Diné Elders, Food Sovereignty, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Gabi James, Echo Hertzberg, and Bronwyn Pappas-Byers Introduction
From scorched earth techniques of burning indigenous gardens to agroforestry systems and the mass slaughter of buffalo in the center of so-called North America, food has been a tool of American settler colonization and assimilation. Food has also been a source of health, sovereignty, kinship, and an expression of resistance, and thus a site of complicated histories. This post will briefly explore some of the complex relationships the Diné (Navajo) people have with food. While we do not have the space to adequately explore the specific food history of the Diné people, readers can learn more about it from the Diné Policy Institute Food Sovereignty Report chapter on the historical analysis of the Diné food system here: https://www.dinecollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/dpi-food-sovereignty-report.pdf The Navajo Nation faces a health crisis due to extremely high rates of nutritionally related illness, including obesity, diabetes, heart-disease, hyper-tension, and cancers. While healthier food options like fresh fruits and vegetables are available at the few grocery stores on the Navajo Nation,“junk food” and “sweetened beverages” are more readily available. Due to ongoing settler colonialism, forced migration, and federal US food policies, such as USDA regulations, traditional food sources have also been rendered inaccessible to Diné people. However, the Navajo people are reclaiming food sovereignty in response to injustice, as well as to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced them to expand on their traditional knowledge. You can find links to various resources throughout the post to learn about ways to help or to learn more.
Native Elders as Keepers of Traditional Food Knowledge
Before discussing the ways in which the Navajo nation is practicing food sovereignty, a key concept in traditional Diné teachings we must understand is that of K’e, a word for the ancient kinship system practiced between Diné people and all other living things. The Diné Policy Institute Food Sovereignty Report explains K’e and includes the retelling of traditional ways of being by elders. K’e is rooted in the oral history of the Diyin Dine’é (Holy People) who placed plants on the earth in a sacred and holy way that refer to the blessings Changing Woman gave to sacred food plants for the well-being of the Diné people. Thus, in traditional Diné food ways, plants and animals that are consumed as food are sacred beings that must be treated with respect, from the germination of seeds to crop cultivation to the preparation of traditional dishes. According to Diné Natural Law, the Diné people have a sacred obligation to respect, protect, and preserve all beings that were placed on earth for them as people are stewards of these relatives, some of which cannot be consumed for food or any practices at all. Guidelines around what plants and animals are considered sacred maintain the balance found in the interconnected environment of Dinétah. This traditional ecological knowledge bridges together people, land, food, and culture. Because ongoing settler colonialism has forcibly relocated Dinétah to a food desert, Navajo food culture is now revolving around “survival foods” created in response to the inaccessibility of traditional foods, proper kitchen equipment, and cooking knowledge on the reservation. Previously, traditional sacred food practices, such as K’e in the planting and harvesting of traditional crops and wild foods, have relied on seasonality and were thus guided by the order of Nature. For example, prayers are always spoken before planting, harvesting, cooking, or sharing meals to maintain the spiritual connection Diné people share with all other more-than-human beings. As Diné elders point out, interactions with food are supposed to be group efforts among local extended family and community members, including the preparation of traditional foods. This cultivated food security by ensuring everyone who is involved in the process has access to these foods and learns the techniques necessary to keep them alive. Because elders are keepers of traditional knowledge, these communal gatherings engage Diné youth with their elders, through observing, participating, and performing the proper interactions with these sacred beings. The communal preparation of traditional foods from scratch, in addition to maintaining and passing on the spiritual connection to the earth, kept nutrient-related low. Elders are, therefore, integral to reclaiming food sovereignty and maintaining indigenous communities in balance with the earth in the Navajo Nation. As Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz notes, growing traditional food and restoring wild food sources is not enough if people don’t know how to respect or cook them, which is where communal preparations that encourage people of all different age groups to learn from elders and each other, which supports food sovereignty (Murphy, 2018). Additionally, as Denisa Livingston points out, smaller scales of seeding food sovereignty can also look like family members teaching their children and grandchildren to cook and value traditional foods (Murphy, 2018). Both are essential ways in which knowledge and wisdom are passed down, and, as we will discuss later, translate well to initiatives in accessible cooking classes that work with traditional foods. At its core, food sovereignty for Diné people does not rely on changing or bypassing the industrial food system currently in place in the United States. Choosing to buy local or USDA certified organic foods, which is not possible due to the inaccessibility currently and historically enforced by the US government. Food sovereignty is an independent entity that reclaims cultural practices, involves tribal members in mutual aid efforts to keep each other food secure, and is built off traditional knowledge and wisdom that bypasses western science. Fundamentally, the pathway to reclaiming food sovereignty in the Navajo Nation is through informal communal efforts that emphasize kinship ties with land, culture, and the keepers of traditional knowledge: Diné elders. From the combined forces of the industrial food system imposed by the US government and the lack of response to the COVID-19 pandemic, food sovereignty in the Navajo Nation has evolved to account for the protection of elders, and, consequently, traditional ecological and food knowledge.
