Reporting from Indian Country

Yes! magazine published this article in 2020. For more on topics like this, see my book,  American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle... . In the Cheyenne River Youth Project garden, excellent soil and hard work produce great veggies M any Americans are now experiencing an erratic food supply for the first time. Among COVID-19’s disruptions are bare supermarket shelves and items available yesterday but nowhere to be found today. As you seek ways to replace them, you can look to  Native gardens  for ideas and inspiration. “Working in a garden develops your relationship to the land,” says Aubrey Skye,  a Hunkpapa Lakota gardener . “Our ancestors understood that. Look at the old pictures. It’s etched on their faces. When you understand it as well, a sense of scarcity and insecurity transforms into a feeling of abundance and control—something we all need these days.” For several years, Skye ran a  CDC-sponsored gardening program  on Standing Rock, a reservation that stradd

This story appeared in 2020 in  Rural America In These Times.  For more on topics like this, please check out my book,  American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle... . “The tribes aren’t blinking.”  That’s how attorney Greg Lembrich phrased the Sioux tribes’ response to S.D. Governor Kristi Noem’s order to remove the roadway checkpoints they had set up at their reservations’ borders. Their intention was protecting their communities from the coronavirus pandemic. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier (right) visits a Covid-19 checkpoint. Photo courtesy Remi Bald Eagle. In early April, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Oglala Sioux Tribe began checking vehicles for drivers and passengers with Covid-19 symptoms and redirecting nonessential travel around their reservations. In May, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe began a similar effort. “We will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death,” Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman