When first introduced to milled white flour, tribal people were perplexed. One account says that we were disenchanted, mixing it with water to make a gruel of sorts. It turned out badly. The result was a gooey, inedible mess. Because this was one of our first forays with rations, we were sure that the government wanted to poison us rather than shoot us.
All the new White foods were first regarded with caution and distrust. Bacon was fatty, coffee bitter and sugar too cloying, historians recount. Now fast forward this nutritional scenario to 2010. Today, we would do well to view the food offered by mainstream society as suspect.
I read with a bit of shock and horror the fare served at this year’s Indiana state fair: Fried butter and donut hamburgers. Yes, on a certain scale, it is possible to top deep-fried candy bars in the category of foods that are bad and keep getting worse.
The topic of bad nutritional health is a touchy subject in Indian Country. Native etiquette tells us that to turn down food offered to you is bad manners. But Indians continue to amaze the medical community with our susceptibility to Type II diabetes. The smallpox blankets may be a thing of the past, but this new epidemic is also brightly wrapped, offers comfort but is terrifyingly toxic.
Statistics tell us that half of all the Pima Indians in Arizona have diabetes. And of that number 95 percent are overweight. The Pima are a paragon of puzzle. Researchers are sure that the key to understanding why Indians are so vulnerable to diabetes will come through research done with this tribe. Fingers are crossed across Indian Country.
A mega-hit on the Internet is a segment done by a nationally recognized body makeover maven who also has a top rated TV show. The version I have seen is where she travels to Indian Country and offers the nearly sacrilegious idea that fry bread is bad. One must be careful how to say that in some places. But this workout warrior (some would say demon if you’ve done her DVDs) says that when we choose fry bread we are choosing to check out early.
This sobering advice goes against all we have ever been taught. A good fry bread maker is beloved by all in their community. Winners of fry bread championships are always hotly debated. As a staple of pow-wow dinners, it is bad form to run out of fry bread during the community dinner. Yet, history tells us it is not a traditional Indian food. Traditional foods for us meant wild starches, vegetables and lean game. Those who think fry bread is traditional Indian food must have not eaten the Comanches’ version of mixed dried meat, nuts and berries or the kind of lightly fried wild mushrooms eaten by Cherokees, never tasted the acorn and bean bread made by the Wichitas or the fermented hominy drink revered by Creeks. A chance encounter with these foods brings back an appetite that we may have forgotten existed.
Sweet was the fruit that came in season, not the cake from the box. I call to mind a picture of Pawnee (Pani) men in the 1800s feasting on watermelon. Let’s face it, our world is an assimilated existence. We can never go back and pick up the exact diet of yesteryear.
Yet, almost extinct instinct tells us to bypass the deep-fried butter we see mainstream society munching. (Even if it tastes “almost like a cinnamon roll.”)Meanwhile, Indian physicians were ecstatic to see the Internet segment denouncing fry bread. Interestingly enough, in the 1940s, not one single case of an Indian death was attributed to diabetes by federal health officials but by the 1970s, diabetes was the single largest killer of people over 50. The exact number of Indian relatives, friends and acquaintances felled by diabetes is simply unknowable. Signs of hope flicker in Indian Country. One Indian urban clinic has adopted a practice of not offering fry bread at their annual dance. At first, people were horrified. Now, after several years, it is met with greater acceptance.
I was introduced to a Chickasaw food program that features a room of new fully-loaded island kitchenettes.They were built to help teach their people to cook more healthily. And even more cleverly, they used foods offered through USDA food distribution programs (commodities).More tribally-subsidized programs are catching onto spreading a new food/lifestyle philosophy. Wellness centers, once new and innovative, are becoming standard offering in tribal communities. Sports and activity-oriented kids’ programs (and for adults) are the new pastime instead of the one plugged into the wall.
All the same, the federal government has a track record for doling out food rations to Indian tribes.
The original intent, I read, was to subsidize the lean hunting seasons. But a dependence on food rations soon followed because settlers were encroaching treatied hunting areas like ants on a lollipop. Lands given to reservation areas were also poor agriculturally, not to mention that most Indians had no idea how to farm.
A book by Linda Murray Berzok, “American Indian Food,” notes that in the 1800s rations were parceled out twice a month in some tribes. Common rations of the day included beans, beef (bacon as a substitute), coffee and flour. It is noted that the rations set the stage later for commodity food programs that were high calorie, high fat, high sugar and high cholesterol. Part of our legacy with diabetes is clear. Conversely, a recent federal food program report shows that less than $1 million in funding was used to educate all Indian tribes and communities about diet choices in 2008-09. While there is no simple equation for solving the diabetes epidemic amongst tribes, adequate nutrition education so we can make better choices is a sign of goodwill.
Indian Country is not trying to blame shift for our diabetes problem. But accountability is married to responsibility. And together they are expecting a child named change.
(S.E. Ruckman is a citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes in Anadarko, Okla. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma’s School of Journalism and has written for the Tulsa World and the Native American Times. She is a freelance writer who is based in Oklahoma.)