Many faces, many voices

Tohono O'odham Food and Fitness:
Restoring Traditional Food and Cultural Activity Traditions

Before the 1960s, there were no documented cases of diabetes on the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona. Today, this Native American community faces the highest rate of adult-onset diabetes in the world. The dramatic rise has gone hand in hand with a sharp decline in cultural traditions, including cultures of food. For Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA), community development, health, and wellness begin with revitalizing traditional food-related practices as a wellspring of good nutrition and cultural pride.

“We started with community garden and now work about 100 acres,” says Karen Blaine, TOCA Program Coordinator. It’s impressive growth, and success worth bragging about. “There’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing. People are approaching us, and we’re reaching out to schools with our programs. Tohono O’odham cultural practices are intricately tied to traditional food systems, so TOCA’s work incorporates education and cultural revival of ceremonies, songs, story telling, and arts. Traditional food practices involve both gathering and cultivating, and TOCA holds traditional gathering events that include associated cultural practices.

“These are all spokes of the wheel,” says Tristan Reader, TOCA founder and co-director. The spokes that make up the Tohono O’odham food system are health, economics, agriculture, and culture. Traditional food systems are fundamental to cultural vitality and community development, as well as physical health. When they started in 1996, Reader says most people didn’t see a connection between food systems and cultural vitality. That they do now is one of the clearest measures of the program’s success.

At the farm, the focus currently is improving productivity rather than expanding acreage. Combining modern agricultural technology with traditional farming practices has been part of this. With support from the Kellogg Foundation, TOCA bought a combine and other appropriate technology that has allowed them to increase production as demand has risen. While not opposed to high-tech innovation, Reader stresses the importance of matching technology to local conditions and needs. ‘Appropriate’ technology includes right-sized equipment, as well as equipment that can be repaired on the farm. TOCA’s combine, for instance, is entirely mechanically operated.  It doesn’t have a single electrical component, which means it can be repaired on the farm. Also, the combine is smaller than those typically sold in the US market. TOCA worked with a distributor to special order this smaller model — made for the Latin American market—from the manufacturer in Brazil.  

The processing of bahidaj, the fruit of the Saguaro cactus, is another example of TOCA’s close attention to local environmental and cultural conditions. At the camp where TOCA processes bahidaj, the community comes together to gather the fruit, and elders teach youth how to harvest and process bahidaj. Following an early morning ceremony in the desert, small groups spread out to gather the fruit, which is later boiled down into a syrup called Sitol, which is used as both a sweet treat and to make the ceremonial wine for the annual rain ceremony. Sales of the surplus harvest help fund the camps.  

Reader knows local and federal policy change must also play a role in building a sustainable food system. Youths eat two or three meals a day at school, and the food they are served does not support their health. So TOCA is working with the schools and with the federal school lunch program to introduce more healthy food into the commodity distribution system. Their dynamic strengths, seen in their ability to forge partnerships, mobilize local knowledge and history, and evaluate community needs, make TOCA an exemplary model of food systems activism.