Stories
In the film
Nephi Craig
White Mountain Apache
Nephi Craig is the founder of the Native American Culinary Association, a network of Native cooks, chefs, scholars, farmers, and community members devoted to the development and preservation of Native American foodways.
He recently launched Café Gozhóó, a restaurant and nutritional recovery clinic under the aegis of the Rainbow Treatment Center.
Twila Cassadore
San Carlos Apache
Twila Cassadore has been working with San Carlos Apache, White Mountain Apache, and Yavapai peoples for the past 25 years, conducting interviews with elders to bring information back into the community to address health and social problems. With the Western Apache Diet Project, Twila has documented the importance of foods like grass seeds and acorn seeds to the diets of Apaches before people were moved onto reservations and became reliant on rations, and later, commodities.
Samuel Gensaw
Yurok
Samuel Gensaw is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe and a co-founder of the Ancestral Guard, committed to the foodways of the North Coast California indigenous as well as supporting indigenous environmental movements worldwide.
Elsie DuBray
Cheyenne River Sioux Nation
Elsie DuBray is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation and is currently attending Stanford University as an undergraduate. Her analysis of lipid structure in buffalo meat, which her family raises and harvests, took her to the Intel World Science Fair, where she placed fourth in the biology division in 2018. Elsie is committed to using the resources of Stanford’s biological sciences program to further her research of traditional indigenous diets as a way to combat the diabetes epidemic in Indian Country.
Clayton Harvey
White Mountain Apache
Clayton Harvey has been working integrally with the White Mountain Apache community to build safe and healthy farming systems, beginning with Ndée Bikíyaa, the People’s Farm. Clayton manages this fully functioning farm which delivers high quality produce to schools and other facilities. He also runs a number of educational and preventative care workshops to encourage healthy eating amongst Apaches.
Journalism Project
In 2017, 2018, and 2019, Gather hired a number of Native American journalists and photographers to report on key issues of food sovereignty in Indian Country. The project was helmed by Kim Baca (former Interim Director of the Native American Journalists Association). We then pitched these stories to publications inside and outside Indian Country to great success.
Topics were as varied as Native Hawaiian fish ponds to Navajo Beef, truly showcasing the spectrum of amazing work on Native food sovereignty.
A Native Community Preserves its Food Traditions
Members of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation are keeping traditional foodways alive in the face of climate change and human impact.
American Indians strive to restore nearly lost tribal food traditions
Despite a growing awareness, Northern California tribal members struggle for the right to gather foods like acorns, mussels and surf fish that have sustained their tribes for thousands of years.
Organic reach: Food sovereignty moves to the web
Colonial contact brought foreign food and disease to tribal nations. Now, a digital generation is reconnecting with tradition.
Native Communities are Fighting for a More Inclusive Farm Bill
Farm policy has long ignored tribal governments and communities. A coalition of tribes aims to change that.