Blackfeet Researcher Leads Her Tribe Back to Traditional Foods
Indian Country Today
Researcher Abaki Beck, 23, has vivid childhood memories of helping her mother, grandmothers, and aunts pick traditional foods and medicines on the Blackfeet Nation in northwest Montana. Because her great-grandmother passed down her vast knowledge of the tribeās traditions, Beck learned the importance of eating these foods at an early age.
Well before white settlers colonized their land, Blackfeet Nation members used more than 200 types of plants for food and remedies. But forced assimilation and reliance on the U.S. government for food adversely shifted most nationsā diets from whole foods to industrialized processed foods and eroded tribal health. More than 80 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults are overweight or obese, and half of American Indian children are predicted to develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetimes, according to the Indian Health Clinical Reporting system.
Beck, who has a degree in American studies and has researched the impacts of settler-colonialism on Blackfeet youth suicide, hopes to change those health disparities. Her report, published in May, āAhwahsiin: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Contemporary Food Sovereignty on the Blackfeet Reservationā (ahwahsiin translates to āthe land where we get our foodā), features oral history interviews with nine Blackfeet elders who discussed the nationās traditional foods and the health issues connected to a modern American diet. A 2016 surveyāthe Blackfeet Nation has approximately 17,000 membersāfound that one of the most cited barriers in accessing traditional or local foods was lack of knowledge.
āOur people survived genocide in part because of [traditional] foods and medicines,ā Beck says. āAnd because our elders are passing away and global warming is changing how our environment functions, now is a significant time to capture eldersā knowledge and our own communityās history.ā
āSome Westernized foods and medicines are not best for tribal people.ā
Beck partnered with Saokio Heritage, a community-based and volunteer-run organization on Blackfeet. The report was funded by a $10,000 grant from the First Nations Development Institute and is available on the organizationās website.
Many of the traditional foods, plants, and teas are still available on the reservation, and some are even sold in health food stores, Beck says, so younger tribal members can learn to integrate them into their daily lives. For example, traditional medicine like willow bark or blue root can replace Tylenol, and bison or venison can replace fatty beef. Local berries can either become a traditional berry soup or be mixed into other recipes like pancakes, muffins, and smoothies.
āSome Westernized foods and medicines are not best for tribal people,ā says Carolyn Angus-Hornbuckle, director of public health policy and programs at the National Indian Health Board. āThese health disparities are happening throughout Indian Country, and we could see positive health impacts if Blackfeet chose to share Beckās report and their knowledge with other communities.ā
Most scholarly research reports are concealed behind paywalls and easily accessible by only those in academia, but Beck removed that barrier for the Blackfeet people by making her report available for free.
Danielle Antelope, a 21-year-old Blackfeet Community College student who helped Beck conduct the interviews, grew up eating chicken patties, cheeseburgers, and tater tots for dinner.
āWe never ate vegetables,ā Antelope says. āMy mom was a single mom, so she wanted to make sure we were full when she fed us, but we didnāt think about the nutritional aspect of what were we eating.ā
āI wish I had known of our traditional ways of eating when I was younger,ā she adds. āI didnāt really learn about eating healthy in school, either.ā
Efforts to promote food sovereignty throughout Indian Country have included youth education, community gardening, and economic development. But because there are hundreds of distinct tribesāwith different needs and systems of food, government, and regulationāapproaches to tackling the health disparities vary greatly, Beck says.
Even though āhealth disparities on the Blackfeet Reservation [are] too broad to be solved by one report,ā Beck says, sheās confident that awareness is part of the solution.
Gabriel Ware wrote this article for YES! Magazine. J. Gabriel is a reporting intern at YES! Follow him on Twitter @JGabinator.