Native Americans Discuss a Return to Traditional Natural Foods to Combat Health Problems

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The New Focus On Native American Cooking
By Karen Lincoln Michel
Special to The Washington Post

Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page F01

Cedar-planked, fire-roasted juniper salmon and the ash-roasted sweet corn
with hazelnut butter are not typical cafeteria fare in the museums that line
the Mall, where hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza are in abundance. But as
these dishes and other regional foods make their appearance on the menu of
the Mitsitam Cafe in the new National Museum of the American Indian, it will
be one more step in a growing movement to highlight and preserve Native
American cuisine.

The movement was the focus of the Native Food Summit held in Milwaukee
earlier this month to coincide with the city's annual Indian Summer
Festival, one of the midwest's largest Native American cultural festivals.
The summit, which was sponsored by First Nations Development Institute,
based in Fredericksburg, drew 160 attendees from food-related nonprofit
organizations focused not just on Native cuisine but on building sustainable
food systems on tribal land.

It also emphasized the need to combat diabetes and childhood obesity among
Native Americans. According to a recent study, an estimated 40 percent of
Native American youth are overweight. And the National Diabetes Information
Clearinghouse reports that American Indians and Alaska Natives are 2.6 times
more likely to develop diabetes than non-Hispanic whites and have a greater
chance of contracting kidney and cardiovascular diseases.

Like many population groups in the United States today, many Native
Americans have abandoned the diet of their ancestors.

Bea Medicine, a Native American anthropologist, says that traditional food
staples of Indian tribes -- wild game, berries, roots, teas and indigenous
vegetables -- were high in protein and low in fat. That's a switch from the
modern Native American diet, which is high in fat and refined starches and
sugars.

Kibbe Conti, a registered dietician and nutritionist who helps tribes
nationwide develop nutritional models based on their traditional food
supplies, explains how the native people's diet has changed dramatically
over the past 200 years.

"It started when Indian people were no longer free to live off the land,"
said Conti, an Oglala Sioux. After the tribes were placed on reservations,
they were fed government rations of processed food. Much of reservation
lands could not be farmed. The shift from hunting, gathering and farming to
a cash economy in the early 1900s forced family members to leave home in
search of work.

Native people kept some traditional foods in their diet, such as Indian
corn, squash, wild game and waterfowl, but relied heavily on buying
processed foods.

Today, many tribal members exist on a steady diet of government commodities,
featuring cheese, canned meat and packaged food, lard and powdered milk,
according to Conti. Those in isolated areas have few choices and pay more
for groceries. Some shop in remote convenience stores lacking a selection of
fresh and nutritional food.

Conti's work and the native food movement fall in line with a global food
movement by the International Indian Treaty Council, which works with the
United Nations on issues of indigenous rights, traditions and sacred lands.
The council promotes peoples' efforts to regain control of natural resources
on ancestral lands and to practice their right to control food sources on
their land.

"There's no better way to know a people than through their food," said
Loretta Barrett Oden, a Potawatomi chef from Oklahoma who worked with the
food staff at the conference to serve Native American-inspired creations
such as bison, wild rice and black bean salad, sage grits, and maize crepes
with sautéed fruit.

To achieve this end, Conti is working with tribes to help them develop
specific, historically based nutrition models to replace the existing U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans (the "food
pyramid") . And the summit offered information on applying for grants to
fund the food system projects.

Conti considers the food movement the final piece in native peoples' return
to wholeness. She said Native Americans have persevered in issues of treaty
rights, and have relied on their traditions and spirituality to combat many
social issues. Food is their final frontier.

Karen Lincoln Michel is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer, a past president
of the Native American Journalists Association and a member of Wisconsin's
Ho-Chunk Nation.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company