Food Sovereignty in Practice In the opening pages of the Diné Food Sovereignty Report quotes the Declaration of Atitlán, Guatemala:
“‘The Right to Food of Indigenous Peoples is a collective right based on our special spiritual relationship with Mother Earth, our lands and territories, environment, and natural resources that provide our traditional nutrition; underscoring that the means of subsistence of Indigenous Peoples nourishes our cultures, languages, social life, worldview, and especially our relationship with Mother Earth; emphasizing that the denial of the Right to Food for Indigenous Peoples not only denies us our physical survival, but also denies us our social organization, our cultures, traditions, languages, spirituality, sovereignty, and total identity; it is a denial of our collective indigenous existence.
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect for their own cultures and their own systems of managing natural resources and rural areas, and is considered to be a precondition for food security.’” (Diné Policy Institute 7)
The Diné Food Sovereignty Report opens with this quote because it illuminates the powerful link between food, culture, kinship, and place and makes clear that all of those things cannot ever be separated from each other; Food sovereignty means more than simply having access to any kind of food but instead is a holistic and deeply personal way of life that is particular to the communities it supports. As we have seen, for the Diné people food is intimately tied to K’é and the struggle against ongoing settler colonialism, and thus a Diné food sovereignty that is specific to this kinship system and history is a necessary and beautiful thing. So what does this look like in practice? The Diné Food Sovereignty Report opens with a survey designed to answer that very question. The survey covered a number of different topics ranging from current food accessibility to education, but it’s most critical questions pertain to accessing traditional foods, challenges to producing and distributing food, and who should create the programs which will ensure food sovereignty. In a combination of survey data and subsequent interviews with elders, farmers, and other community members, the Food Sovereignty Report concludes that there is a huge interest within Diné communities to learn about traditional foods — both growing and selling — however people feel that there is a disjuncture between elders and knowledge holders and larger communities across the Navajo Nation. Many people pointed to education about traditional food as both essential to healing this disruption as well as asserting sovereignty as a nation. Education is a key component to Diné food sovereignty because it reinforces K’é through connecting generations and species, or as the Declaration of Atitlán states, “nourishes our cultures, languages, social life, worldview, and especially our relationship with Mother Earth.” (Diné Policy Institute 7) A second overarching theme in the Diné Food Sovereignty Report is the challenges to producing and distributing food. A number of issues were identified, such as GMOs (especially the insult of GMO corn), land permitting practices, and most prominently, climate change and federal “food safety” standards. The report mentions a number of climate change effects on the Diné food system, most notably the slow recharging of the aquifer and diminishing water availability and desertification, which has made finding appropriate grazing land difficult. The report suggests a growth of traditional farming practices which are well adapted to the arid region and use seeds and plants which are well equipped to grow in areas with little rainfall. Similar to the emphasis on climate-related factors (desertification, water, wind, shortened growing season), a large section of the report is dedicated to the difficulties of FDA and USDA standards. The standards set by the US Federal Government include incredibly complex and inaccessible permitting systems which have strict rules for the production of any food which will be sold commercially. These bureaucratic systems, much to the detriment of small farmers all over both the Navajo Nation and the US, require many foods to be processed at USDA certified facilities, none of which are near the surveyed Diné farming communities. If Diné farmers wish to sell food in, for example, a farm to school program or to a grocery store, they must ship all their produce out of the Navajo Nation for processing and then pay for it’s return, incentivizing the export of nutrition grown on Diné soil to surrounding colonizer communities. The report firmly states that Diné food sovereignty looks like the creation of sovereign food safety standards which allow for traditional methods of processing and distributing food which would never be permitted under a colonial government. The UDSA deliberately keeps permitting firmly in the hands of corporations who can afford the lawyers to navigate the bureaucratic process and the high cost of creating processing locations which are up to federal code. One final overarching theme of the report that we will touch on is: whose responsibility is the creation of a food sovereign Navajo Nation? The survey data overwhelmingly demonstrates that Diné people want Diné communities and their sovereign government to be the ones to develop systems for food sovereignty. The Diné people wish to rely on their own knowledges in order to create foodways that are well matched to their land and relationship with the earth, and that top down solutions, like education and food safety standards, should come from the Navajo Nation government rather than the US colonial state. As the Diné Food Sovereignty Report states: “Diné Food Sovereignty empowers Diné people by putting the Diné people, cooks, farmers, ranchers, hunters and wild food collectors at the center of decision-making on policies, strategies, and natural resource management” (Diné Policy Institute 64). There are a number of initiatives which are working to build Diné food sovereignty from the community up. While we don’t have the space here to explore a large number of them in depth, we would like to share a few ongoing projects before turning to a conversation about the most pressing issue at this time: COVID-19.
