In a recent article for The New York Times, Priya Krishna writes that "Oglala Sioux, like many other Native Americans across the country, are relying on the practices — seed saving, canning, dehydrating — that their forebears developed to survive harsh conditions, with limited supplies." Krishna discusses that many tribal residents, like the Oglala Sioux Tribe living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, have to travel long distances to get to grocery stores - sometimes up to 2 hours.
In addition to this long travel time for food, many natives rely on food stamps and are also more likely to have diabetes, making access to food extremely difficult for some.
"Milo Yellow Hair, who lives in Wounded Knee, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is hard at work preparing 8,000 seedlings of local varieties of squash and corn — hearty crops with a short growing time — to plant in people’s yards. Many residents live without electricity to run refrigerators or freezers, so to prepare for what could be weeks or months of staying indoors, he is encouraging people to dry their vegetables so they’ll keep for a while. Corn, for example, can be cooked and dried to be used as a base for soups and stews, or to make wagmiza wasna, a traditional snack in which the corn is pounded with berries and tallow." continues Krishna.
Read the Source Article: "How Native Americans Are Fighting a Food Crisis" by Priya Krishna for The New York Times
