Native Foods Celebration Highlights Access to Plants for Health, Identity, Community

For millennia, Native Californians have stewarded landscapes using practices based on long-held traditional knowledge of local ecosystems and tools such as controlled fire. The result has been cultivation, harvest and use of native plants for food, fiber, tools, shelter and fuel.

But to continue in that cultural lifestyle, Native people need access to those places. They need health services that include consideration of how food can be medicine. They want to be a part of the conversations about how all that happens.

And, their voices can contribute to addressing critical challenges faced by the larger society.

These are some of the key themes that emerged from the first-ever California Native Plant Foods Celebration and Symposium, held recently at UC Davis.

This all-day event grew from collaboration among representatives of the UC Davis Departments of Plant Sciences, Native American Studies, and Nutrition; UC Agriculture and Natural Resources; and Californian Native communities. It included cultural demonstrations and panels revolving around Native plant foods, along with activities and meals for attendees that emphasized the web of connections among people, plants and the land. 

“Our goal is to promote trustful, respectful communication between the university and Tribal communities,” said Dan Potter, chair of the Department of Plant Sciences, who conceived the original idea for the event. “Plant foods are central components of culture that connect traditional knowledge, land stewardship and nutrition… We hope to create a welcoming space for listening and learning” that will lead to “building relationships that are ethical, community-led and mutually beneficial.”

Several demonstrations showcased the preparation of Native foods such as sour berries and acorns. Lois Conner Bohna, a member of the North Fork Mono people, crushed and boiled acorns into a fragrant paste as part of a traditional process involving soapstone tools and century-old baskets handwoven by her grandmother. Acorn paste, with a pleasantly woody taste and soft, tofu-like texture, has been an important staple in Native diets for thousands of years. 

“I learned this from my mother, who learned from my grandma,” Bohna said. “It’s a very labor-intensive process.”

Gladys McKinney and her sisters, members of the Dunlop Band of Mono people, exhibited the various uses and nutritional benefits of foods such as sour lemonade: Sour berries grow in the region and are crushed into a refreshing and tangy drink. “When I was a kid, this was our candy,” McKinney said, holding a small, round fresh sour berry. She and her sisters also shared traditional recipes using various plants and their importance in maintaining cultural identity.

“We want people to appreciate the food for what it was originally. It’s important to see the original process and the benefits of these foods,” said Julie Tex, McKinney’s younger sister. She offered the example of acorns: “Acorns are good for blood sugar, have lots of nutrients and have kept the community healthy.”

Native plant foods such as berries, acorns, nuts and more provide key nutritional benefits for the Tribal communities that have used them for centuries. But as a result of European-American colonization and shrinking access to lands, Native communities across the United States have faced challenges in keeping alive what they call foodways -- the interconnected practices of tending and harvesting plants, using them, and stewarding the land they share.

The event highlighted the critical role traditional foods play in people’s diets and how removing access to these foods and nutrients endangers the communities. 

Panels: Food, health, medicine & business

Led by researchers and Tribal leaders, speakers on the four panels offered insight into how Native peoples’ relationship with food has been altered by colonization. At one panel, speakers talking about the nutrition of Native plant foods and the discrepancy with land access. All the panelists emphasized the important connection between the people and their land, spanning from cultural customs to nutrition to healthcare. 

Sage LaPena, a certified medical herbalist and member of the Nomtipom Wintu Tribe, explained the importance of native plants in Tribal medicine, and the difference between herbal medicines used historically and conventional medical treatment. She encouraged primary care physicians to have conversations with Native herbalists to understand how plant medicine can serve patients in a well-rounded and culturally appropriate way.

“This is building momentum,” LaPena said. “This is something we can and must bring to people who are unable to access this medicine.”

Emilio Daniel Siaz, a Ph.D. student at UC Davis in nutritional biology and member of the Pit River Tribe, underscored the importance of Tribal customs and intergenerational experience. The cultural and historic connection Native peoples had with their land allowed them to pass on their knowledge and traditions to future generations. As farming, logging, mining and development encroached, access to much of their ancestral land has become restricted, limiting current ecological knowledge. 

Panelists also emphasized the link between nourishment and medicine, both found in native plant foods. Pointing to conditions plaguing Native people such as diabetes, they argued that limiting access to traditional foods creates health problems and food insecurity for communities. 

In addition, many of the plants used in traditional Native practices often are endangered because they thrive in niche microclimates.

 There are some small-scale projects to make native plant foods available to people who cannot access these foods easily and to commercialize plant-based products to a broader market. However, panelists emphasized that traditional plants cannot be industrially grown, nor is that their desire.

“There is a lot of historical trauma related here,” said Viviana Vega, a student at UC Davis and a member of the Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians. She is co-founder with her sister, Kristall Vega, of an enterprise that makes packaged acorn snacks with the aim of reconnecting Native people to ancestral foods. “What we’re doing is trying to heal that (trauma). Whether (the product) is to be shared beyond the Tribes is up to the Tribes.”

Instead, panelists returned frequently to the issue of accessing native plants with the same liberty that their ancestors enjoyed. The collective health of their communities depends on enlarging access to plants for nutrition and wellness, they argued.

Move forward by listening, planting, building trust

To address some of these issues, researchers must take into account the cultural needs of Native communities, panelists advised. 

Garden specialist Ellen Sanders-Raigosa discussed the work of the Intertribal Agriculture Council, the nation's largest and oldest Native American agriculture and natural resources organization, to restore traditional ecological knowledge to Tribal members. Projects include restoring landscapes, training people in cultural burning, building partnerships, mentoring and supporting intergenerational sharing.

She and Abbey Hart, nursery manager at the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, described training Native nursery professionals in nursery management in a program hosted jointly by the council and arboretum.

Sanders-Raigosa also highlighted several plant nurseries established by Native communities to supply restoration efforts. She is a member of the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians and works at Potawot Community Food Garden. 

By reviving and centering themselves in their traditional ecological knowledge, Native people can strengthen their foodways and make them more resilient in the face of climate change and other challenges, argued Ali Meders-Knight, executive director of California Open Lands, a Native-led nonprofit. This knowledge includes practices such as cultural use of fire to burn landscapes in a controlled manner. When coupled with scientific methodology and monitoring of outcomes, traditional knowledge can be a powerful tool for managing public and private lands, presenting an opportunity to collaborate with state officials and others. Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member.

Michelle Villegas-Frazier, one of the event co-organizers, called on the university and researchers to support Tribal communities by taking the time to build trusting relationships. That will require examining, owning and addressing the institutional patterns that have harmed Native people. 

“It means reframing how we do our work and the narrative we create,” Villagas-Frazier advised. “Allow the Native voices to lead.”

Villagas-Frazier is director of the UC Davis Strategic Native American Retention Initiative and The Nest, one of the symposium’s sponsors.

More about the event and sponsors

Learn more about the California Native Plant Foods Celebration and Symposium here. It was held Feb. 10 at UC Davis.

This event was made possible through the generous support of The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) at the University of California, Davis.

Additional support came from the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) and Sacramento Valley Chapter; Tribal Council of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR); Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians; Farmhand Foundation; Watershed Nursery; and Séka Hills.

Additional support through UC Davis came from the School of Education, School of Medicine, Department of Nutrition, The Nest, Grand Challenges, the Student Farm and the Yocha Dehe Endowment in the Department of Native American Studies.