Western Apache Seed Mix
White Mountain Apache chef Nephi Craig, founder of the Native American Culinary Association (NACA), shares about his mission to combat food insecurity in his community in the documentar...
Nourished by Native Ways: Documentary Film Gather Shares Indigenous Communities Reclaiming Food Sovereignty
“We are born with the burden of being indigenous,” says Sam Gensaw in the film Gather. “It is not so much that we’re transforming food; it is that food is transforming us.”
Gensaw, one of four main characters in the 2020 documentary by James Beard Award–winning filmmaker Sanjay Rawal, advocates for the rights to salmon fishing of his Yurok Tribe on the West Coast and activates vulnerable Yurok youth in the fight to preserve salmon fishing traditions.
Gather is an intimate film that takes us into the heart of Native communities and addresses the struggle to rebuild their indigenous food system at all levels—from growing food, restoring traditional fishing, hunting and foraging ways, to understanding the Native diet and its importance in a healthy lifestyle.
The film is laced with historical references to how a systemic destruction of traditional foodways took away indigenous peoples’ self-reliance, undermined their cultural identity and created a debilitating dependance on nonperishable food. The main characters share about their mission, the food and food traditions they cherish and how they work to engage their community in reclaiming food sovereignty*.
In addition to Gensaw, the documentary zooms in on Twila Cassadore (a master forager of the San Carlos Apache) who opens up her knowledge of ancient medicinal and food practices to the youth in her community, teaching them how to forage and how to cook foraged foods. On Elsie DuBray, a Cheyenne River Sioux teenager who turns to science to showcase the health benefits of her tribe’s traditional buffalo-based diet as compared with modern beef. And on Nephi Craig, a White Mountain Apache chef, who prepares to open his restaurant focused on using Apache-grown produce in a commitment to combat food insecurity in his community. He brings the flavors of locally grown healthy food in innovative dishes. The chef works closely with Clayton Harvey, farmer at The People’s Farm where those native crops are grown.
Gather is beautifully filmed, with honest stories and captivating narratives, and it shows us what it means for a community to lose its food sovereignty—and what it takes to restore it.
Gather is available to stream on iTunes (US/UK/Canada), Amazon (US/UK) and Vimeo-on-Demand (rest of the world).Visit the www.gather.film for more information.
*Food sovereignty is “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” (Source: http://usfoodsovereigntyalliance.org.)
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