The documentary is a featured viewing for Duluth’s Bus Bike Walk event and reveals the strength and resilience of Indigenous communities as they work for food sovereignty.
Gather (2020) is a documentary that explores how Indigenous communities across the United States are reclaiming and protecting their cultural heritage and traditional knowledge through food sovereignty. About 70% of all foods consumed around the world originated from Indigenous people in the Americas, yet many of these communities today suffer from food deserts.
Food deserts refer to areas that lack healthy, fresh foods. Food insecurity affects more than 60 reservations in the United States. Instead of grocery stores, many of these communities only have access to convenience stores and fast-food restaurants. This leads to higher rates of obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases that disproportionately harm Indigenous people.
Gather follows individuals from three different tribes and their efforts in combating food deserts and colonial trauma that includes an increased risk of alcoholism, suicide, diabetes, and homicide. These manifestations of colonialism persist today as Indigenous communities continue to fight for land and health rights.
The White Mountain Apache Nation in Arizona has always had a strong connection to their land and the food it produces. However, they live in a food desert today with no grocery store on their reservation and only a gas station for food. Colonizers attacked their food systems when they first invaded and wiped them out with forms of biological warfare. This lack of access to healthy and affordable food today has impacted the community negatively and led to an increase in diabetes in both adults and children.
Nephi Craig is working to heal his community by bringing their traditional foods back. He created Café Gozóó, a nutritional recovery center and restaurant. Café Gozóó features traditional ingredients and foods that White Mountain Apache gatherers relied on before colonization. Clayton Harvey also supplies the cafe and community with fresh produce from Ndée Bikíyaa, the People’s Farm that they created on the reservation.
In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation depended on buffalo for their economy and way of life. They used buffalo to construct their homes and relied on the meat for sustenance. The U.S. government knew this and wiped out 60 million American buffalo to destroy the Indigenous cultures who relied on them and force them into submission.
Elsi Dubray is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation and a college student. She created a research project to investigate the lipid content of buffalo meat that was grain-fed versus foraged diet. She discovered that buffalo who were raised with traditional grazing feeding habits produced healthier meat. Her research proposed that traditional diets could be used in Indigenous communities to combat diabetes.
The Yurok Nation in California was one of the last people to be contacted by colonialism with the California Gold Rush in the 1840s. Their livelihood depends on catching salmon from the Klamath River and both their land and way of life has been repeatedly threatened by outsiders. Colonizers invaded Yurok territory and only 10% of their tribe survived the genocide. The Yurok Nation continues to have to protect their river and salmon from both governmental policies and the effects of climate change.
Samuel Gensaw co-founded the Ancestral Guard to create a network with other Indigenous tribes to protect land, resources, and traditions. The Yurok Nation is preserving their fishing culture by passing it onto the next generation. However, their river continues to be under threat. Gensaw notes that once the salmon disappear from the Klamath River, so will their people.
Gather reinforces the power community has for positive change. Sometimes hope and healing starts with an individual and an idea, but it’s the community that brings that spark to life.
The Zeitgeist is showing Gather for free this month on their online platform, Zinema 2.0. This showing of Gather is part of a month-long Bus Bike Walk event to celebrate people-powered innovations and community.