Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

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Students from Northwest Indian College at the Muckleshoot Tribe learn about traditional salmon preparation and skin tanning during a monthly seminar of the Food Sovereignty Project.

Including traditional foods – like huckleberries, nettles, camas and salmon – into tribal members’ everyday diets is the goal of the Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty program. The two year project is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and is supported by Northwest Indian College’s Traditional Plants and Foods Program.

“This effort is about eating healthy and remembering who we are and where we come from,” said Valerie Segrest, a traditional foods educator at Northwest Indian College. In addition to a native foods course, the project also includes monthly day-long community seminars covering specific foods, such as deer, berries or salmon. The project has also spawned a native berry garden at the college, an orchard at the Muckleshoot Tribal School and we’ve a “cultural landscape” including native plants at the new senior center.

The project was inspired by a joint effort of the Muckleshoot, Suquamish and Tulalip tribes and the Burke Museum to research plants used by tribes. “The Burke constructed a database of pre-contact foods,” Segrest said. “What we ended up pursuing is how we make that somewhat dry database into something people can apply to their lives.”

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