FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN WARM SPRINGS

Shuwiyasha FOOD SOVEREIGNTY PROJECT

WRITTEN BY CARINA MILLER, WARM SPRINGS COMMUNITY ACTION TEAM RESEARCH ANALYST PHOTOS PROVIDED BY CARINA MILLER

The Warm Springs Community Action Team (WSCAT), in partnership with HDFFA, began a food systems assessment project in 2020, Shuwiyasha. This project examines the Warm Springs food systems, how it came to be, and how to move forward with community input. Shuwiyasha was modeled on other Tribal food system assessments, but our unique government and land holdings show why tribes are not one size fits all. We look deeper into food access in its current form, implementing tribal teachings and healing informed practices in everything we do. By having conversations about how our relationships have been shaped by colonialism—addressing social barriers through policy change—and having open conversations as a community, we hope to create programming and access that transforms food in our daily life. Most of all, we recognize change comes in slow, incremental steps.

Chuush (Water) The Warm Springs community has been experiencing ongoing water infrastructure issues for several years — with breaks in the outdated system that affects access to drinkable water. Oftentimes areas of the reservation have no access to running water at all. Although there have been several projects over the years to fill the needs gap, this issue greatly impacts any gardener, farmer, and rancher’s ability to succeed. Teechum (Land) Since time immemorial, our Tribal traditions have taught us to give thanks to the animals and land for nourishing our bodies and keeping us alive; this comes in the form of feasts and ceremonies every season, legends about our creation, animal people, and gathering and preserving first foods when we can. Although many families still practice food gathering and traditions, modern day survival, land policy, economic needs and governance have disrupted and shaped our relationships with food.

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Cascade Mountain Pastures

GRASS FED LAMB, Sisters OR

Contact us at or

@CascadeMountainPastures @cascademountainpastures

Tiin (People) Warm Springs is known for maintaining strong traditions and beliefs in the Pacific Northwest. We still have many language speakers and traditional knowledge carriers, longhouses across the reservation, spiritual leaders, food gatherers, hunters, fishers and many other ways of keeping our original lifeways alive. Through our community surveys, we learned that community members don’t know much about land use, zoning, how to get land, or who is even in charge of land. Community members expressed a need for more teachers and understanding around how to gather and preserve food, and talked about the social barriers within our tribes. A’W (it’s time now) WSCAT is here to be community centered and led. We have begun laying groundwork for a larger private sector tribal economy, more food access, healing-informed development and third place development, through various projects: Partnering with Oregon Agricultural Trust, HDFFA, and Tribal Council and committees to pursue a large scale food co-op and commercial farming training program. • Creating policy changes, based on the barriers we face with leasing and use of land. • Seeking funding to construct a greenhouse for the children’s learning garden, so children can grow their food from seed and have longer seasons. • Expanding our produce giveaway program, offering food preservation classes for community members with values based agreements for all teachers or contractors. • Supporting individual families and community members to meet their identified needs. Our goal is to take action, while being aware of the ways white supremacy has and continues to guide our work, community, systems and priorities and try to break away from those tracks and the survival mode that has not allowed us to decolonize on a deeper level.