Tribes create their own food laws to stop USDA from killing native food economies
SALT
RIVER PIMA-MARICOPA INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. – Jacob Butler eyed a lemon
tree—its bright yellow fruit nestled among thick green leaves and set
against the blue Arizona sky—then checked on the tiny pomegranates and
grapes in the garden as a black-striped lizard darted into the shade of a
mesquite tree. In the distance, downtown Phoenix glittered under the
rising sun.
“We
try to grow what’s been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,”
says Butler, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden
coordinator, as he surveyed the land and the plants growing on it. “For
the past 13 years we’ve been doing this, so it’s in the minds of the
people now.”
Traditionally,
Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew lima beans, squash, corn, and
other vegetables; used mesquite trees for food, medicine, and other
practical purposes; and relied on wild game for food. Today, about
12,000 acres of their reservation are used for industrial
farming—cotton, alfalfa, potatoes, and other commercial crops—but, in
the garden where Butler works, agriculture isn’t a financial boon: It’s a
way to strengthen and cultivate culture.
“What
are the stories that go along with this tree? What’s the story we tell
that says when squash came to the people or corn came to the people?
What are the songs that go with those things?” says Butler. “That’s what
we incorporate here: Our garden is a platform to perpetuate our
culture.”
According
to Butler, tribal members once cultivated myriad varieties of beans,
squash, and melons. Now, many of those crops have become extinct and
their stories lost, and losing other heirloom foods would have
irreversible effects on cultural practices.
Indigenous
communities have been sustained by thousands of years of food
knowledge. But recent federal food safety rules could cripple those
traditional systems and prevent the growth of agricultural economies in
Indian Country, according to advocates and attorneys. Of the 567 tribal
nations in the United States, only a handful have adopted laws that
address food production and processing. Without functioning laws around
food, tribes engaged in anything from farming to food handling and
animal health are ceding power to state and federal authorities.
To
protect tribal food systems, those advocates and attorneys are taking
the law into their own hands, literally, by writing comprehensive food
codes that can be adopted by tribes and used to effectively circumvent
federal food safety codes. Because tribes retain sovereignty—complicated
and sometimes limited though it may be—they can assert an equal right
with the federal government to establish regulations for food handling.
“Tribal
sovereignty is food sovereignty, and how do you assert food
sovereignty?” says A-dae Romero-Briones, a consultant with the First
Nations Development Institute, an economic development organization.
“You do that through a tribal code.”
Food
codes and laws are basic legislation governing agriculture and food
processing. Food codes are good things: They are designed to protect
consumers from products that could make them sick or even kill them, as
with a national salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter in 2008,
and, more recently, E. Coli outbreaks at Chipotle restaurants in 11
states.
Since
2011, food laws have become tougher, thanks to the Food Safety
Modernization Act (FSMA), the first major rewrite of U.S. food-safety
laws in more than 50 years. Under FSMA, producers must take into account
everything from the packaging and refrigeration of products to how
crops are grown, all in the name of safety. These safety controls raise
interesting questions in Indian Country.
- Traditionally, Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew lima beans, squash, corn, and other vegetables. Today, about 12,000 acres of their reservation are used for industrial farming. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.
In
many Native communities, for example, access to certified kitchens and
state-of-the-art facilities is slim to nonexistent. That means producers
often must rely on traditional knowledge to make foods that are safe
for consumption. One example, says Romero-Briones, is blue corn
products.
“That’s
an industry that has existed for generations,” she says. “But if you
want to produce it or process it in traditional fashions, you’re
probably not going to be able to do that because you’re going to have to
do it in a certified kitchen.”
Under
FSMA, tribal food economies face two options: Assimilate by complying
with federal law or keep tribal food products confined to the
reservation.
“It’s
one thing to say that we have to develop food and process food in
certain ways, but it’s another thing to recognize that tribes have their
own versions of food safety,” says Romero-Briones. “Tribes have been developing food economies for thousands of years.”
Another
example of how traditional foods are impacted is buffalo slaughter.
Dozens of tribes from the Dakotas to Oklahoma are engaged in buffalo
management and harvesting. But those hoping to get buffalo products into
markets outside of tribal communities often face big hurdles.
Buffalo,
for example, is considered an exotic animal under federal guidelines,
says Dan Cornelius, with the Intertribal Agriculture Council. And that
has repercussions when it comes to what the federal government will
support.