COVID-19 Support and Reclaiming Traditional Food Practices
For a few months, the Navajo Nation had the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the country, surpassing both New York State and New Jersey. The Navajo Nation (the largest Native American reservation in terms of both population and area) as of Nov. 18, has had 13,880 total confirmed cases and 613 confirmed deaths. The Navajo Nation tribal government provided little to no support in the early months of the outbreak. Due to the late start by tribal government to support their people, community members and outside organizers initiated their own means to provide assistance to those in need. From the start of the pandemic in early 2020 to present day, resources such as food, water, clothing and other necessary resources have been delivered across the 27,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation. Kinship, empathy and the desire to provide assistance to their people has spread relief and healing much farther than the bureaucracy could manage at that time. The statistics shown in the graph below demonstrates the physical damage that has been done, however the media is not and can not show the irreversible damage that has been done mentally and spiritually.  Daily Confirmed Cases on Navajo Nation The tragic loss of Diné elders has done harm that will continue to affect many generations long after vaccines have been distributed. Diné have not only lost elders but community members who would have passed down personal stories, culture, language, and medicine. Prior to the pandemic, Diné culture was already at risk of being lost because of the small number of people who have the knowledge to pass down tradition. With the combined damage of settler-colonialism and the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of all Native American and Indigenous people is crucial to the survival of tradition and lifestyle. Forced removal, boarding schools, and constant back and forth conflict between complicated federal policy and tribal law hinders Native Americans socio-economically, yet traditional practices incorporated with constant and rapidly developing technology plays a crucial role in reclaiming culture. Diné farmers and gardeners are a crucial part of a movement for food sovereignty. A majority of residents of the Navajo Nation travel to border towns to do their shopping, which includes food. The effort to give Indigenous peoples control of their food supply and nutrition starts with addressing the lack of access to healthy food. “We know that food is medicine, but it can also make us more sick,” said Denisa Livingston, a leading Diné community health advocate and the Slow Food International Indigenous Counselor of the Global North. “It can contaminate our health and well-being” (Nierenberg). While healthier food options like fresh fruits and vegetables are available at the few grocery stores on the Navajo Nation, the options are limited. Store offerings qualified as “junk food” and “sweetened beverages” are more readily available. Reviving traditional food practices must be done to incorporate healthy food in the daily lifestyle of the Diné with efforts being done by Diné gardeners, farmers and educators. Lack of resources have become a barrier for farming efforts because it’s necessary to prioritize education, jobs, and a steady income to achieve those resources. There are several barriers to seeing complete food sovereignty on the Navajo Nation, but the community is giving strong and continuous efforts to support those in need during these times of crisis. “Navajo Nation COVID-19 Dashboard.” Navajo Nation Department of Health,www.ndoh.navajo-nsn.gov/COVID-19/Data. Nierenberg, Amelia. “For the Navajo Nation, a Fight for Better Food Gains New Urgency.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Aug. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/dining/navajo-nation-food-coronavirus.html. Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund The largest grassroots relief fund, organized by Diné community members. They do constant deliveries of supplies, food, goods, aid. https://www.gofundme.com/f/NHFC19Relief
Dennehotso Families Covid-19 Relief Fund Grassroots collective started in part by Navajo chef Brian Yazzie with a mission to provide food and necessities to elders and families in need during the pandemic, focusing on Dennehotso, AZ and surrounding areas. https://www.gofundme.com/f/dennehotso-families-covid19-relief-fund?sharetype=teams&member=4462262&ut
NavajoStrong Founded by Bud Frazier (Diné), NavajoStrong has served over 200 families and continues to expand. They collect monetary and supplies donations and distribute them across the reservation. https://www.navajostrong.com/get-involved
Nihi K’é Baa’ (For Our Relatives) Mutual Aid A collective made up of Indigenous people, undocumented migrant relatives, womxn, femmes, LGBTQ2Spirit relatives, volunteers, community organizers, frontline workers, land defenders/water protectors who are supporting those who need help through Indigenous mutual aid, food and water radical redistribution for the most vulnerable, pet/cattle food distribution, etc. Also asking for support and solidarity for long-term healing of damage caused by the fossil fuel industry and years of extreme resource extraction through sustainable projects, seed and food justice/sovereignty.
K’é Infoshop A self-funded Indigenous community organizing space that hosts critical discourse and mutual aid towards the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. They feed the unsheltered every Saturday morning, host talking circles, food bank with organic ingredients, hold workshops, build a public library, provide free secure internet access and security training, and anything else to engage our relatives in a healthy manner to critically analyze the state of Dinétah.
Protect Native Elders Located in Dinétah (Northern area), Protect Native Elders provides essentials and supplies to elders in need.
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