Part Two:
Food’s pathway to the past and the present
Photo credit: Joel Wigelsworth
Plants like corn, beans, squash and tobacco are so integrated into the science, diet and spiritual life within Diné culture that when the tribe was forcibly separated from their land in the mid-1800s [see part one of Through Food], it meant more than just relocation. It was a violent and intentional attempt to separate and exterminate tribal identity by any means necessary. It was genocide.
Andi Murphy (Diné) a journalist, podcast host and part of the present-day indigenous food movement, has spent the last four years exploring the links between connectivity, food, and Indigenous resilience with her award winning podcast, Toasted Sister, a show dedicated to storytelling through food. Over the course of two, hour-long calls with me in January 2021, Murphy shared her journey into journalism, podcasting and food, food’s relationship with Native culture, and the success and significance of her podcast within the Indigenous food movement. She explains:
“Food has opened up a lot for me. It’s given me a sense of connection to this whole big Native world. Connections are everything…for some there’s that spiritual connection that people feel with food. The connection to tradition – you’re not just learning about food but the cultural aspects; language, taboos, origin stories, ceremony, health, connection to the environment, to Earth, and the realisation that we can’t have any of this if we can’t have water, good clean land.
I’ve learned a lot about Indigenous science through all of this. I mean lots of people think that Natives were just here eating things off the trees but there was a whole science behind it. Think about star gazing and using the stars and the moon to tell time and figure out when your plants are supposed to be planted or harvested. Learning from the animals. All of it is science. It’s all about connectivity. It’s like in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding when the dad is like “take any word and I’ll show you the Greek root of it.” Well, give me any topic and I’ll show you how it connects to food and how that originated in Native communities – any topic!”
Erasing the shame of commodity foods
Due to continual and unrelenting interferences from the American government, the Diné economy began to shift away from reliance on the land to reliance on the purchase of commercial food products and the federal Commodity Food Programme. The programme, which began in 1959, included supplemental food deliveries to the Dine community living on reservations. According to a report in 2012 by the Diné Policy Institute (DPI) - 63% of respondents surveyed indicated that they receive aid from at least one form of food assistance programming, while many indicated that they participate in two, or multiple programs. This, as the report continued to outline, is a reflection of economic disparity and lack of access to resources and agricultural infrastructure within the reservation itself.
The same report fro