Gather — Growing a food movement
This is not just another documentary to save the poor marginalized people, affected by the cruelty of colonialism but a celebration of food sovereignty and a call to action; promoting the efforts of many distinguished Natives that have fought to save their communities from poverty, hunger, and disease through Food sovereignty. So, what is Food sovereignty — it is a myriad of local efforts to transform and reclaim local food systems, while combating hunger. This includes increasing access to healthy and traditional foods, also enhancing community health, and creating food policies to target food as a path for entrepreneurship and economic development. The Natives highlighted in Gather have chosen to rise above extenuating circumstances to restore the food systems in their community through entrepreneurship and science.
The industrialization of food is one of the many issues highlighted in the documentary, that is affecting our acknowledgment of the need for sovereignty. The industrialization of food, has made us increasingly desensitized to our food sources. We do not know where our food come from and for the most of us, we do not care. While many of us can afford this luxury of ignorance, Natives with limited access to resources cannot. If natives were to depend only on the current food system, they would have to live with the existing consequences; diabetics, obesity and many other health issues. Additionally, since the quality of food available and affordable to natives through our current food ways is lowest nutritional value, they have to depend on localized farming to restore food sources that would negate the current health isuues faced in their community. In an effort to restore the local food sources, Chef Nephi, a native western chef have found innovate ways to use the local food resources to help his community by creating café Gozhoo. This cafe has served both as a way to restore local food sources for the local community and an opportunity for natives going through substance abuse to seek sobriety through cooking. Chef Nephi explains in the documentary, “it’s an edible education in indigenous resurgence in western Apacheria”. For many indegenious people food should not just be a packed substance in a store but a way to connect with community, mother nature and an in depth spirituality of how food makes us who we are as people.
Gather also highlights younger generation stepping up to protect local food sources aswell. Elsie Dubray a high schooler, interested in how her family raises and harvest buffalos decided to take that a step further with her analysis of lipid structure in buffalo meat. Her research analysed the benefits of eating a beef-based diet versus a traditional Lakota diet based on Buffalo. Her father — Fred Dubray has dedicated his life to bringing the buffalos back to the traditional land, so fighting the cattle industry, has been an uphill battle for her and her family. Evenmore, Elsie’s current research threatens the powerful cattle industry. Despite the extenuating circumstances, she is determined in her continuous fight to help the many health issues in the Native community through science. while working on her science project she explains “I wasn’t always the traditional type but I have discovered lifestyle, and truth in my heritage. I want to educate the scientific community with traditional knowledge and make younger natives care about their culture”.
While Gather brings to light many limitations faced in the Native American community to revitalize their land, we can all contribute to this fight for food sovereignty by expanding the food sources available to these community, give more funding to entrepreneurial projects like Café Ghozoo that promotes Natives food sovereignty and economic development. We can enable younger generation like Elsie to incorporate their cultural heritage into science to help save the local food systems.
Saving Indigenous food systems should not be a fight for just the natives but a Global issue against food scarcity, the health issues in these communities and the marginlization of their food system. If we can solve these problems we can increase the quality of live in these communities, and create more biodiversity in our food system. We cannot be bystanders anymore, we must join this fight. Our current food system has benefited on discriminating certain ethnic groups, profiting on the majority and extracting resources that have depleted our ability to grow or connect to our food sources. So we must stop this injustice and fight with the Natives for the revitalization of our land and a food system that connects us all.
