly, however, this study’s participants viewed food sovereignty not as an absolute that can be achieved or lost, but rather a movement that is carrying these projects towards their goals; a process that participants expect to be undertaking for a great deal of time; and a framework through which they are working towards improved physical, cultural, and economic health. Acknowledgments This project was sponsored by a Salomon Grant from Brown University. I was accompanied during a majority of this trip by filmmaker Angelo Baca (Navajo/Hopi), who is in the process of creating a documentary about the indigenous food movement from footage collected on this trip. I want to especially acknowledge Jeff Metoxen (Oneida), and Stephanie Berryhill (Mvskoke Creek) who are no longer with us, but whose words have been important to this project. Notes 51  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 1 For more information about Tsyunhehkwa, visit https://gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com/2015/01/19/tsyunhehkw-oneida-nation-wisconsin/ or their Facebook website, https://www.facebook.com/tsyunhehkwa/. 2 This origin story of the term food sovereignty is cited in many places, including La Via Campesina’s website; see https://viacampesina.org/en/food-sovereignty/. 3 “Declaration of Nyeleni,” February 2, 2007, Selingue, Mali, http://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290. 4 Ibid. 5 Bina Agarwal, “Food Sovereignty, Food Security and Democratic Choice: Critical Contradictions, Difficult Conciliations,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41, no. 6 (2014): 1247–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876996. 6 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 2001, cited in Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiehe, “The Origins and Potential of Food Sovereignty,” in Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, ed. Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiehe (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2010), 1–14. 7 Michael Menser, “The Territory of Self-Determination: Social Reproduction, Agroecology, and the Role of the State,” in Globalization and Food Sovereignty: Global and Local Change in New Politics of Food, ed. Jeffrey McKelvey Ayres, Peter Andree, Michael J Bosia, and Marie-Josee Massicotte (University of Toronto Press, 2014), 53–83; Wittman, et al., “The Origins and Potential.” 8 Tabitha Martens, Jaime Cidro, Michale Anthony Hart, and Stephane McLachlan, “Understanding Indigenous Food Sovereignty through an Indigenous Research Paradigm,” Journal of Indigenous Social Development 5, no. 1 (2016): 18–37. 9 Menser, “The Territory of Self-Determination,” 59. 10 Priscilla Claeys, “Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina’s Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years,” Globalizations 12, no. 4 (2015): 452–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2014.957929. 11 Wittman, et al., “The Origins and Potential.” 12 Menser, “The Territory of Self-Determination,” 53. 13 Ibid. 14 Madeleine Fairbairn, “Framing Resistance; International Food Regimes and the Roots of Food Sovereignty,” in Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, 15–32, 31. 52  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 15 Philip McMichael, “Food Sovereignty in Movement: Addressing the Triple Crisis,” in Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, 168–85. 16 Raj Patel, “What Does Food Sovereignty Look Like?” in Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, 186–95; Meleiza Figueroa, “Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life: Toward a People-centered Approach to Food Systems,” Globalizations 12, no. 4 (2015): 498– 512. 17 Annette Aurélie Desmarais and Hannah Wittman, “Farmers, Foodies and First Nations: Getting to Food Sovereignty in Canada,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41, no. 6 (2014): 1153– 73, 1155, https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876623. 18 See Wittman, et al., “The Origins and Potential”; Figueroa, “Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life”; Fairbairn, “Framing Resistance.” 19 Asfia Gulrukh Kamal, Rene Linklater, Shirley Thompson, Joseph Dipple, and Ithinto Mechisowin Committee, “A Recipe for Change: Reclamation of Indigenous Food Sovereignty in O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation for Decolonization, Resource Sharing, and Cultural Restoration,” Globalizations 12, no. 4 (2015): 559–75, 564. 