This is the transcript of a video broadcast for IGTV ‘Meat School.’ You can watch the archived broadcast here.
Hello everyone and Happy Friday, we are here for another episode of Meat School. I’m Meredith Leigh, author, activist, farmer, butcher, cook. I’m coming at you from modern day Asheville, NC, on the stolen ancestral lands of the Cherokee people. Welcome.
This is the 7th episode of this broadcast and if this is your first time listening, I really encourage you to listen back over the archives, because a lot of information builds, and framework was laid in prior episodes that provides context today. For example, today’s episode is not specifically about meat, but about food system design, justice, and land ethic. If you know me and you know my work, you know that I am a meat specialist, but that I approach meat as a lens to entire food system analysis and change, and that I very strongly believe in reversing the reductionist approach to food production that takes animals out of community with plants and people out of conversation with earth. Which brings me to an announcement.
There will only be one more episode of Meat School in the near future. Ideally next week. That will put my production of this content at 8 broadcasts. The work that has gone into this effort, which happened on a whim when COVID hit, has been really rewarding and has opened up conversations that need to be happening. And I feel ready to have them. But I need to design better. IGTV has been a great platform, but it’s not the only one, and I have had requests for more broadly accessible media. So. There will be more of this, but it is going to happen differently. I’m announcing a forthcoming podcast that will continue these conversations and bring more voices to the table. I will be suspending weekly broadcasts here as I begin work on the new “season”, if you will. I’ve been asked whether there is a Patreon account, and until now there hasn’t been, but today there is. I’m asking listeners who have found Meat School valuable, and who would look forward to the continuation of this type of content to donate $1/episode, so $8, to help me continue this work. The information for my Patreon is included on your screen. Thank you for your support. I’ve enjoyed the richness of your feedback and participation, and I look forward to developing this more intentionally.
OK. Enough housekeeping. Let’s get on with today’s episode.
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For the past several years I have made a decent portion of my professional life as a gypsy educator, networker and activist, spending time in communities all over the world trading knowledge of butchery, meat curing, food systems design, and land ethic. It has been a journey of epic self-trust and vulnerability, but it has yielded incredible abundance in terms of connections, perspective, and friends. Especially in 2020, as this aspect of my work has been suddenly suffocated by COVID, I have found myself looking back with immense gratitude on the people I have met, the things they have shared and taught me, and how it has impacted or changed me as an individual and as a voice in food. Today I am very excited to share with you a conversation I had with an alumnus of my charcuterie intensive, Dr. Tristan Reader. I met Tristan when I taught in Tucson, Arizona on the ancestral land of the Tohona O’odham people, at the home of Brad and Raven (last names withheld to respect privacy). I’m going to share photos of the Sonoran Desert for folks who haven’t been there. A truly beautiful, soul-stirring place. We had a fantastic group of farmers, cooks, conscious consumers, and deep thinkers. So, as is common in these classes, we didn’t just talk about sausage and the principles of meat curing, but we dug more deeply into the issues of food, the traditions, sources, and treatment of food and food system literacy. Tristan, and Tucson, brought an incredible, incredible angle to this conversation. You’ll understand why in a second, because, well…introducing Dr. Tristan Reader.
Tristan Reader is Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of American Indian Studies and the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona. His work focuses on:
• Indigenous food sovereignty;
• Native American wellness and public health;
• Native American economic hybridity & social entrepreneurship;
• Cultural revitalization theory and practice;
• Indigenous and Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodologies;
• Global food movements and food sovereignty;
• Sustainable and culturally-based community development;
• Community empowerment and quantum leadership; and
• Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies.
Prior to joining the UA faculty, Tristan was Co-Founder and Co-Director (with Terrol Dew Johnson) of Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA) for two decades. There, he partnered with hundreds of community members to develop a broad set of food sovereignty programs aimed at promoting public health, cultural revitalization, community empowerment, and sustainable economic development. This work was the foundation of his PhD dissertation, ‘Thereby We Shall Live’: Tohono O’odham Food Sovereignty and the Confluence of Quantum Leadership, Cultural Vitality, Public Health, and Economic Hybridity (Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University – UK).
