This Q&A is part of a series highlighting the work of the 2020 Funds to Feed Grantees, community organizations who provided critical food during the COVID-19 pandemic. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Rosalie Talahongva and Margot Cordova from Native America Connections sat down with LISC to talk about the impact of their Funds to Feed project.
What was your organization doing before the pandemic? What new opportunities opened up due to your Funds to Feed project?
Rosalie Talahongva: At the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center, we're mainly a rental space. With the commercial kitchen, we have those chefs of record who come in. We've always looked at the healthy side of traditional foods and cooking methods, that kind of thing. Funds to Feed really helped us, especially with Chef Maria because she used a lot of traditional ingredients. It was so nice to see. Ramona Farms Dena Gila River was able to help and supply a lot of that food. There were other groups involved with that as well.
Chef Maria opened our eyes to other avenues that we can explore when we're bringing chefs into this kitchen to talk about healthy-eating habits and healthy food. It’s like a springboard. Whereas before the pandemic, maybe she would come in and have some of those food items, but we didn't necessarily know where they're coming from. Under Funds to Feed, we were seeing that. That’s an exciting avenue for us.
How did you use the Funds to Feed Grant? What new partnerships formed because of the project? Where did you source your food?
Rosalie: We used it for feeding native people in the city of Phoenix and primarily other aspects of Native American Connections. There were some elderly people who were fed and then homeless people. When the pandemic hit, NAC found some grant money to house homeless people because the pandemic was ravaging and really dangerous to the homeless population. When they were put in places where they have housing, then we were able to feed them as well.
We had the meal preps, dry food totes and fresh food totes that went to different places. We worked Phoenix Indian Medical Center, ASU Downtown and then our own people were coming in and delivering those food items all over. Those other avenues for traditional foods, that was a partnership we gained, which is good. We also reinforced some partnerships already had. That’s always good, too.
Did the Funds to Feeds Grant and your project support new community leaders?
Margot Cordova: Native American students who were receiving food totes also were helped in other ways. There was a larger, coordinated effort going on to help support the students. Student leaders helped make sure distribution of food, clothing or other things got to where it needed to go among fellow students.
Why is this work important to your community? In other words, how will it impact future generations?
Margot: Because of the food that was purchased, whether it was the dry goods or the foods that were made, they were indigenous foods from Ramona Farms. They also came with recipes because some folks, even though it's part of their culture going back, don't really know how to use some of these foods.
Rosalie: Yeah, Margot, I think that you really hit it on the head there as far as reconnecting native people with traditional foods and how those foods still are here. With traditional foods, a lot of times we have a hard time bringing them to say a grocery store because the fields are not plotted out, and the USDA doesn't come in and check and make sure that all the plants are in such in such a condition. Like down in Yuma, you know those salads are grown, those ready-made salads in a bag. Those plants are grown side by side by side, so when the harvest comes in, they're all picked at the same time, and then they're washed and tossed in a bag. All those fields are numbered, and all the rows are numbered. So, if e-coli or anything else happens, the USDA can go back and identify exactly which row it was that those plants came from.
But with traditional farming, we don't have that. We don’t have that relationship with USDA. We don't have that relationship with the tribe in a lot of cases, and so we don't have that continuity of the food source. I'm Hopi and we grow blue corn, white corn, sweet corn, various colored corns. We don't ask if you have properly chilled the ground or anything like that. You're just grateful for the food coming in. And, so, I can take fresh corn and dry it, and then bring it back as like a hominy or something like that. I know how to do that. But a lot of younger people don't, and to see these items in the food totes was really great.
The Funds to Feed Grant was about seeding a future, not just responding to the urgencies of COVID-19. What do you feel the lasting impact of your project will be? In other words, what does the project look like in the future?
Rosalie: The lasting impact, I think, is the sharing of the traditional food and sharing the knowledge that goes behind using that traditional food. But it's really enhancing those chefs, enlarging our group of people that we go to for food items, and sharing that with the native community and others. There are others that are out there who are interested and that's great, too. Traditional foods are good. They taste good, and they're good for you.
In fact, one of the things that we're looking at is seeing what can we eat as opposed to junk food? Junk food tastes pretty good. It's salty, greasy, sweet, whatever it is, but what is there from a traditional aspect that is just as good? And I know that among Hopi we have a parched corn. It's almost like corn nuts, but all it is is parched corn. It doesn't have any of those preservatives added to it. Can you make this? And can you make it out of the corn that comes from Ramona Farms? Let's try and let's see. The parched corn that Hopi does? We gather a certain sand and heat it up and parch the corn in that. The USDA frowns upon things like that.
It's so difficult. It's like, what do you mean? We've done this for thousands of years. We're still alive. But that's a whole other discussion.
What’s one thing you have learned from this past year?
Margot: That a lot of us know how to pivot.
Rosalie: I would agree with Margot. And we can learn quickly. It’s like OK, on to Plan B. Even though there isn’t one, we better find one really quickly and see what it is we can do.
And it wasn’t necessarily for the benefit of business as it was. It was about how can we go out and change our focus and change that focus to people that are in need this minute -- shut our old selves, look at something new and know that it's not permanent, but at least at least we can help get through this. We were action motivated. What can we do to help? What can we do to step up and help the people that we recognize, and we see, to a certain point, that we're already helping? To find out that, yeah, we can shift, and we can pivot. We can do something and we’ll come back to where our origin was after a while. But not right now.