PROJECT ABSTRACT SUMMARY
The overall goals of our 5-year project proposal funded by the Tribal Practices for Wellness in
Indian Country program is an increase in resilience and use of cultural practices to reduce
diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, as well as increased sense of mental and emotional
wellbeing among community members. To reach this 5-year goal, our proposed project activities
each aim to increase the number of people participating in opportunities for cultural teachings
and practices that promote health and wellness. We plan to do this through three distinct
strategies:
Strategy 2:
Establish an annual community calendar of seasonal cultural and traditional events, celebrations
and activities that support and reinforce healthy practices. To achieve this, we will emulate
intergenerational transmission of knowledge and language through field trips themed by cyclical,
seasonally appropriate hunting, gathering, harvesting, and preservation methods of the Fort Peck
Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes community.Our Project Staff will conduct weekly field trips themed
on planning, observing, hunting, harvesting, planting, or crafting. Weekly activities will be
based on cycles of seasons and the appropriate times of the year for each activity (See Y1
Workplan Proposal for detailed themes). We will survey the Fort Peck Buffalo Ranch &
landscape for plants & medicines, and collect information on traditional language and annual
cycles to assemble a seasonal, cyclical calendar of natural-world observation, plant/medicine
harvesting, hunting, and preservation practices
Strategy 4:
Establish or strengthen opportunities for adults and elders to pass on Tribal, cultural, and other
knowledge to children and young people, and to other adults and elders within the Fort Peck
Assinboine & Sioux Tribes community. We will utilize the FPCC Buffalo Chasers Podcast Series
in an effort to include topics that discuss the whole health benefits of re-establishing our
relationship with the growing, gathering, and harvesting of both traditional and modern foods
and the impact our re-connecting can have on our relationships with our elders and children.
Secondly, we will bolster the Fort Peck Tribal Seed Library by sponsoring access to an online
Seed School (e.g., Seed Savers, Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance) for community members to take
as an annual cohort. The cohort model will allow community members to learn together while
sharing their own experiences so that the Tribal Seed Library might gain enough knowledge and
experience to one day host its own Fort Peck-focused seed school in our communities, taught by
community members.
Strategy 5: Partner with Tribal, Inter-Tribal, governmental, and non-governmental entities to
produce and promote traditional diets, including foods and drinks to sustain health. Finally, we
will bolster pre-existing community gardening activities through a partnership with the Fort Peck
Tribes Community Services garden to facilitate traditional gathering/harvesting of foods to
strengthen the tribal ecological knowledge system of the Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes
community. We will enhance the current Community Garden Program to include more traditional
seed, plant, and food offerings to tribal and community members. The inclusion of more
traditional varieties and offerings, will also provide another opportunity for the students who
visit/volunteer, community members who work/volunteer, and tribal elders who receive the
majority of the garden's produce to interact together around these healthy and culturally
significant foods; giving all ages a better sense of their own connections to their culture and
community.