Tristan is a joint-recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award. He helped found Native Foodways magazine, and serves on the Leadership Council of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA). Tristan has written more than 20 articles and book chapters on Native American food sovereignty.
Whew! What a resume. I reached back out to Tristan late last year for an article I was working on about Indigenous Foodways, and then the article was canceled by the publication. So, I’ve been sitting on this incredibly valuable conversation for a while now, and it occurred to me that right now, right here, is a really great place to share it. It needs to be shared. I don’t have a recording of the conversation itself, which is a shame because it would be great if you could hear Tristan’s voice here, so I am going to share highlights and reflections from our conversation, and then you can head over to the blog to read the entire transcript. When I spoke with Tristan I didn’t really have my recording ducks in a row and I’m happy to say that I have that much more under control now, and with the launch of the forthcoming, official Podcast you’ll get to hear people’s actual voices. My apologies for the lack of that representation in the here and now. I have circled back with Tristan and he has provided his edits to the transcript so you can feel confident that this is a good faith representation despite the absence of his actual voice.
So, given the very clearly complex nature of Tristan’s work, I wanted him to break it down to the everyday person. Let’s talk about Indigenous Food Sovereignty. What does it mean, and why does it matter for all food systems theory? So I asked him to say what quantum leadership and hybrid economics mean, for everyday folks. His answer was golden.
Meredith Leigh (ML): Describe your work and areas of expertise. (Does your website sum it up best? If so, describe for the casual cook quantum leadership and hybrid economies)…
Tristan Reader (TR): My work is focused broadly on Native and Indigenous community development and cultural revitalization. A large part of that work focuses on food is because in most Native communities you can analyze thru food the culture, relationships, health, and natural resources of the community. Food is a powerful lens of both understanding communities and helping to revitalize them.
The idea of leadership has tended to be, in the west, the dynamic, charismatic individual. Within Native communities the understanding and idea is one in which leadership is a collective and social process, rather than the traits of an individual. So, within this type of model, it’s less about an individual trying to move mountains and more about the individual trying to empower the community to move mountains. Forming capacity rather than shifting a food system.
We tend to think of economies in neo-liberal capitalistic economies, wherein there are these two broad forces 1)private sector market economy business and then 2) consumers. And that’s often operating in relationship to the government (regulations and incentives interacting with it). John Altman says what gets left out is the customary economy. An example of this is Tohono O’odham people might harvest saguaro fruit and share it— it’s the sharing economy. Communities operate in an informal and customary fashion. When it comes to food, one of the real goals is how do you bring these three together? What would happen if an enterprise (part of market economy) operated school lunch programs (using funds from government sector) but bought cholla buds from someone’s grandmother or used seal meat in the arctic, and then those things ended up in the school lunch system? That is an economic hybridity.
ML: Amazing. On point for so many food activists. How did you gain interest in working with indigenous people, the Tohono O’odham (TO) specifically, and how soon did food sovereignty become central to your work?
TR: When I first moved to the Tohono O’odham community, I already had interest in food, but when I first started working with Native communities there was already an affinity there. Food was so central to native identity and community.
I grew up in AZ and had been exposed to Native communities growing up. My wife took a job on the Nation in 1995, and we moved to Sells (center of TO reservation). I started a community garden because I wanted to grow things, and initially had a lot of kids saying “who is this crazy white guy out there?”… The garden became a gathering spot for the kids in sells. After school a group would come and help – from composting to planting. And then a really exciting thing happen- the late Danny Lopez, a tribal elder, was teaching at primary school at time. I had been to school and he had been running a traditional singing and dance group with the kids, and they had a performance for non-Native visitors. It didn’t have a strong impact on me, they did a ground blessing song but it was in a school cafeteria. So, I invited Danny to the garden, and it was amazing. He brought the kids to the garden and started to talk to them about planting the seeds and how his grandfather would take them out of a pot and seek the seeds’ blessing and then bless them in turn. And he started to sing the song to the seeds in the garden. It was so powerful because the cultural practice has been re-rooted in a place where the practice was happening. It has been recontextualized—not in a linoleum floored cafetria but in the soil of a garden with actual seeds.
