Chickaloon building community food ark

Spectrum, by Kim Sollien

W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Foods and Society Initiative and annual networking conference of April 19-22 was a huge success in terms of helping Chickaloon Village get connected to the North American community working for food security and community food project activities.

Angie and I met people from all over the country, working hard to ensure that their communities had access to healthy, affordable, organic foods. Mark Paikuli-Stride from Hawaii, with the Aloha 'Aina Health Center, is working to restore traditional land-use practices of the Piko Akea. Mark is working with other community members and farmers to grow taro, a traditional food of his people.

The farms are located on an ancient wetland that has been protected by Hawaiian family groups for the past 15 to 50 years. While growing taro, they are teaching young people of the community through a partnership with the local charter school about traditional foods, land stewardship, culture and their language.

We talked at length about building a bridge between our Ya Ne Dah Ah school and sustainable-foods initiative and their farm and school to create a cross-cultural exchange, once our programs are a bit more established.

We met Bonnie Bobb with the Western Shoshone tribe. She is working to keep the United States government from seizing their ancestral lands to conduct underground nuclear tests and selective burning of 3.1 billion acres of pinyon (or pinon) and juniper forest for forest-fire mitigation.

We learned that the pine nut from the pinyon tree has always been the most significant food of the Shoshone. The tree is medicine, shelter, food and spirit to them. They are working to restore honor and give back to the tree that has given them life. They are bringing back the forgotten traditional ceremonies of pine nut, establishing a profitable Western Shoshone pine-nut enterprise and maintaining the Shoshone Treaty land base, cultural rights and sovereignty.

All of these efforts have helped them protect their lands and provided economic opportunities for the members. Norland and Terrol Johnston with the Tohono O'odham Community Action of Arizona created a tribal nonprofit focused on bringing back the traditional foods of that bioregion, mainly bush beans, to feed the community.

Currently they are farming about 10 acres of tribal land, involving the community in the planting and harvesting process, creating marketing plans to reach more community members with their foods, providing nutritional information about the benefits of eating traditional foods and they just received a large grant from the Kellogg Foundation to continue building the program.

LaDonna Redmond of the Institute for Community Resource Development is working for food security and environmental justice in the inner city of Chicago. She said grocery stores have moved out of cities and into suburban neighborhoods in the past few years, leaving the resident population who don't have transportation to rely on convenience stores like 7-Eleven to meet their food needs. She has been working to create farmers' markets and coordinate local farmers to supply some foods to the community, and she has been organizing city blocks to start their own community gardens.

We met Michael Dimock and Patrick Martins of the Slow Foods Project. Slow Foods works to preserve the genetic diversity of livestock and meat birds by researching and finding farmers to breed heirloom breeds and to then sell them to the general market. They also provide marketing support to the farmer so they can sell their meats. We asked if they would look into some game birds for us in this climate that we could incorporate into our foods initiative.

Eric Nicholson of the United Farm Workers of America is fighting hard to ensure that migrant and immigrant farm workers in the Northwest have access to equitable pay, living quarters and health care.

Youth from all over the country are working on community food issues and learning about farming, organic agriculture, community organizing and educational outreach. The Youth Project was one of the youth groups at the conference.

The conference was a huge networking success. I left feeling empowered knowing there is a brilliant, committed, dedicated, revolutionary army of people in every sector of the food system working for change, working for food security, working to ensure that all communities have access to healthy foods grown close by.

The Kellogg Foundation gave each of us a gift by bringing us all together and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to attend. This conference allowed me to see that Chickaloon Village is building a foods ark for its community and staying open to the reality that there is room for everyone to join. Our table stands on pure, healthy land, rich in biological and cultural diversity, and her arms are open if all creatures seen and unseen take each breath with the knowledge of profound respect and the discipline to act with consciousness. I can't think of anything more important to be working toward -- food security. We can do it!

If anyone would like more information, please contact me at 745-0737 and I will be happy to share.

Kim Sollien is the sustainable development coordinator for Chickaloon Village.