20 Claeys, “Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights,” 453. 21 Kamal, et al., “A Recipe for Change,” 22 Jeff Corntassel, “Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse,” Alternatives 33 (2008): 105–32. 23 Judith Ehlert and Christiane Voßemer, “Food Sovereignty and Conceptualization of Agency: A Methodological Discussion,” Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies 8, no. 1 (2015): 7–26, 9. 24 Ibid. Amy Trauger, “Putting Food Sovereignty in Place,” in Food Sovereignty in International 25 Context: Discourse, Politics and Practice of Place, ed. Amy Trauger (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 1–12, 5. 26 Sam Grey and Raj Patel, “Food Sovereignty as Decolonization: Some Contributions from Indigenous Movements to Food System and Development Politics,” Agriculture and Human Values 32, no. 3 (2015): 431–44, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9548-9. 27 Ibid., 434. 28 See Figueroa, “Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life,” 53  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 29 The Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831). 30 Kyle Powys White, “Food Sovereignty, Justice and Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance,” in Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, ed. Anne Barnhill, Tyler Doggett, and Mark Budolfson (Oxford University Press, 2018), 345-36, 346. 31 Ibid., 348. 32 For example, see the description of Sullivan’s campaign against the Haudenosaunee in Jane Mt. Pleasant, “The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture,” Agricultural History 85, no. 4 (2011): 460–92; and in the nineteenth century, see the stories collected and recorded by the Diné of the Eastern Region of the Navajo Reservation, Title VII bilingual staff, Oral Histories of the Long Walk = Hwéeldi Baa Hané (Crown Point, NM: Lake Valley Navajo School, 1990). 33 Nicholas James Reo and Angela K. Parker, “Re-thinking Colonialism to Prepare for the Impacts of Rapid Environmental Change,” Climatic Change 120 (2013): 671–82. 34 Karla Rae Rudolph and Stephane M. McLachlan, “Seeking Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Origins of and Responses to the Food Crisis in Northern Manitoba Canada,” Local Environment 18, no. 9 (2013): 1079–98, 1082. 35 Charlotte Coté, “‘Indigenizing’ Food Sovereignty: Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States,” Humanities 5, no. 3 (2016): 57, https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030057. 36 Jennifer Bess, “More Than a Food Fight: Intellectual Traditions and Cultural Continuity in Cholocco’s Indian School Journal 1902–1918,” The American Indian Quarterly 37, nos. 1–2 (2013): 77–110. 37 Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan, “Addressing Food Security and Food Sovereignty in Native American Communities,” in Health and Social Issues of Native American Women, ed. Jennie Joe and Francine Gachupin (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012), 113–32. Richard White and William Cronon, “Ecological Change and Indian-White Relations,” in 38 Handbook of the North American Indian, Vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1988), 417–29. 39 Elizabeth Hoover, “Cultural and Health Implications of Fish Advisories in a Native American Community,” Ecological Processes 2, no. 4 (2013): np, https://doi.org/10.1186/2192-1709-2-4; Laurence M Hauptman. In the Shadow of Kinzua; the Seneca Nation of Indians Since WWII. (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013). 40 Kari Marie Norgaard, Ron Reed, and Carolina Van Horn, “A Continuing Legacy: Institutional Racism, Hunger, and Nutritional Justice on the Klamath,” in Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, 54  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover and Sustainability, ed. Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2011), 23–46. 41 Elizabeth Hoover, The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 42 Jamie L. Donatuto, Terre A. Satterfield, and Robin Gregory, “Poisoning the Body to Nourish the Soul: Prioritizing Health Risks and Impacts in a Native American Community,” Health, Risk and Society 13, no. 2 (2011): 103–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2011.556186. 43 Pamela K. Miller, Viola Waghiyi, Gretchen Welfinger-Smith, Samuel Carter Byrne, Jane Kava, Jesse Gologergen, Lorraine Eckstein, Ronald Scrudato, Jeff Chiarenzelli, David O. Carpenter, and Samarys Seguinot-Medina, “Community-Based Participatory Research Projects and Policy Engagement to Protect Environmental Health on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska,” International Journal of Circumpolar Health 72, no. 1 (2013), https://doi.org/10.3402/ijch.v72i0.21656. 