Indians’ Water Rights Give Hope for Better Health
New York Times [US] - 30 August 2008
ARIZONA, USA: More than a hundred years ago, the Gila River, siphoned off by farmers upstream, all but dried up here in the parched flats south of Phoenix, plunging an Indian community that had depended on it for centuries of farming into starvation and poverty. Now, after decades of litigation that produced the largest water-rights settlement ever in Indian country, the Indians here are getting some of their water back. And with it has come the question: Can a healthier lifestyle lost generations ago be restored? Reviving the farming tradition will prove difficult, many tribal members say, because the tribes, who number 20,000, including about 12,000 on the reservation, have not farmed on a big scale for generations. Fast food is a powerful lure particularly for the young, and the trend of late has been to move off the reservation, to work or live. Read the article…
4 September 2008 at 3:27 pm
I have every confidence that the Gila River Indians will succeed in cultivating healthful and traditional crops that have sustained them for centuries and that they will stem the high incidence of diabetes with the return of their most precious resource; Water, to their thirsty land. They have waited long and with great patience throughout the lengthy water adjudication process and are so deserving to have their waters flow back to the people. Justice has been served.
May they enliven their wonderful healthy traditions with energy and determination. Native Seeds/Search’s Native American Outreach Program is there to assist them with seeds and technology.
The mission of Native Seeds/SEARCH is to conserve, distribute, and document adapted and diverse varieties of agricultural seeds, their wild relatives and the role these seeds play in cultures of the American Southwest and Northwest Mexico.
Native Seeds/Search can be reached at: http://www.nativeseeds.org
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Tucson, Arizona 85705
By phone 520.622.5561
toll-free 866.622.5561
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Native Seeds/SEARCH is a nonprofit conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona that works to conserve, distribute and document the adapted and diverse varieties of agricultural seed, their wild relatives and the role these seeds play in cultures of the American Southwestern and northwest Mexico. Our mission began in 1983, springing from the nexus of cultural longing and impending loss of genetic diversity. Today we safeguard 2000 varieties of arid-land adapted agricultural crops. Some, like watermelons, were adapted from seeds brought by early Europeans. Most of our collection consists of varieties of indigenous crops developed over centuries or millennia to suit the needs of their human partners. We promote the use of these ancient crops and their wild relatives by distributing seeds to traditional communities and to gardeners world wide. Currently we offer 350 varieties from our collection, grown out at our Conservation Farm in Patagonia, Arizona. We also work to preserve knowledge about the traditional uses of the crop we steward. Through research, seed distribution and community outreach NS/S seeks to protect biodiversity and to celebrate cultural diversity. Both are essential in connecting the past to the future.
Crop loss means an inevitable reduction in genetic diversity: thousands of years of evolution down the drain. The loss, in human terms, is equally severe. Traditional farmers are a stabilizing force in many Native American communities. They conserve historic seeds adapted to local conditions, keep traditional agricultural and culinary practices alive, donate crops for ceremonies and feast days, and feed extended families from their fields. We are as concerned about the loss of ecological relationships, the traditions of humans and plants evolving together, as we are about the extinction of a single species. When peoples once sustained by agriculture lose their agricultural traditions, their survival as a culture may also be at risk. For many Native American tribes in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, these relationships are endangered. The good news is that a tide is sweeping through Native American communities, traditional crops and foods are again sought for their power to nourish body and soul. Native Seeds/SEARCH is grateful for the opportunity to return the seeds of grandparents to people who seek them, and to make available to everyone this wondrous gift, the delicious joy of seeds.