Menominee Food Sovereignty Assessment
The Menominee Food Sovereignty Assessment team investigated Menominee people’s views on food access and their knowledge of traditional foods, as well as the prospect of building a farm on the reservation. The team heard from youth, elders, college-affiliated professionals, traditionalists, and food distributors. Conducting a food sovereignty assessment in tribal communities provides an important starting point for evaluating community feedback and creating further assessments, focus groups, workshops, or programs to meet the needs of tribal community members. The goals of this assessment included:
1. Create a common understanding and narrative about traditional foods and practices of the Menominee.
2. Begin to identify current food-sharing and preservation practices, formal as well as informal sharing, distribution, and exchange networks of locally produced/traditional foods.
3. Understand how food (locally harvested/produced versus other) is shared and distributed within the household, family networks, and the larger community.
4. Understand perceptions of government food programs and their relationship with food sovereignty.
5. Systematically involve youth and elders and more rural parts of the reservation.
In addition, the Menominee Food Sovereignty Assessment team examined the history of the Menominee Tribe as sustainable agriculturalists. The College of Menominee Nation has been working in collaboration with tribal archeologist Dr. David Overstreet, who previously taught at the College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to build scientific capacity through ongoing research into the ancestral Menominee practice of sustainable agriculture since 2012. He has over 25 years of experience working collaboratively with the Menominee Historic Preservation Department and the Tribe’s historic preservation officer. This historical perspective of agriculture in the Menominee tradition has been of great value for engaging the community in food sovereignty initiatives.
Menominee Food Sovereignty Assessment (pdf)
Wisconsin’s First People (You Tube)
This 30-minute video relates the origin story of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CuPldJ Sycc
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