I left California in June, about two weeks after my twenty-fifth birthday. That felt significant somehow, like I was crossing some kind of threshold into the next phase of life. I traveled away from the West Coast, crossing Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming until I arrived in the familiar sticky, sweet air of South Dakota. The last few miles of Wyoming we were driving into a spectacular South Dakota show of lightning and thunder, two things I have missed immensely while living in the Santa Cruz area. The relief I had was almost instant and I cried big, sloppy tears, thankful to be back in my territory and in my element.
However, that joy was short-lived when I began to throw myself into my work. I have noticed when you leave home it is easy to also leave behind all the things that made home difficult. I was quickly reintroduced to all of the complications that had led me to pursue my current work. Politics. Politics. And more exhausting, nauseating politics. On the rez there are politics I cannot even accurately name. Personal? Familial? Racial? Gender? Cultural? Whatever the title, these politics are so subtle I sometimes feel like I am Neo attempting to slow them all down as they zoom at me so that I can stop and analyze each one in order to determine my next move. My status as half-breed makes me an easy target for the "art thou Indian enough" interrogation that everyone gives each other, no matter your blood quantum. Full bloods also experience this interrogation, but usually not as bluntly or as quickly as those of us whose identity is masked in confusing phenotypes.
After the initial reunion with my family, I started scheduling meetings with people my dad and my cousins had suggested, which then led to other people suggesting more people. I quickly found several people who had a great deal of knowledge and care for revitalizing and maintaining our traditional foods. However, one of the women I met did not care for another women I had agreed to meet with, which caused her to distrust me. And one of the men who had an incredible amount of cultural knowledge on local plants was a "notorious drunk," and rumors about his questionable sexuality somehow contributed to his "lack of credibility" in the eyes of many people in my community. Traditionally, homosexuality was not only accepted, it was revered and had a place within our culture. But now the inevitable influence of the missionaries has bred with what is left of our ways to create a hodgepodge of beliefs, which are somehow traditional, but also Christian.
Regardless of the difficulties surrounding my participants, I continued to pursue them. The one that finally stuck was an elder in the community, a woman by the name of Faith Spotted Eagle. Whether it is just her personality or a variation of the "Indian enough" test, I was given the run around. She would call and text in fevered spurts, then be unreachable. I would be sent to places to meet and then the location would change after I'd driven 45 miles, and so on and so forth. However, after I had evidently proven myself, she suddenly became warm, receptive, and eager to work with me. We met a few times before we actually sat down for an interview, which very nearly did not happen (she was receiving representatives from the Lummi tribe who had traveled to our nation with their totem pole in solidarity against the Keystone XL Pipeline and their meeting ran late). However, we did meet, and the content of her interview reminded me why I am so intensely interested in the intersection of food and history. Colonization presents itself through every facet of living, and our foods are an everyday example of how deeply entrenched we are in the structures of colonialism. Faith's interview provided some beautiful examples of not only our issues, but our triumphs. Her decades of knowledge and experience are invaluable, and I hope to get more interviews in the coming years, long after this project is over.
A little while later I attended a medicine walk with Faith, which was led by the ethnobotanist, Linda Black Elk. Linda's extensive knowledge on the plants of our land was thrilling. Naming not only the English name for each plant, she would also give us its scientific name, and most wonderfully, its Dakota name as well. I filmed a great deal of her doing everything from picking plants, to making salve, and we quickly became friends. A young woman in her thirties, Linda has an undeniable effervescence to her that is nicely paired with a bit of sharp sass. We scheduled for me to come interview her more formally at her office where she teaches at Sitting Bull College.
My interview with Linda produced some absolutely beautiful content - her words far exceeded anything I could have imagined. It was only later that I realized that after discussing traditional, unprocessed foods in very serious tones that there was a container of Vegemite sitting near the windowsill in some of the shots. Apparently that was a prank gift to her, but I am now acutely aware of how contradictory that appears on screen. She also told me an incredibly beautiful but sad story about mouse beans and the relationship that Oceti Sakowin (Lakota/Dakota/Nakota) women used to have with them.
The week after I met with Linda I went to Pine Ridge to visit family from my mother's side there (My dad's family is from the Yankton rez, and that is where I am enrolled - I am only descended from Pine Ridge, not enrolled). There I met with Karlene Hunter who is the co-founder and CEO of Tanka Bar. Tanka Bar is a snack bar made of buffalo meat and cranberries, and is now sold in all fifty states. The ingredients of the bar are no mistake - the recipe comes from the old traditional recipe for wasna, which was dried meat and berries, sometimes mixed with some fat to create the correct consistency. A staple in the Oceti Sakowin diet, and is said to have been made to last up to ten years without spoiling. Knowing this, when Karlene and her co-founder, Mark Tilsen, were creating the bar they insisted on never using any unnatural preservatives. Despite the continuing success of Tanka Bar, Karlene still seems slightly baffled about being the CEO of a food company, which adds to some very earnest advice. She tells me, "No matter what comes your way, just roll with it. Find out how it serves you. Read that book Who Moved My Cheese? and tell me what you think. It basically tells you that in the maze of life, when someone moves your cheese, you can't keep looking for it in the same place it was before. It moved. So you move. I never thought this would be my cheese, but I get do something that represents my values and the values of my people, so I can easily dedicate myself to my work."
After meeting with Karlene, I from Kyle to Porcupine to meet with Nick Tilsen (the son of Tanka Bar co-founder, Mark Tilsen). Nick is immediately likable, with a gigantic smile and warmth that does not have a hint of falseness to it. As the founder and director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, Nick is a busy man. He is in the process of creating a self-contained, self-sustaining community. Years in the making, this community has been planned not only by Nick, but also by the opinions and input of tribal members. Nick has not just thought of the bottom line, he has thought of the triple bottom line. Not just the next ten years, but the next hundred. The community he envisions not only has single family houses built to utilize the angles of the sun, but also greenhouses that can adapt to impact of climate change on the yearly rainfall. He doesn't just see a community center, but artists' lofts and spaces for drum groups to practice before hitting the pow wow trail. Solar panels and a micro grid, self-contained water cleaning systems, and more. Nick not only has the vision, but the determination. He recently recognized by President Obama, and met with him briefly to discuss the future of agriculture in Pine Ridge.
Despite having other interviews planned, the only ones that worked out were these four. In Oceti Sakowin culture, four is a significant number and I have taken this as a sign that I need to formulate the film around how that number informs our relationship to food, especially from a culturally informed standpoint. I think with the interview material I have collected I will be able to create four sections to the film that correlate with the Oceti Sakowin medicine wheel model for health, which is made up of Physical, Spiritual, Social, and Emotional tenets of health. Thus far that is my plan. My story. And I'm stickin' to it (until the expertise and wisdom of more seasoned filmmakers makes me see reason).
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