44 Bob Weinhold, “Climate Change and Health: A Native American Perspective,” Environmental Health Perspectives 118, no. 2 (2010): A64–A65; Kathy Lynn, John Daigle, Jennie Hoffman, Frank Lake, Natalie Michelle, Darren Ranco, Carson Viles, Garrit Voggesser, and Paul Williams, “The Impacts of Climate Change on Tribal Traditional Foods,” Climate Change 120, no. 3 (2013): 545– 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0736-1. 45 Dennis Wiedman, “Native American Embodiment of the Chronicities of Modernity,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2012): 595–612, https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12009. 46 United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, “Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations,” 2015, www.fns.usda.gov/fdpir/food-distribution-program-indian- reservations-fdpir. 47 Email correspondence between the author and Joe VanAlstine, president of NAFDPIR National Association of Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, January 2, 2017. 48 Rachel M. Gurney, Beth Schaefer Caniglia, Tamara L. Mix, and Kristen A. Baum, “Native American Food Security and Traditional Foods: A Review of the Literature,” Sociology Compass 9, no. 8 (2015): 681–93, https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12284. 49 United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, “Addressing Child Hunger and Obesity in Indian Country: Report to Congress,” (January 2, 2012):5. https://fns- prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/IndianCountry.pdf. 50 Ibid.,vi. 51 Wiedman, “Native American Embodiment,” 597. 52 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2011,” https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/pdf/ndfs_2011.pdf. 55  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 53 Kyle Powys Whyte, “Justice Forward: Tribes, Climate Adaptation and Responsibility in Indian Country,” Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013): 517–530, 518, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013- 0743-2. 54 Tristan Reader and Teroll Dew Johnson, “Tohono O’odham Himdag and Agri/Culture,” in Religion and Sustainable Agriculture: World Spiritual Traditions and Food Ethics, ed. Todd LeVasseur, Pramod Parajuli, and Norman Wirzba (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2016), 315–336, 329. 55 Winona LaDuke interview, White Earth Reservation, August 29, 2014. 56 Taiaiake Alfred, “Sovereignty,” in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Phililp Deloria and Neil Salisbury (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 460–74. 57 Joanne Barker, “For Whom Sovereignty Matters,” in Sovereignty Matters, ed. Joanne Barker (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 1–50. 58 Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, “Nenabozho’s Smart Berries: Rethinking Tribal Sovereignty and Accountability,” Michigan State Law Review 339: 339–54; Amanda Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty: Definitions, Conceptualizations, and Interpretations,” American Studies 46, nos. 3/4 (2005): 115–32. 59 Jessica Cattelino, “The Double Bind of American Indian Need-Based Sovereignty,” Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2010): 235–62, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01058.x. Jace Weaver, “Indigenousness and Indignity,” in A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, ed. 60 Henry Schwarz and Saengeeta Ray (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 221–35, 232. 61 Vine Deloria Jr., “Intellectual Self-Determination and Sovereignty: Looking at the Windmills in Our Minds,” Wicazo Sa Review 13, no. 1 (1998): 25–31, 27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1409027. 62 Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty,” 121. 63 Ibid., 122. 64 The terms “scholar” and “activist” (as well as “community member”) are not meant to be mutually exclusive; an actor could ascribe to multiple designations, or all of these. 65 Desmarais and Wittman, “Farmers, Foodies and First Nations,” 1154–55. 66 Martens, et al., “Understanding Indigenous Food Sovereignty,” 21. 67 Dawn Morrison, “Indigenous Food Sovereignty: A Model for Social Learning,” in Food Sovereignty in Canada: Creating Just and Sustainable Food Systems, ed. Hannah Wittman, 56  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover Annette Aurélie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiebe (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2011), 97–113. 