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Raising bees is one of the
steps to a new agricultural livelihood envisioned by participants
in an ongoing educational market gardening initiative run by
a group of Lakota Sioux in South Dakota.
– Photo by
Ann Krush |
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Life on South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Reservation might be
hard for most people to visualize. Residents lack outlets for nutritional
food, money for gas to drive 50 miles to the nearest grocery and
even fuel with which to cook. Many subsist on convenience-store
food bought with welfare checks and government-distributed commodities
such as flour and sugar. Both contribute to a perpetual feeling
of dependence and a rising incidence of diabetes.
In the mid-1990s, reservation
residents seeking a way to prevent diabetes decided to start gardening.
They thought that exercise, fresh air and a harvest of fresh produce would
improve their health. Today, with coordinator Ann Krush of South Dakota’s
Center for Permaculture as Native Science, Lakota community gardeners
have encouraged scores of additional people to raise and eat their own
vegetables. The practices have caught on, with some gardeners now supplying
a new farmers market at the reservation’s only lighted intersection.
“It’s rural poverty
– there is no money and there are no stores,” Krush said. “We
started with things that are the easiest to grow that people can eat without
cooking. Many of them on [federal assistance] don’t know fresh vegetables
very well, and part of the motivation is a more nutritious diet.”
The problems for the Lakota
began, Krush said, in the late 1800s, when the Plains, which had provided
them with a healthful diet, were taken over by settlers. The U.S. government
agreed, by treaty, to provide food to the tribe, (which calls its members
the “People”), but their hunting and gathering grounds were
no longer available to them. The People responded negatively to having
their land taken and receiving hand-outs.
The health of the People deteriorated. In the early 1990s, the new gardeners
formed an autonomous participatory center they named after permaculture
practices, in which people learn and do for themselves. A decade
later, some 80 families participate.
“The People say, ‘We
have to help ourselves, we can’t just sit around through this situation,’
” Krush said. “The timing was right because things had gotten
bad enough.”
An important part of the
program centers on program assistants working in their own neighborhoods.
The assistants receive a stipend – partly supported by a SARE grant
– to work side by side with fledgling gardeners and encourage their
new efforts. To start, the assistants learn about nutrition, vegetable
gardening, tree-planting, fruit-bearing shrubs, and food drying and storage.
Then, they work directly with their neighbors to share their new knowledge.
The assistants also mentor youth interns as young as 10, who receive a
SARE-supported stipend.
The early lessons counter
a long-held Lakota antipathy against working the land. Instead, the network
of gardeners fosters a group that is proud of its achievements coaxing
food from the soil.
“New confidence shows
clearly in the program assistants and, in turn, their neighbors, who are
no longer embarrassed to garden, gather and dry,” Krush said. “In
fact, they are doing so proudly.”
Crops range from peas, radishes,
onions and tomatoes – raw foods that require no preparation –
to corn, squash and honey from Lakota-tended hives. Raising honey bees,
in fact, has been a rewarding enterprise and, Krush hopes, a bridge to
understanding livestock care and small entrepreneurship.
The farmers market, supported
by a second SARE grant, attracts both Lakota and white customers. Given
the small size of the garden plots, Krush was amazed that gardeners had
enough to sell after feeding their households, but the market has proved
a small success.
“It’s tiny, but it’s real and it’s happening,”
Krush said. “There are plenty of buyers, it’s just a matter
of producing enough of what people crave: fresh, healthy food.”
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Audience
Sicangu Lakota, Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Mission, South Dakota |
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Educating Team
Center for Permaculture as Native Science
* Note: The center closed in 2004. |
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Challenges Addressed
Historical bias against gardening
Poverty |
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Connection Strategies
Training and supporting program assistants from within the community
Long-term commitment from educating team |
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Teaching Methods
Practical skills taught with participants in co-learning environment
Rearing honey bees as first step for livestock enterprises |
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