Federal American Laws Create Indigenous Food Apartheid: The Genocide Continues Silently
Food insecurity across the U.S. is a very prevalent issue that speaks to the accelerating economic crisis and wealth inequality across the nation. Food insecurity in Tribal Reservations, however, poses a crisis that is rooted in far more than economic divides. Rather, this issue is a slow and quiet racial and ethnic assault against Indigenous communities. “Food Apartheid”, a term stressing the racial discrimination in policy impacting access to and control over food, is a complex crisis within U.S. reservations [1]. The history of genocide committed by the North American colonies and the U.S. government against Indigenous people has long persisted into the contemporary era.The historic context of this issue can be understood through the U.S. government initiative to strip Indigenous people of cultural heritage and to legally commit mass genocide through war, boarding schools, and most relevantly, famine. Indigenous communities living on reservations see 1 in 4 people facing food insecurity, compared to that of 1 in 10 people nationally [2]. The history of U.S. governmental attacks along with the current avoidance of assistance in policies and funding create a Food Apartheid that continues to affect Indigenous reservations so severely, with no accountability on the U.S. government to assist or involve themselves at all in the issue. Federal laws which economically disadvantage reservations, which provide little or no attention of federal agency services to reservations, and which interrupt food sovereignty and traditional hunting on reservations have amounted to complicity and active participation in the crisis of Food Apartheid in the continued genocide of Indigenous Americans.
The history of this issue of Food Apartheid, although vast, has accumulated into the modern struggle that is presented to Indigenous people today. Native nations have been systemically marginalized monetarily and legally through various governmental initiatives which have led directly to food insecurity or as so far as mass starvation. A devastating example of a historical government initiative that directly caused food insecurity for native people was the ruthless mass hunting of buffalo throughout the late 1800s. This was an active, legalized attempt to exterminate the main food source of Plains Tribes. White hunters led by the U.S. military hunted Buffalo for several months, killing with no intent to utilize the corpses in any way. They were successful, with only 300 buffalo left by the end of the 19th century, stopped short by legislature with concerns for the extinction of the species altogether [3]. Throughout this time, U.S. government was also in the midst of removing the political rights of Indigenous tribes through the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871, ceding individual government rights of each tribe to the U.S., halting any further creation of Treaties, which necessitate the involvement of two independent nations to participate. This act drastically increased the power of the U.S. government over Indigenous nations and allowed for the gradual dissolution of several treaty agreements [4]. It also perpetuated the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which calls for reservations and resulted in the Trail of Tears [5]. The act of 1871 was able to remove citizenship from Indigenous Americans without publicly portraying these abominations to voting members of the U.S. The wording of this treaty creates an unclear understanding to its readers, suppressing any backlash, considering the general social progression concerning race throughout the late 1800s following the abolition of slavery.
This continuation of oppressive acts and bills spread into the 20th century as well. Governmental concerns about the impacts of industrialism and the introduction of national parks gave way to an attack on Indigenous communities in the name of environmentalism. Policies extending into the 21st century were created, barring tribes from hunting traditional food sources, placing Native Tribes in a dangerous situation [6]. National parks created an excuse to drastically minimize the sizes of reservations. In Alaska, protections for subsistence hunting were redacted as recently as the 1980s, removing access to food sources and forcing Alaskan Native people to attempt to survive on minimal and unaffordable sources of food [7]. These efforts are just some of many by the U.S. government, which legally stripped away Indigenous rights and access to resources in the name of a ‘better cause,’ allowing food insecurity to continue silently but brutally into the contemporary era. Further, federal policies have exacerbated Food Apartheid by rendering access to cultural and traditional food unattainable on reservations. Alaskan Tribes still face major restrictions to traditional hunting and Plains tribes still face a lack of a sustainable quantity of living Buffalo to hunt. In the face of blanket hunting restrictions, traditional subsistence hunting is outlawed on reservations, decimating yet another potential source of food for people on reservations. Despite this negative impact on food access, strict hunting regulations have persisted in the name of environmentalism over Tribal sovereignty.