68 Kyle Powys Whyte, “Food Justice and Collective Food Relations,” in Food, Ethics, and Society: An Introductory Text with Readings, ed. Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson, and Tyler Doggett (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 122-134, 126. 69 Rudolph and McLachlan, “Seeking Indigenous Food Sovereignty,” 1081. 70 (Raster and Hill 2017:268) Raster, Amanda and Christina Gish Hill. 2017. “The dispute over wild rice; an investigation of treaty agreements and Ojibwa food sovereignty.” Agriculture and Human Values 34:267–281. 71 Morrison, “Indigenous Food Sovereignty: A Model.” 72 Ibid. 73 Kamal, et al., “A Recipe for Change,” 565. 74 Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty.” 75 Kamal, et al., “A Recipe for Change,” 76 Morrison, “Indigenous Food Sovereignty: A Model.” Morrison also cites the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty in her essay. 77 Hoover, The River Is in Us. 78 I am labeling as “interviews” the sessions during which I sat down with a participant with an interview protocol and asked a standard series of questions, although these sessions were often guided by the participants and their interests as well. In contrast, during what I label “conversations” and “farm tours,” with the participants’ permission I kept on my audio recorder while walking around their farms and gardens. These conversations frequently included multiple people and the topics were primarily guided by the landscape and the project at hand. All participants of “interviews” as well as “conversations” signed an informed consent asking if they wanted to be named or have their information remain confidential. 79 NVivo is software that helps analyze qualitative data by providing the framework to organize and sort interview information into different coded categories established by the researcher. 80 See gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com to view the blog posts. 81 Julie Garreau interview, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, SD, August 1, 2014. 82 George Toya interview, Nambé Pueblo, NM, June 10, 2014. 57  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 83 Kenny Perkins interview, Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, September 5, 2014. 84 Valerie Segrest, presentation at the Native American Culinary Association Conference, Desert Sonoran Museum, Tucson, AZ, November, 2013. For conference information see http://apachesinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2013/11/nacas-2013-indigenous-food-symposium.html. 85 Valerie Segrest interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 86 Diane Wilson interview, Dream of Wild Health farm, Hugo, MN, August 14, 2014. 87 Personal communications with Dream of Wild Health staff, Hugo, MN, March 6 2015. 88 Scott Shoemaker interview, Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, August 29, 2014. 89 Ibid.; and personal communications with members of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network 2014- 2017, especially at the Indigenous Farming Conference hosted by the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, which includes panels and sessions by Indigenous Seed Keepers Network members every year. 90 Tom Cook interview, Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, September 8, 2014. 91 Roberto Nutlouis interview, Pinon, AZ, July 10, 2014. 92 Romajean Thomas interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 93 Bob Shimek interview, White Earth Reservation, MN, August 5, 2014. 94 Cassius Spears Sr. interview, Westerly RI, April 30 2016 95 Valerie Segrest, presentation, Food Sovereignty Summit, Green Bay, WI, April 16, 2014. For full agenda, see https://firstnations.org/sites/default/files/conferences/2014/documents/2014_Ag_Summit_4_7_2014. pdf. 96 Alan Bacock interview, Big Pine, CA, July 14, 2014. 97 Jeremy McClain interview, Bad River Reservation, WI, August 18, 2014. 98 Lannesse Baker interview, Minneapolis, MN, August 13, 2014. 99 Terrol Dew Johnson interview, Sells, AZ, June 30, 2014; see also Reader and Johnson, “Tohono O’odham Himdag and Agri/Culture.” 100 Mariaelena Huambachano, “Food Security and Indigenous Peoples Knowledge: El Buen Vivir- Sumaq Kawsay in Peru and Tē Atānoho, New Zealand, Māori-New Zealand,” Food Studies 5, no. 3 (2015): 33–47, 40, 42, https://doi.org/10.18848/2160-1933/CGP/v05i03/40505. 