Teaching Seasonally-Based and Culturally-Centered Sustainable Agriculture Curriculum to Tribal Educators

Participants have been able to experience hands-on learning with processing a deer hide, cooking traditional foods, touring diversified farming operations employing a variety of organic methods at various scales of production, learning about making corn mortars from logs, tapping trees and learning about making maple syrup.  

2021 Workshop Summary 

• Traditional Tool Workshop.  Two-dozen participants were able to make their own corn mortars from yellow birch logs before using them to process foods in a community celebration.
• Virtual Food Sovereignty Symposium.  Due to rising pandemic numbers, this virtual event replaced the planned in-person event.  Two days of presentations culminated in keynotes from renowned Indigenous food leaders, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Sean Sherman.
• Harvest Celebration and Field Day.  Featuring hands-on activities like corn harvesting and braiding, this event drew one hundred participants for a day of learning before a dinner from several chefs centered on Indigenous foods.
• Fall Harvest - Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.  Hosted at Dynamite Hill Farms, this weekend of activities included multiple presentations, demonstrations, and activities including construction of a traditional wigwam frame, tanning deer hides, and making maple sugar.

2022 Workshop Summary 

• Traditional Tool Workshop.  Similar to the workshop in February 2021, in partnership with College of Menominee Nation, Nueta Hidatsa Tribal College, Ukwekwka, and others, a traditional tool workshop focusing on making corn mortars where participants were able to make their own tools.
• Maple Workshop.  Nearly a dozen Tribal, along with a few non-Tribal, agricultural educators came together for a workshop at Dynamite Hill Farms in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community where they learned about unique approaches to tapping trees on Tribal trust land where restrictions against permanent installation pose challenges.
• Food Sovereignty Symposium & Festival. This three-day event drew over 300 participants in a broad partnership with many organizations.  Dozens of speakers and instructors presented in both formal settings and during hands-on workshops.
• Regenerative Agriculture - Southern Wisconsin.  This two-day workshop visited research farms and the Meat Sciences Facility at UW-Madison, a non-profit commercial incubator kitchen, and private Indigenous farms.  Over 40 participants, predominantly agricultural educators, attended the event that included catering from Indigenous chefs.
• Regenerative Agriculture Workshop - Northeast Wisconsin.  Visiting four Tribes over three days, this significant series of field day sessions covered a huge array of Tribal operations from both Tribal enterprises and individual producers.  Over 60 attendees participated and all food was prepared by Indigenous chefs.
• Harvest Celebration. Turning the previous year's event into an annual occurrence, this Harvest Celebration convened 150 attendees for an afternoon and evening of learning, cooking, and eating with several activities featuring Indigenous foods and teachings.

2023 Workshop Summary

• Maple Learning Exchanges.  Two workshops were held on maple syrup production at Tribal sites at Red Cliff and Fond du Lac.  Each location operated at different scales and approaches, with Red Cliff being a more community-oriented operation with shared equipment, harvest sites for individuals, and community education.  Fond du Lac was at Spirit Lake Native Farms, an independently-owned Tribal operation with a modern tubing collection system and high efficiency sap evaporator along with a bottling facility.
• Seeding the Future.  Held in conjunction with numerous partners, this three-day event at Ukwekwa at Oneida included an assortment of hands-on learning and teaching opportunities with a major focus on traditional tools and growing strategies.
• Harvest Celebration.  Building upon previous years' fall harvest events, this expanded celebration expanded into a full weekend  with numerous activities on harvesting, processing, and soils education.  The first day was designed as a family-oriented events, drawing nearly two-hundred attendees.  Workshops included wild rice processing, corn braiding and corn husk dolls, nixtamlizing corn for tortillas, using corn mortars to grind corn, and work stations making hundreds of tortillas for tacos.

2024 Workshop Summary

• Indigenous Producer Academy.  This event drew 75 educators, producers, academics, and agricultural support professionals for two days of learning and networking.  The event began with a comprehensive field day at Forest County Potawatomi's Bodweadmi Ktëgan Farm where workshops included 1) rotational grazing, composting, beekeeping, aquaponics, and high tunnel management with a focus on pruning cucumbers and tomatoes.  Prior to these workshops, all attendees were able to join an overview tour that gave a sense of the multitude of activities on the farm, with some background on activities not covered in the workshops like maple syrup production, orchard management, and pastured poultry.  Menominee hosted dinner and evening cultural activities featuring corn husk flowers and cooking on the first evening before sessions on conservation planning and farm business development on the second day.  NRCS co-presented on implementation of grazing plans during a visit to one of the Tribe's farms.  The business planning training took a train-the-trainer approach by breaking participants into groups that developed FSA farm loan applications for Indigenous operations based on provided scenarios focused on Indigenous corn, livestock, maple syrup, and wild berries.
• Fall Harvest Celebration.  Continuing the late September series of events from previous project years, this event expanded from two days to three with the addition of a field day that attracted numerous partners to learn about both production but also supply chain management focused on community-oriented local and regional food distribution.
• Our Shared Waters. Bringing Tribal cultural educators to share stories of their construction of both wooden dugout and birchbark canoes, this event gave opportunity for participants to get onto the water in paddling the traditional and modern canoes.  The event also included hands-on workshops finishing wild rice and braiding corn on the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union Terrace, right next to Lake Mendota.
• Maple Sugar Cone Workshop.  Many people do not realize that maple syrup is not a traditional food, or at least not the primary final production.  Instead, maple sap was cooked beyond syrup to sugar or cakes that were easier to store and transport.  This workshop first covered how to make cones from birchbark.  These cones were then filled with syrup that had been cooked until most water was removed, allowing it to be poured into the cones where it set into hard cakes, as well as stirred to make maple sugar.
• Indigenous Seasonal Harvest Calendar.  The foundation of the Indigenous seasonal harvest curriculum is the seasonal harvest calendar, which varies by community and family.  Biskakone Greg Johnson from Lac du Flambeau presented in this final session, giving an overview of highlights from his seasonal food cycles that included stories and both the challenges he and his community face from year-to-year and the value that such seasonal living brings.

Participants have been able to learn through presenters and hands-on opportunities, which often facilitates the highest impact learning outcomes, but making select content available through the online learning platform allows expanded reach throughout the year and for those unable to attend in-person trainings.

Progress continues on developing content to launch this platform, balancing some appropriate traditional foods content with more general agricultural education materials.  Determining appropriate traditional content is complex because some knowledge needs to be kept within communities with protocols for sharing.  However, basic information on many foods may be shared.  Content has been recorded from each of the in-person workshops, with additional material developed during standalone sessions.