In tribal farms, community gardens and home gardening, the Indigenous food sovereignty movement which aims to make Native communities self-sufficient through the cultivation of healthy foods
Angela Ferguson, supervisor of the Onondaga Nation Farm and a leader in the Indigenous food sovereignty movement, in South Onondaga, N.Y, on Aug 21, 2022. Through classes, seed banks and plantings, tribes across the United States are reclaiming their agricultural roots, growing healthy foods and aiming for self-sufficiency. Image: Tahila Mintz/The New York Times
SOUTH ONONDAGA, N.Y. — The solstice sun lingered overhead as Angela Ferguson surveyed the green hills of the Onondaga Nation in central New York.
“The ancestors know that we’re here and I think that’s what makes us all feel good,” she said. “They’re thanking us for utilizing this land for the purpose it was intended, which was to feed the people.”
Ferguson, 52, is the supervisor of the Onondaga Nation Farm, a 163-acre plot of tribally reclaimed land 20 miles south of Syracuse, New York. She is a leader in the Indigenous food sovereignty movement, which aims to make Native communities self-sufficient through the cultivation of healthy foods.
In tribal farms, community gardens and home gardening, the movement celebrates the agrarian traditions of planting, harvesting and eating as vibrant assertions of Native identity and community.
This coupling of foodways and identity begins with a fundamental relationship to land. “You have to have a connection with the place where you are growing,” Ferguson said. “You have to have your feet in the dirt to pick up that ancestral energy.”
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