Today, Indigenous Nations are no longer burdened with wars or racial laws, rather, they are burdened with a health and economic crisis, fueled by the government and an unsolvable situation. Economic issues faced by reservations overall are a major contributing factor to Food Apartheid. The economies of reservations are inherently set up with a disadvantage as indigenous American tribes are not culturally concurrent with capitalism as a system for food access and never have been. The ability to excel economically is impossible, as policies and historic issues force all economic advantages off the reservation, dragging its younger citizens, and in turn, its culture, out of reservations. However, this isn’t the main reason for food insecurity and food deserts. Reservation prices of food are substantially higher - one example being an 85% increase in the price of bread [8]. Grocery stores themselves are very scarce and often carry unhealthy foods with little to no fresh produce [9]. A large percentage of residents are surviving on Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) packages. However, these systems are not enough, and most often FDPIR is unhealthy and inaccessible to those without personal vehicles at an average of 16 miles of distance to obtain a package. This lack of access to affordable, healthy food poses an opportunity to put policies in place and set up collaborations between government and corporations, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promises to provide, with a responsibility “for protecting the public health…by ensuring the safety of our nation's food supply…”[10] Instead, tribal nations are given inadequate federal funding, not only for food, but also funding for Tribal Agencies. This lack of funding is substantial and “lags behind the average for the rest of the United States”[11].
This active disarmament of political agency has left reservations without adequate assistance or resources to function, registering as yet another, more long-term governmental initiative against Indigenous people in the U.S. Federal Food aid, being as crucial as it is to reservation diets, has been called upon to assist with cultural food accessibility as well. However, the agencies in question often lack the legal responsibility or initiative necessary to respond to these requests [12]. There have been some successes recently, with the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), starting working with tribes to create accessibility to Buffalo meat in school meals. They have acknowledged they need to do more and that Food Sovereignty, something that the FNS alone is not capable of instituting, is key to this program [13].
Another case that indicates positive change regarding Food Apartheid is the Herrera v. Wyoming case of 2018 [14]. This case granted the Crow Tribe hunting rights in the state of Wyoming, holding that the tribe’s hunting rights did not expire with the statehood of Wyoming in 1890. This case is a registered example of many injustices and broken treaties between the U.S. government and Tribal Agencies, and the responsibility of the courts to reestablish the agreements within broken treaties. While a step in the direction of food sovereignty, unfortunately, the Herrera case is not fully over [15]. Hunting regulations and rights are an issue among the U.S. government and Indigenous Tribes that are a constant battle, with each step forward being blocked by several more regulations needing to be considered. In the case of Herrera v. Wyoming, boundaries of Crow tribe hunting still need to be set.
This issue of Food Apartheid is an immensely urgent issue that affects Indigenous populations mentally and physically across the categories of health and culture. Janie Simms Hipp, the founder of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Tribal Relations, wrote “When Indian Country lost its ability to feed itself, through whatever means, we lost that part of ourselves that supports our ability to thrive.”[16] U.S. legislature that oppresses Indigenous people economically and avoids addressing issues concerning Tribal Agencies block Food Sovereignty and the access to traditional cultural foods, participating in the crisis of Food Apartheid and the continued genocide of Indigenous Americans. The decimation of Indigenous populations from 10 million to under 300,000 occurred between the arrival of Europeans and the 20th century [17]. Mass murders and Indian Boarding Schools have become a part of history. However, this physical and cultural genocide has not ended. Genocide was recognized as a crime under international law as any act following the definition, including “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” among other offenses [18]. Cultural genocide is the destruction of a groups culture imposed by a dominant group upon a minority group [19]. Over 300 tribes face food insecurity nationally [20]. Food Apartheid against Indigenous Americans is a crisis, and it will not end under these conditions that the U.S. is guilty of inflicting and avoiding to address.
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