As a community-based participatory research project designed to promote health and wellbeing, Growing Resilience supports home gardens for 96 primarily Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho families in the Wind River Reservation, located in Wyoming. Through analysis of data from two years of qualitative fieldwork, including stories told by 53 gardeners and members of the project's community advisory board in talking circles and through our novel sovereign storytelling method, we
Communities in Indian Country across the U.S. are reconnecting to traditional and healthier food systems, often working explicitly for food sovereignty. This paper contributes to these reconnection efforts by (re)telling the story of the Northern Arapaho food system and the path we are creating toward health and our reclamation of Northern Arapaho food sovereignty. With support from my co-author, I approached data gathering and analysis in a blend of traditional native and conventional western research ways. I use the phrase "foreign intrusion" to help rename eras in our history when our food system was altered by colonialism, forms of physical and cultural genocide, and assimilation. This "restorying" of the food system history of the Northern Arapaho people provides an indigenized frame for understanding our food system history, impacts of intrusion, and paths for reclaiming Indigenous food sovereignty. My methods include interviews with tribal members (N=16), three talking circles (N=14, 11, and 6), autoethnography, seven years of participation and observation in food sovereignty work, and document analysis, in addition to extensive literature reviews.
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