As Trump’s Administration’s agenda is promoted, “Make America Healthy”, Robert F. Kennedy, the Jr., the United States Health and Human Services Secretary, lamented the fee treated by the Americans, in particular the Indians.
Purcursed foods have “mass poisoned” tribal communities, he said last month when he met with tribal leaders and visited the health clinic of the Indians in Arizona.
A few weeks later, in the testimony to the House of Representatives, he said that the processed food led to a “Genocide” among the IndiansWho lives disproportionately in places where there are few grocery stores.
“One of my great priorities will receive good food food, traditional reservation products because processed products for American Indians are poison,” Kennedy said in the committee. He said healthy food is key to combat high rates of chronic diseases in tribal communities.
But even when the president sets Kennedy and the US Department of Agriculture, the USDA has stopped the program that dozens of tribal food banks helped them provide fresh, local food, important for their traditions and cultures.
This program is a program of cooperative agreement for helping the US buying in the United States – it began under President Joe Biden in late 2021 as a response to food access problems that were increased pandemic. Its purpose was to increase purchases from local farmers and ranchers, and financing was the hundreds of food banks across the country, including 90 tribal service.
In March, the Trump administration decided that the program did not meet its priority. The Minister of Agriculture Brooke Rolinz defended the reduction of half a billion dollars, calling the program the remains of the COVID era.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in his statement, the press secretary of the USDA said the department continues to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars through more than a dozen other food programs that help families meet their nutrition needs. A spokeswoman for tribal communities said it included a food distribution program on Indian low-income household reservation.
When this program began in the 1970s, it offered the processed food conditionally known as “goods”. Over the years, the government has added salmon, frozen chicken, products and other more nutritious tribes that include the monthly recipient food packages. But few tribes involved in the food distribution program can buy food directly from farmers and ranchers, as they were able to make with the canceled grant program. Instead, the majority selects from the list of approved and available USDA products.
Kelly on the right, lawyer at the initiative of indigenous food and agriculture at the University of Arkansas, said the Trump administration program was considered a great success because the tribes chose products based on their nutritional needs and “what people actually want to eat”.
“With the opportunity to adapt the program, it has a big difference,” she said.
In accordance with the reservation of the problem, which is now resolved by the program, was a problem for generations immortalized by a number of federal policy, Case added. The pandemic simply “nominated and aggravated these problems,” she said.
For example: In the 1800s, tribes in the West began to lose access to traditional food sources – such as berries, salmon and bison – although the contracts promised tribes the right to hunt and fish. Some were removed from their homeland.
Instead, the federal government provided tribal participants in the food – flour, bacon, sugar, coffee and other staples. At the same time, the violent removal of their children to schools -the boarding schools overcame the ability of families to transmit the knowledge of the products they hunted and collected.
The tribe said that the negative grants helped to fill the void.
Credit:
Aaron Augustus for PROPUBLIC
In the Indian reservation of a rocky boy, in a particularly distant Montana section, Jason Belkort said he believes that the chippeva tribe is finally approaching the nutritional, local food of each participant in need. He expects the financing of local food purchases in a few weeks to end.
Funding – $ 400,000 over the past few years – helped the tribe to buy beef and produce local ranchers and farmers. The money was delivered by approximately 250 households when the reservation, where the nearest supermarket is about 20 miles.
“We wanted to make sure no one was turned away,” Belkort said. “There are families that go without food; there are children who go without food.”
The tribe also used the money to help raise bison from the herd of the tribe, which, according to Belkart, “made miracles not only in terms of nutritional value.” The crops became public events where the younger members of the tribe learned how their ancestors were breaking and used buffaloes. He said the feeling of tribal identity was restored.
“There is a lot of cultural exchange. There are many memories from the old timers what their grandparents told them and how to use buffalo,” Belkort said. “And believe me, or not, there is some healing that happens.”
The crops will continue, Belkort said. But it is unclear how it will replenish $ 150,000 for financing that USDA had previously rewarded a tribe for local food purchase over the next year.
Other tribes are similar to the future.
A Walker River Paiute in Nevada The first received one of the grants per source of local food, including $ 249 091 in 2022. The community, 115 miles southeast of Reno, used most of the money to local products and eggs, USDA reports. According to the tribe, from 830 residents of the reservation, both the Indians and no, 40% received a food purchased with a grant.
“I really believe that no one knows the needs of our tribal citizens better than the tribe,” said Amber Torres, the then chairman of the tribe.
At the end of March, a dozen nonprofit organizations who advocate Indigenous were sent Letter to Secretary USDA RollinsCalling it to restore a “critical” program as a step towards respect for the sovereign status of tribes. At a recent meeting with USDA officialsThe leaders of the tribe again emphasized that they wanted to say about the food distributed on the reservations.
Credit:
Aaron Augustus for PROPUBLIC
Tribal communities still have access to a handful of federal food programs. However, last year, the government’s accountability service, the Congressional Congress, found that some put barriers to the ability of people to get the food they want or need.
For example, people who accept the commodity program offers also cannot get help in the framework of the Additional Nutrition Program commonly known as food stamps. As a result, the needs of the household may remain dissatisfied. Sometimes SNAP offers the necessary ingredients for cooking – oil, seasoning or yeast – what kindergarten program cannot provide, the study said.
(Local Food Program has not been included in the GAO report.)
In the reservation of Fort -Belnop in Montana, the local food program USDA became a reliable device, especially since the federal commodity program was suspended there, said Tesha Houley, which is Gross Ventre, or Aaniaih, and a social worker in the reservation. The structural problems closed the building where the food program was drawn up.
Commercial Day Eagle Hope founded that it helped her tribe fasten $ 2 million from USDA to buy fresh local food and handle the bison in her flock. Members of the ASSINIBOIN and Gros Ventre tribe, which are able to collect wild, rich in nourishing berries, exchange them for pay through the grant. She spread the food first from the truck on her property and then in the public center.
Over the past few years, the tribe and its non -profit organization have spread thousands of pounds of food. She believes that the money that remains from the past grants financing will end this winter. For people who can reach the grocery store, up to 45 miles from some reservation communities, many will have to benefit from SNAP at a time when food prices are rising.
“It means even less food in a month,” Houley said. “People will go without.”
Belkort said he started looking for other grants, and the tribal officer made jogging for food donations in the Havri, more than 20 miles, and a large Falls, about 90 miles.
“We have no plan B,” Belkort said about the sharply canceled grant. “Given a short message, it is difficult to find the sponsor in this term.”
