Finding health in good nutrition

I am passionate about ensuring that Native American children have access to fresh foods for good nutrition. Food insecurity is a real and pervasive problem on reservations, with 25% of Native Americans considered to be food insecure, or having inconsistent access to foods needed for good nutrition. Food Insecurity leads to significant health problems like diabetes or obesity, and it hampers a child's future chances for success in life. Many reservations are food deserts, meaning they are devoid of fresh foods, and contributing to the high numbers of food-insecure residents. Many common diets on reservations consist of packaged, fried, frozen, and processed foods, because that is simply all that's available.

I am at the Gathering of Nations Powwow this weekend and I have two reflections:

First, there is a ton of greasy, sugary foods for sale here. It also saddens me how so many people swarm to the frybread stands. Frybread was created as a necessity when we were first ripped from our ancestral lands and confined to reservations. We had no way of obtaining traditional foods, so the government gave us food packages of flour, lard, and other goods common in European diets but completely incompatible with our traditional lean diets. Frybread is a symbol of the oppression we experience(d) and continues to be a contributor of our obesity problem today. It does not represent our heritage, but instead the devastating colonization of our peoples.

Second, despite the spread of extremely unhealthy foods throughout the powwow, I kept seeing little signs of hope. Two little boys happily munching on slices of an orange. A big guy biting into an apple. Even a food stand offering apple slices. They came drizzled with caramel, but still, it has to be healthier than the nachos and cotton candy at other booths. If people can just be given the option of fresh foods, I have hope they will choose to be healthy.

We do not eat well in Indian Country. That is accepted by all. But little by little, we are starting to get more exposure to fresh foods, and we are starting to make better choices. It's a hard road to reverse a hundred years of colonized diets, but there is hope.