#abenaki — Public Fediverse posts

#NiweskokCollective Advances #FoodSovereignty and Obtains Land

"#Niweskok (From the Stars to Seeds) is a nonprofit collaboration of #Wabanaki farmers, health professionals, and educators working to revitalize food systems for tribes in northeast #Wabanakik (#Maine). The collection is responsible for reclaiming traditional foods & healing for their communities, their peoples of the #WabanakiConfederacy (#Penobscot, #Wolastoqiyik, #Mikmaq, #Passamaquoddy, #Abenaki), by practicing and promoting traditional crop cultivation, land-based education, and fisheries revitalization.

"From Tribal Business News’ article Wabanaki food sovereignty group secures no-strings land deal by Chez Oxendine, Niweskok has secured 245 acres of a piece of land called the #GooseRiverFarm in Wabanakik through innovative methods. This effort is an example of #Indigenous Sovereignty and self-determination through unconventional means. For the first time, Niweskok will have a permanent base for its programs after years of operating on borrowed and leased lands, according to co-director Alivia Moore to Tribal Business News.

Partners and Funding

"A coalition of 12 organizations and several private donors, including the #MaineFarmlandTrust and the #CoastalMountainsLandTrust, helped secure the land for Niweskok without easements, giving the Wabanaki nonprofit sovereignty over the property. Easements frequently accompany land returns or transfers which are often well-meaning. However, they can create barriers to Indigenous sovereignty and land management by preventing practices such as prescribed burning and fishing or zoning preventing buildings or infrastructure. Without restriction, Niwekok can continue to practice self-determination and food sovereignty, preserve the culture and traditions of the Wabanaki Confederation, and create a strong community."

https://www.indigenouscop.org/food-systems-agriculture/niweskok

#SolarPunkSunday #TraditionalFoods #Sovereignty #IndigenousFoodSovereignty #IndigeousAgriculture #BuildingCommunity #CulturalPreservation #LandConservation #IndigenousPeoplesDay

Getting to know our food, and how being good stewards of the land can help us eat better

by Katharine A. Jameson, Vermont Country magazine
03/01/2024

Excerpt: "Learning from the land

"Chief Stevens points out that it’s all in one’s perspective. He gives the example of #dandelions. 'You might look at them as a weed but I might look at them as a food source,' he explains, noting the wine and greens for which they’re used.

"When Europeans arrived in what they later named Vermont, they saw the lush #ForestGardens Natives had fostered, but didn’t recognize that it had been cultivated. 'The sophistication of the agriculture system was so high that people couldn’t see it at all. It just looked like abundant wild lands, but really they were so abundant because of our deep connection and long-term #stewardship of them,' #Abenaki tribal member, #JohnHunt describes in a new, short film posted to YouTube about Abenaki food systems.

"What can we learn from these growth practices? Professor Tiana Baca of Sterling College explains in this film: 'Nature doesn’t grow in #monocrops.' She notes that Native people’s lush gardens maximized yields by #CompanionPlanting crops like the #ThreeSisters. 'The three sisters is a companion planting group of corn, beans and squash. They’re plants that grow together and support each other. The corn is growing up, it’s providing this living trellis. The beans use that to climb on. The beans are then fixing nitrogen and supporting the growth of the corn and then the squash plant kind of sprawls out and creates this living mulch. All of them working together makes all of them produce better.'

"Respect runs deep in the Abenaki tradition. From the elders and ancestors from whom they learn to the food and animals they consume, they bless the animals they dispatch with tobacco and hold sacred the chain of custody of each of their seeds.

" 'We have to have some foresight about it. Treating the land with respect and not looking at it always through our need, but as a collective community need. In the old days we used to look at community more than individual needs.' Stevens discusses the Native mentality that land, contrary to the European way, is to be shared by all creatures, not owned.

" 'There is hope,' Chief Stevens says. 'There is a way to reconnect and change the outcomes of what is happening. But the only way to do that is to put the effort, time and resources into connecting with us, the native people and others to try to remember that historical knowledge of connection to our land, our animals and our wild food sources. The forests and the wild foods sustained our people for thousands of years. Why would we not think it wouldn’t do that now?'

"The Chief set out a few things we can all do to help save the planet."

https://vermontcountry.com/2024/03/01/abenaki-food-systems-native-stewardship/

#NativeAmericanHistory #NativeAmericanFood #FoodSovereignty #FoodForests #Stewardship #RelationshipToPlace #SolarpunkSunday #KnowWhereYourFoodComesFrom