Health & Healing through Ancestral Agriculture
Food plays a connective role in Indigenous culture and traditions. Growing food enables communities to be resilient, transfer cultural knowledge, and connect to land and place. Meet two organizations that are developing community-based food systems to ensure food resiliency in Native communities. Learn more about their efforts to revive traditional and ancestral foods – integral to food sovereignty– and how they are revitalizing cultural and community health.
Creating a San Carlos Food Hub
Nalwoodi Denzhone Community (NDC) is a non-profit organization located in San Carlos that is working to strengthen the Apache community through food education and food growing. Through its partnership with United Food Bank, NDC assists in the distribution of food boxes to community members and is building a food hub that grows native food crops and offers cooking and gardening workshops and classes.
NDC is located at an old tree farm that was dormant for 11 years until NDC began revitalizing the land and rebuilding the burnt-down farmhouse in 2014. The organization added garden plots and has since expanded its growing operations. They are currently incorporating regenerative practices that work in harmony with the land. Through their efforts, residents can reconnect with the land, their ancestral roots, and find pride in the resurgence of traditional Apache values and food. NDC grew nearly 3,000 pounds of produce on their farm in 2020, including the return of native crops, such as the Apache Giant Squash and Apache Red Sugarcane. NDC continues to grow these traditional foods for the community while preserving the seeds.
The Evolving NDC
The harsh summer season means limited growing and available produce. The team at NDC has shifted toward regenerative practices as the next phase of their farming journey. For several years, in addition to their garden plots and farm, NDC has raised hens. Their eggs and produce are distributed to several nearby cafes that serve freshly made meals using local ingredients.
NDC’s chicken coop project, which started out several years ago as an educational tool for teaching visiting school children where food comes from, has now transformed into a chicken tractor. This moveable shaded structure allows their chickens to roam free and graze on the farm as the chicken tractor is moved from one area to the next. The chickens eat the weeds and insects, as well as fertilize and revitalize the grow plots to help prepare the land for the next growing season.
NDC’s engagement with the community is a crucial component of its mission. Their educational outreach includes workshops, cooking classes, and hosting food-focused events like farmers markets and an annual fall harvest. Additionally, they offer youth programs that provide food education and hands-on growing classes. The NDC staff also volunteers at a nearby children’s home in Globe, AZ where they manage a chicken coop with hens and teach the children how to care for the chickens.
A fully built community kitchen and meeting space at NDC welcomes chefs, cooks, and health educators who provide cooking demonstrations and workshops to residents. Eric Shin, NDC’s Director of Operations, also shared that recent grant funding will enable the organization to expand its facility to include a farm store. The store will provide fresh produce and eggs from the NDC farm, as well as produce and other food products from local farmers and producers in the area.
NDC will be hosting its annual Fall Fest on October 22nd. Click here to learn more about NDC or watch the Good Food Film that talks about the partnership between NDC and the United Food Bank.
Celebrating Apache Foodways and Culture - Ndee Bikiyaa: The People’s Farm
Nearly a two-hour drive north of NDC and tucked away in the White Mountains sits a lush, vibrant farming community that serves as a beautiful example of a community-based food system in action. The mission of Ndee Bikiyaa: The People’s Farm is to revitalize traditional lifestyles and restore personal and cultural health among the White Mountain Apache community through agriculture, food, and providing work experience and job opportunities for its youth and residents.
The People’s Farm is grounded in the food sovereignty movement and demonstrates how a community can come together to create a dynamic food system that nourishes and provides for its residents. Near the farm sits a local restaurant, Café Gozhóó, that offers vocational training for the nearby Rainbow Treatment Center and serves Indigenous meals created by Chef Nephi Craig. The meals feature local ingredients foraged or grown by residents and those at the People’s Farm.
The People’s’ Farm initially began as a for-profit farming venture by the US Economic Development Administration to plant alfalfa and rye in the 1980s but became fallow in the 1990s. As a way to quantify and safeguard the tribe’s water rights and develop its water use, in 2005 they reactivated the farm and converted it into 120 acres of hay production, a two-acre micro-farm, a community garden space, and several hoop houses. The farm continues to be developed into a vital community food initiative.
Focusing on Indigenous Food Culture
The People’s Farm encourages community members to grow traditional foods by providing garden plots and communal farming resources, such as a tool library, a tractor rental program, and educational and instructional courses on soil health, planting techniques, and irrigation practices. The farm also hosts food events such as farmers markets, food co-ops, harvest festivals, and cooking classes to connect with the community. A bustling farm store located on the land sells produce that is grown a few feet away or from nearby farms, plant starts, foraged food such as sumac berries and wild tea, and regional products like sacred river salt, “Apache Grown” corn flour products, and ancestral seeds. The farm store also stocks different types of Indigenous-produced products, which allows the community to purchase from other tribes for items such as coffee, wild rice, wild blueberry syrup, and elderberry balsamic vinegar. These products are available to residents at a minimal cost.
The farm works closely with the youth, hosting seasonal summer camps and workshops that connect younger generations to their ancestral food and farming traditions. Young adults are given the opportunity to apprentice on the farm to gain farming skills, tractor and machine operating experience, food entrepreneurship know-how, as well as customer service and communication skills by working at the farm store. Volunteers, interns, and seasonal employees are also an integral part of the farm structure.
Like many farming communities in Arizona, the People’s Farm struggles with water challenges. While the river flows near the farm, the farmers have limited resources to help them pull water from the river to irrigate their crops, leaving them to truck in and manually store the water. A recent partnership with the United Food Bank, however, has provided them with the funding to purchase a pump that moves water from the river to the farm more efficiently and enables them to expand their growing operations and strengthen their ability to feed their community.
Come and experience this amazing Indigenous food community! The People’s Farm will be hosting its Harvest Festival on Friday, September 16th from 9 am to 2 pm with special cooking demonstrations by Chef Nephi Craig and farm activities that showcase the wonderful work being done at The People’s Farm. To learn more about the harvest and the farm, follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