58  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 101 Winona LaDuke interview, White Earth Reservation, MN, August 29, 2014. 102 Bob Shimek interview, White Earth Reservation, MN, August 5, 2014. 103 Amos Hinton interview, Ponca City, OK, June 6, 2014. 104 Winona LaDuke has described this survey during a number of her presentations at events like the Indigenous Farming Conference held every year at White Earth in March, as well as during a TED talk discussed at https://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/why-winona-laduke-is-fighting-for-food- sovereignty 105 Stephanie Berryhill interview, Okmulgee, OK, June 4, 2014. 106 Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture, “Hopi Farmers Market & Exchange,” https://www.hopitutskwapermaculture.com/job-announcements. 107 Sean Sherman, interview, Minneapolis MN, August 29, 2014. 108 Ben Jacobs, conversation, Tocabe restaurant in Denver Colorado, November 21, 2015. 109 Diane Wilson interview, Dream of Wild Health farm, Hugo, MN, August 14, 2014. 110 Romajean Thomas interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 111 [I THINK WE SHOULD GET RID OF THIS FOOTNOTE ENTIRELY 112 Nancy J. Turner and Dawn C. Loewen, “The Original ‘Free Trade’: Exchange of Botanical Products and Associated Plant Knowledge in Northwestern North America,” Anthropologica 40, no. 1 (1998): 49–70, https://doi.org/10.2307/25605872. 113 Scott Shoemaker interview, Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, August 29, 2014. 114 Josh Sargent interview, Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, September 7, 2014. 115 Rowen White interview, Nevada City, CA, July 16, 2014. 116 Pati Martinson interview, Taos, NM, June 12, 2014. 117 Intertribal Agriculture Council, “Mobile Farmers Market, Trade Routes Roadtrip,” https://nativefoodnetwork.com/trade-routes/. 118 Darlene Fairbanks interview, Minneapolis, MN, August 12, 2014. 119 Melissa Nelson interview, Novata, CA, June 24, 2014. 120 Jeff Metoxen interview, Tsyunhehkwa, Oneida Nation of WI, August 20, 2014. 121 Melissa Nelson interview, Novata, CA, June 24, 2014. 59  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 122 Lannesse Baker interview, Minneapolis, MN, August 13, 2014. 123 Keith Glidewell interview, Bishop, CA, July 14, 2014. 124 Amos Hinton interview, Novata, CA, June 6 2014. 125 Valerie Segrest interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 126 Stephanie Berryhill interview, Okmulgee, OK, June 4, 2014. 127 Lori Watso interview, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Tribe, MN, August 7, 2014. 128 Julie Garreau interview, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, SD, August 1, 2014. 129 Zach Paige interview, White Earth Reservation, MN, August 5, 2014. 130 Stephanie Berryhill interview, Okmulgee, OK, June 4, 2014. 131 Valerie Segrest interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 132 Don Charnon interview, Tsyunhehkwa, Oneida Nation of WI, August 20, 2014. 133 Amos Hinton interview, Ponca, OK, June 6, 2014. 134 Diane Wilson interview, Dream of Wild Health farm, Hugo, MN, August 14, 2014. 135 Christina Elias interview, Minneapolis, MN, August 13, 2014. 136 Milo Yellowhair interview, Pine Ridge Reservation, SD, August 3, 2014. 137 Melissa Nelson interview, Novata CA, June 24 2014. 138 Lilian Hill interview, Kykotsmovi, AZ, July 9, 2014. 139 Chuck Hoskins interview, Tahlequa, OK, June 7, 2014. 140 Julie Garreau interview, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, SD, August 1, 2014. 141 Bob Shimek interview, White Earth Reservation, MN, August 5, 2014. 142 Grace Ann Byrd interview, Dupont, WA, July 22, 2014; Romajean Thomas interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 143 Michael Dahl conversation, Minneapolis, MN, August 7, 2014. 60  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 144 Mike Wiggins interview, Bad River Reservation, WI, August 19, 2014. 145 Pati Martinson interview, Taos, NM, June 12, 2014. 146 Caitlin Krenn interview, Dupont, WA, July 22, 2014. 147 Gayley Morgan, phone interview, July 25, 2014. 148 Woodrow White interview, Tomah, WI, August 21, 2014. 149 Amos Hinton interview, Ponca City, OK, June 6, 2014. 150 Roberto Nutlouis interview, Pinon, AZ, July 10, 2014. 151 Stephanie Berryhill interview, Okmulgee, OK, June 4, 2014. 152 Angelo McHorse interview, Taos, NM, June 12, 2014. 153 Jack Kloppenburg, “Seed Sovereignty: The Promise of Open Source Biology,” in Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community, ed. Hannah Wittman, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, and Nettie Wiehe (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2010), 152–67, 165. 