The Importance of Healthy Indigenous Food Systems & How to Improve Them

Details

By Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson

October 15, 2024

Guest Opinion. American Indians and other Indigenous societies have lived off the land since time immemorial. However, climate change and lack of political recognition continue to present undue hardships for tribal members not only in the United States, but globally.

Indigenous traditional foods that are biodiverse, climate-adapted and nutritious are being replaced by highly processed foods, with devastating outcomes for the health of Indigenous people. Here in the U.S., tribal members have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity than any underserved population. One tribal nation in Arizona has the highest rate of diabetes in the world.

Last year, I was awarded the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research New Innovator in Food & Agriculture Research Award (New Innovator Award) to begin to address this issue. My project, Revitalization of Indigenous Crops in the Southwest, focuses on three main areas: 1) best practices for water conservation on Indigenous crops to manage climate fluctuations such as drought, 2) Indigenous food nutritional analyses to gather data needed to add traditional crops to the diets of American Indian reservation-based school children and 3) finding ways to set up mobile research labs on American Indian reservations to collect soil and nutritional data as a way to encourage Indigenous youth to pursue studies in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

Other strategies may bolster U.S. indigenous food systems as well, such as creating direct financial access for Native-led non-profit food organizations that have served their people in times of crisis, like the COVID-19 epidemic. Enabling some tribal organizations to sponsor watershed projects, rather than limiting sponsorship to tribal governments, would also be useful. 

Additionally, U.S. land-grant colleges and universities are ideally positioned to build capacity for tribal community colleges, tribal governments and native-led food organizations. They should be encouraged to partner with these entities as technical service providers to help close the inequality gap on American Indian reservations.

My FFAR New Innovator Award project is investigating whether similar tactics might yield results in other Indigenous communities and identifying the necessary steps to put them in place. Results from this and other Indigenous-led projects are vital to position Indigenous people to speak from a position of opportunity rather than victimhood. These projects will also go far in solving pressing global agriculture issues, like those caused by climate change, through the exchange of knowledge between traditional Western science and Indigenous people, as well as exploring the vast plant biodiversity on tribal lands.

As we celebrate National Native American Heritage Month this November, it is important to reflect that despite inequitable opportunities within tribal food systems, Indigenous people remain resilient and valuable stakeholders within the U.S. food and agriculture systems.

Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is a member of the Hopi Tribe in Northern Arizona. Dr. Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Arizona, a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University, and a B.S. in Agriculture from Cornell University. Dr. Johnson is a faculty member and Assistance Specialist within the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. His primary work is with the Indigenous Resiliency Center. Michael is also a co-author on the Indigenous Chapter in the National Climate Assessment Five. His newest initiative is the call for the Restoration of the American Indian Food System based on the stewardship principles of Indigenous conservation. Most importantly, he continues to practice Hopi dry farming, a practice of his people for millennia.