The pandemic has compounded a host of systemic issues in the United States, including food insecurity in Indian Country. In an interview for High Country News, Brian Oaster spoke with the Native American Agriculture Fund’s CEO Toni Stanger-McLaughlin (Colville) to learn more about the special January 2022 report Reimagining Hunger Responses in Times of Crisis. Supply chain problems caused extreme delays in usual deliveries, meaning many went without access to basic necessities. In response, various Native organizations and self-governing communities are using data sovereignty to obtain federal funds that could transform local agricultural infrastructure.
“For the first time, we’re going to take ownership of our data, and also the messaging and how the data is going to be interpreted,” said Stranger-McLaughlin.
Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF) partnered with the Indigenous Food and Agricultural Initiative (INAI) and the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) to research and develop the report in an effort to educate Congress about the importance of local agricultural production in indigenous communities. The report discovered that Native households are faced with food insecurity at vastly higher rates compared to their white counterparts. About 48 percent of over 500 indigenous respondents shared that “sometimes or often during the pandemic the food their household bought just didn’t last, and they didn’t have money to get more.”
NAAF, INAI, and FRAC discovered that Native communities more often turn to their tribal governments for help rather than benefit cards, which are useless in rural areas where there are no nearby food stores. Farm-to-family direct sales became an increasingly popular way of acquiring food during the pandemic. Since shifting to this more self-reliant practice of producing and selling locally, instead of selling to stockyards who sell to processing plants, there has been reduction in transportation and storage costs. NAAF hopes that prioritizing Native-driven data collection will ultimately empower tribes who have waited too long on Washington leaders to make the right calls.
Food insecurity has shown up in many recent corporate news headlines, most often related to global havoc wreaked by the pandemic or climate change. In August 2020, the New York Times covered food deserts affecting members of the Navajo nation, and in December 2021 the Washington Post reported on farmers adapting indigenous peoples’ sustainable farming efforts amidst dire water shortages. However, one noticeable gap in this coverage is the work being done by indigenous communities to develop solutions to historic inequity.
Source: Brian Oaster, “The First Answer for Food Insecurity: Data Sovereignty,” High Country News, February 11, 2022.
Student Researchers: Emily Inman, Emma Stankiewicz, Maria Trifiro, and Kristina Vartanian (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Faculty Evaluator: Allison Butler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
The post Indigenous Communities Using Data Sovereignty To Solve Food Insecurity appeared first on Project Censored.
This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.
Vins | Radio Free (2022-03-31T21:27:06+00:00) Indigenous Communities Using Data Sovereignty To Solve Food Insecurity. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/31/indigenous-communities-using-data-sovereignty-to-solve-food-insecurity/
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