Wow. Yes.
Eventually, we started a farm and started harvesting wild foods, making school gardens and then formed TOCA [Tohono O’odham Community Action]. Terrol Johnson, community member, basket weaver and artist, and I and developed a summer program, an educational and traditional arts program for the kids. Out of that grew TOCA. A lot of kids were saying that there were gang issues in the community and other issues. They started asking “are you going to keep this going?” And we were like YES. Sure. So, we did that. It was more broadly aimed at cultural revitalization, community development, empowerment, and leadership within the community.
I really encourage folks to check out TOCA’s Facebook page. I believe the website is no more, but the work done through TOCA is captured in more detail there.
ML: Your holistic approach to food sovereignty seems critical at this moment. Did a holistic or hybrid approach come from your work with Indigenous people or did you gain your perspective elsewhere?
TR: It came and emerged from Native communities. There has been a global movement toward food sovereignty through La Via Campesina, for example. It has done very important work—food that is sourced from healthy and just food production on a local scale as well as a democratization about food decision-making. What Native peoples and Indigenous people have brought:
Particularly:
1. Focuses more on relationship and obligation within a relational universe as opposed to rights. This asks, what are our obligations to land and one another? Moving from a rights-based framework to a relational and obligational framework (of understanding the universe).
2. There is much more focus on the cultural elements of food and the ways in which many Native culture or agri/cultures or food cultures where ceremony song identity legend all are based in the food ways
3. Focus on health and wellness within Native and Indigenous food sovereignty. There has been an incredible loss of health and wellness in those communities globally. These have emerged from countless native and indigenous communities not just TO.
ML: Can people learn a relational way?
TR: We have to. Whether we can or will? Years and years ago I was living in Mexico city. A friend there made a distinction between hope and despair. Optimism and pessimism are based on a rational analysis of what you think is likely. Hope and despair are more spiritual, more about what you choose to do. More about how you live your life. I’m hopeful but not optimistic.
And we need to focus more on our obligations and responsibilities than on our rights. If you go home and talk to your spouse about your RIGHTS they aren’t going to take it too well. But when you talk about obligation and responsibilities? That makes more sense. We do have a basis for it. We all have certain relationships with this.
ML: How do you identify, culturally? How has your identification been important as you navigate your work?
TR: I’m a white, straight, middle-class male. That’s the reality. One of the things we can aspire to see that the identity we are conditioned to it not the only thing we can understand and embrace. To the degree possible I have sought to embrace other ways of understanding and acting in the universe. To some degree I’ll always answer any question as a white guy, but there are also ways that I understand that. I think it is more about being open and honest to others, and open and honest with oneself about the limitations of perspective.
I have to hold the phone right here really fast, especially right now, because I super-duper love this answer. This is something I struggle with when I’m in my animal brain—I get very concerned about the limitations of my white perspective when it comes to justice work and ethical land and food work. The consistent work it takes to recognize the limitations of perspective, while also re-conditioning ourselves from where we are, and maintaining honesty and openness and a willingness to be vulnerable feel like KEY elements for activists to hear right now. Especially those who are waking up to the activist within them and feeling shame or confusion. Tristan’s voice is a really centering one for that struggle that is inherently part of learning and fighting for justice.
OK, onward. When I visited Tucson I was introduced to a lot of people and heard a lot of talk about the city being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site and there was a lot happening in the food scene as a result. Tristan had some things to say. Very valuable.
ML: When we first met, you indicated that the UNESCO World Heritage Designation in Tucson had not been inclusive of the native Tohono O’odham. In what way?
TR: There certainly wasn’t a process in how it came about. The question is what do such designations intend to do? Do they make a fundamental difference in the abilities of people (whether Indigenous or not) to build food systems that are just and sustainable? Or are they more about the glitz and glamour of food systems?
Boom!
