Native American Heritage Month: Eating at the Old Growth Table

It’s Native American Heritage Month – a time to listen to, and learn from, Native voices and knowledges. One way we participate in this learning is by being in community with Native scholars and change makers. Northwest Harvest staff attended The Living Breath of wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ: Indigenous Foods and Ecological Knowledge Symposium earlier this year.

Valerie Segrest, a Native nutritionist and educator, and enrolled member of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and cofounder of Tahoma Peak Solutions gave the keynote speech entitled “Eating at the Old Growth Table.” Valerie discussed the violence Native communities experienced in the United States and how traditional foodways have been disrupted, contributing to high rates of diabetes and other diet-related illness.

Valerie discussed the way that food informs our relationship to land and each other: “It’s a fact – our food is our medicine and not just at the cellular level, but the part that combines us together as a community, that binds us together here and now. Food brought us together in the past and it is what is going to collectively hold us together in the future.”

Native ancestral diets were nutrient-dense (did you know a single cup of nettle tea provides more calcium than a calcium supplement?!), seasonal, and incredibly varied. She elaborated further, saying: “I think the first thing I want to recognize is how diverse our ancestral diet was versus what’s happening now: our standard American diet, and most of the global diet actually, is limited. 60% of our food intake comes from just three refined crops and we have the ability to eat over 300,000 types of food.”

Northwest Harvest expresses our gratitude to the original stewards of this land and thank our Native leaders for sharing their wisdom and knowledge with us. We honor all the indigenous people of the land we now occupy: past, present, and future. We are deeply grateful for the many ways Native communities contribute their resources, time, and partnership towards our shared vision of ending hunger—a problem that did not always persist in this region.

You can watch the full video here!