154 Rowen White interview, Nevada City, CA, July 16, 2014. 155 Clayton Brascoupe interview, Tesuque Pueblo, NM, June 11, 2014. 156 Kloppenburg, “Seed Sovereignty,” 157. Sheryl D. Breen, “Saving Seeds: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Native American Seed 157 Savers, and Problems of Property,” Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 5, no. 2 (2015): 39–52, 46–47, https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2015.052.016. 158 Lilian Hill interview, Kykotsmovi, AZ, July 9, 2014. 159 Rowen White interview, Nevada City, CA, July 16, 2014. 160 Julie Garreau interview, Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, SD, August 1, 2014. 161 Valerie Segrest, presentation at the Native American Culinary Association conference, Desert Sonoran Museum, Tucson, AZ, November, 2013. 162 Valerie Segrest, presentation at the Food Sovereignty Summit, Green Bay, WI, April 16, 2014. 163 Roberto Nutlouis interview, Pinon, AZ, July 10, 2014. 61  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 164 Jeff Metoxen interview, Tsyunhehkwa, Oneida Nation of WI, August 20, 2014. 165 Kenny Perkins interview, Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, September 5, 2014. 166 Grace Ann Byrd interview, Dupont, WA, July 22, 2014 167 Don Charnon interview, Tsyunhehkwa, Oneida Nation of WI, August 20, 2014. 168 Cassius Spears Sr. interview, Westerly RI, April 30, 2016. 169 Woodrow White interview, Tomah, WI, August 21, 2014. 170 Romajean Thomas interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014 171 Melissa Nelson interview, Novata, CA, June 24, 2014 172 Ken Parker interview, Cattaragus Reservation, September 2, 2014. 173 Roberto Nutlouis interview, Pinon, AZ, July 10, 2014 174 Valerie Segrest, presentation at the Native American Culinary Association conference, Desert Sonoran Museum, Tucson, AZ, November, 2013 175 Jeff Metoxen interview, Tsyunhehkwa, Oneida Nation of WI, August 20, 2014. . 176 Valerie Segrest, presentation at the Native American Culinary Association conference, Desert Sonoran Museum, Tucson, AZ, November, 2013. 177 Valerie Segrest interview, Muckleshoot Tribal College, WA, July 21, 2014. 178 Desmarais and Wittman, “Farmers, Foodies and First Nations.” There are a number of studies from Manitoba, Canada, that focus on indigenous food sovereignty in the context of wild foods. For example, see Rudolph and Mclachlan “Seeking Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Origins of and Responses to the Food Crisis in Northern Manitoba Canada,”; Kamal, et al., “A Recipe for Change”; Shirley Thompson, Asfia Gulrukh Kamal, Mohammad Ashraful Alam and Jacinta Wiebe. “Community Development to Feed the Family in Norther Manitoba Communities: Evaluating Food Activities Based on their Food Sovereignty, Food Security, and Sustainable Livelihood Outcomes.” Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research. 3, no. 2 (2012:43-66; Marten et al. “Understanding Indigenous Food Sovereignty through an Indigenous Research Paradigm,” 179 See, for example, Rudolph and McLachlon “Seeking Indigenous Food Sovereignty: Origins of and Responses to the Food Crisis in Northern Manitoba Canada,” 180 Reader and Johnson, “Tohono O’odham Himdag and Agri/Culture”; David A. Cleveland, Fred Bowannie Jr., Donald F. Eriacho, Andrew Laahty, and Eric Perramond, “Zuni Farming and United States Government Policy: The Politics of Biological and Cultural Diversity in Agriculture,” Agriculture and Human Values 12, no. 3 (1995): 2–18, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217150. 181 Email correspondence between the author and Dan Cornelius, July 9, 2017. 182 Stark, “Nenabozho’s Smart Berries,” 343, citing David Wilkins, American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2002), 48. 62  DOI: 10.17953/aicrj.41.3.hoover 183 Vine Deloria Jr., cited in ibid., 352. 184 Ibid., 352. 185 Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty,” 125. 186 Jeremy McClain interview, Bad River Reservation, WI, August 18, 2014. 187 Alan Bacock interview, Big Pine, CA, July 14, 2014. 188 Clayton Harvey interview, Ft. Apache, AZ, July 3, 2014. 189 Rowen White interview, Nevada City, CA, July 16, 2014. Kyle Powys Whyte, “Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Renewal and Settler Colonialism,” in The 190 Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics, ed. Mary C. Rawlinson and Caleb Ward (New York: Routledge, 2017), 354–65. 63