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In Grand Ronde, Oregon, Native people have gathered to explore the role of tobacco in their culture.
As KLCC’s Brian Bull reports, it’s to challenge perceptions that commercial tobacco is traditional.
Health practitioners and family advocates – mostly from the nine tribes found across Oregon – are at the Spirit Mountain Event Center this week.
This includes Ben Sanford.
He’s the commercial tobacco prevention coordinator for the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland, and a member of the Sappony Tribe of North Carolina.
He’s brought jarred samples of a Hopi leaf tobacco that he’s helped cultivate.
“It’s earthy, it’s rich. It makes my nostrils flare in the best way. When we think of the appeal to the Creator of the fragrance of tobacco, it’s everything I think it should be.”
The message is for Native people to switch from chain-smoking commercial grade tobacco with its additives and chemicals – and use more natural forms in a more reverent way.
Shannon Lafferty is the coordinator of the Grand Ronde’s Tribal Youth Empowerment and prevention program.
“All the way up until this year we have been giving packs of cigarettes or top loose tobacco as giveaways. And this is the first year that we actually used real tobacco. And I’m proud of that.”
Native Americans and Alaskan Natives have higher rates of smoking-related illnesses than the general population, a trend organizers want to fix.
(Courtesy Boys & Girls Club of Rosebud / Facebook)
The Boys and Girls Club of the Rosebud Reservation is the recipient of a farm-to-school grant program.
Among other things, it offers fresh produce to attendees all year.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene has more.
The Patrick Leahy Grant Program is run through the US Department of Agriculture, and in total $14 million has been distributed to schools and communities nationwide.
The Rosebud Boys and Girls Club received just shy of $50,000.
Rachel Kocak is the group’s executive director. .
“This grant will cover fencing, high tunnels, and no-till gardens, so this means outdoors, in the dirt growing for up to ten months of the year for the kids of the Boys and Girls Club. It would serve two of our site locations, so that would reach approximately 80 kids.”
Kocak wants the group to experience food independence.
“The goal is a love of growing and eating locally grown food. That’s the vision – having that joy of self-sufficiency, of feeling the accomplishment of working hard, pulling food out of the ground, and the joy of eating it. Out here in Rosebud, food insecurity is a major issue. For most kids, this kind of fresh garden food is just not accessible.”
While favorites like peas and carrots are on the menu, Kocak says they hope to incorporate traditional diet in the garden.
“The more diverse we can grow, the better, and we’re hoping to incorporate some of the local, ancestral foods that would have been part of the diet. So, perennials like chokecherries and juneberries and those things is part of the landscape as well.”
Any excess crops will be donated to families in need in the Rosebud community.
The Rapid City Area School district also received a grant and seeks to connect local education with agricultural providers.
(Courtesy Choctaw Nation)
In Oklahoma, citizens of the Cherokee Nation, Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation, Muscogee Nation, and soon the Seminole Nation, will be able to use their tribal membership to hunt and fish in each other’s treaty territories.
The Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes recently announced the agreement.
According to the tribes, the agreement allows the Five Tribes to collaborate on wildlife management within their reservations and enhance their ability to manage natural resources in a sustainable manner.
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