“For domestic animals, USDA will pay for the cost of that inspector. For exotics, they don’t,” Cornelius says.
Inspections
can run as high as $70 an animal, and all buffalo products must be
processed in an FDA-approved facility. By implementing food codes,
tribes could find alternative ways to getting buffalo meat inspected and
processed. Cornelius says building an infrastructure that lowers costs
would allow buffalo meat to get to market faster.
“Ultimately,
is it a safe process? If it is, then how can you develop a tribally
specific provision that still is ensuring a safe and healthy food but is
addressing that barrier where there is a conflict?” he says.
So
how do 567 different tribes with 567 different traditions, needs, and
goals go about writing food codes specific to their cultural heritages?
They call a lawyer. Specifically, Janie Hipp, director of the Indigenous
Food and Agriculture Initiative, a legal think tank at the University
of Arkansas.
Hipp,
a former senior advisor for tribal relations at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, says her office has already received dozens of calls from
tribal governments about food inspection and how to get tribal products
off reservation and into other markets.
One
area of concern has been general food safety. With the passage of FSMA,
laws governing how food is grown, processed, and handled are changing
rapidly.
According
to Hipp, tribal governments need to respond, not only to protect their
own producers, but also to protect their own existing food production
systems.
- Jacob Butler in the seed bank. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.
Intellectual
property is another priority. Many tribes have specific, traditional
uses for seeds, crops, and livestock, and, without laws to protect a
tribe’s unique use of a particular plant or animal, a corporation could
trademark and commercialize that product—anything from Wojapi, a Lakota
dessert made from berries, to Piki, a traditional Hopi bread made from
cornmeal.
“Having
nothing on the books is not an option anymore,” says Hipp. “Regardless
of whether it’s a commercialized product or a traditional and very
sheltered and protected product, the law needs to be robust in that
area.”
The
development of tribal food codes isn’t a copy-and-paste job, though.
It’s more of a choose-your-own-adventure situation where newly written
laws can be adopted, then tweaked to an individual tribe’s needs. As
portions of the code are written, they’re made public so tribal
governments can start adapting them. So far, Hipp says the Indigenous
Food and Agriculture Initiative has had more than a dozen meetings with
tribes.
“I
don’t think it does anybody any good for us to just sit and bake it up
for three years,” said Hipp. “We would prefer to roll things out, get in
touch, modify, have it be a more organic process than to just have
everybody sitting outside the room waiting for the release.”
Back
at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden, Jacob Butler
pulled a brown paper bag off a shelf. He dipped his hand into the bag
and produced a fistful of white pea seeds.
- Most of the seeds in the seed bank are heirlooms with genealogies stretching back hundreds of years. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.
“My
generation and generations before me, we all went to school outside of
the community,” says Butler. “None of us really got taught our culture
directly at home because our parents were taught that it was a detriment
to our success.”
The
seed bank is currently housed in a janitor’s closet with brown paper
bags, plastic bottles, and glass containers full of pinto-striped runner
beans, amaranth, basil, luffa, corn, and dozens of other seeds. But
Butler says he has concerns for their future.
“For
me, it’s cross-contamination with [genetically modified] seeds,” he
says. “If this was to become a bigger enterprise, where we were growing
traditional foods for sale, then are we putting our seeds at risk?”
Most
of the seeds are heirlooms with genealogies stretching back hundreds of
years, and Butler says one of his next projects is to meticulously
catalogue every item in the bank for future Pima and Maricopa farmers.
“There
are kids that have grown up being a part of this program that know
right off the bat, ‘Oh hey, that’s a Keli Baasho or a muskmelon,’”
Butler says as he looked around the shelves. “That word Keli Baashomeans ‘old man’s chest,’ so they’re associating that melon with language.”
With
food and culture so intimately intertwined and vital to the survival of
Salt River, the tribe has some big ideas to consider when it comes to
the future of agriculture: Will it be commercial or traditional? What
constitutes organic? How will the few remaining heirloom crops be
protected from GMO contamination? Will Pima and Maricopa crops be sold,
and, if so, how will they be kept safe for consumers? Salt River has yet
to decide on those issues, and Butler says adopting a comprehensive
food code would start the process of strengthening the tribe’s future:
Native people growing native foods, protected and guided by native
laws.
“It’s a conversation we should be having,” says Butler. “People are wanting to see change.”
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