Enhance Your Food Supply: Advice from Native American Master Gardeners
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