Then he said more: The idea is that Tucson is so diverse and awesome, but if you don’t include the people who can support or provide for that foodway, then what are you doing? Traditional Tohono O’odham foods are often only affordable to a white, wealthy community, and people within that community from which the foods original emerged can’t afford them. The UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation is more about marketing than it is about rebuilding the food system of the people. It fails to deliver on the concrete needs of the people and communities from whom that dynamism emerged.
Real food systems change requires boots on the ground – a lot of hard daily grind work to rebuild food systems that respect those systems and cultures. Supporting producers, training a new generation, creating economies of scale in which those foods are affordable for the people in those communities. Support for and nurturing the relationships.
Preach, Tristan. Yes.
TR: For example, we had a challenge at TOCA. We could sell tepary beans for 4-5x price in market economy to high-end foodies. Non-Native people were willing and able to pay more for a delicacy than we could sell it for in community. There was real tension for us, as producers, of how to make it economically viable for people in community rather than letting market drive these things. We are seeing this globally. Quinoa is a perfect example. We hadn’t heard of it 20 years ago. But now in Andean communities what was once a staple for them every day is being exported from the community because now we are willing to pay for it. Instead of relying on the food in the community it’s being exported and people in the community are taking the cash from export sales and buying processed foods. This is the way the market can undermine the abilities of people and communities, and otherwise to actually build sustainable food systems.
ML: You and I shared a lot of camaraderie around your assertion of ‘hopeful realism’. In what ways are you hopeful these days?
TR: I’m really hopeful at two levels
1- Within Native and Indigenous communities, I am extremely hopeful. I started this work 25 years ago and have seen generational shift not only in awareness toward action around food but around a new generation of leaders within Native communities who are dynamic, creative, and inspiring and want to do the hard work of day to day practice in their communities. I have tremendous hope in communities.
2- More broadly in terms of mainstream society, I am hopeful that we actually talk about food now. We explore it outside of the cheap food policy that emerged under Nixon to a Good food policy. We have to deepen the conversation and challenge ourselves beyond “feeling good about having these experiences” to how to we really create cultures and economies that support justice and real levels of relational accountability toward one another.
ML: What are some resources people can turn to in order to deepen their education about Native and Indigenous wisdom and also issues around Native and Indigenous Food Sovereignty?
There is a really amazing app that you can put in any address and it maps out who all the traditional people were and are. https://native-land.ca/
I am teaching a In the fall, I am teaching a 100% online, continuing education course on Indigenous Food Sovereignty through AU.
I also really urge you to go to the native land site and open yourself to that research of where you are and who came before you. I’ve been in the practice of trying to learn about ancestral lands for every place I travel to in advance of going, in an effort to really ground myself and remind myself of what is actually going on and what matters about food work. I need to take it a step further by remembering to verbally give notice when I am speaking. Awareness and out-loud notice. These are two things I can work into my habits that move my work and my business toward equity and justice.
2020 has shown a lot of people, not even activists, but a lot of people, that there are ways of thinking about the world that are fundamentally different from everything that we once took for granted. I think these insights from Tristan, while they are sort of tip-of-the-iceberg in terms of his work and definitely in terms of just food systems and Native and Indigenous Food Sovereignty are pretty marrow-digging in the same ways. How do we think about the world and ourselves within it? How do we change the way we exist and co-exist?
Harking back to our questions from two episodes ago about whether food can be renovated within our current economic, social, and political paradigm (aka can you rebuild a house on fire?) I take lessons in humility and philosophical inspiration from the insights Tristan highlights. As we re-build our businesses, as we lean into the hard conversations about creating more equity as an organization or family—how can we think of leadership as a social process versus and individual trait? Or how can we hybridize economic models? How can we begin to add relational value to businesses and supply chains to thicken resiliency and accountability?
That’s all for today, friends. I hope you will look into the resources here, and into Tristan’s class. And join me in a virtual THANK YOU to Dr. Tristan Reader for his ongoing work and for sharing with us.
OK. Onward. Boots on, head up, into the work and power and vulnerability. Have a good weekend.
