Jill Falcon Ramaker—spirit name Bishkane Mishtadim Ikwe (Flaming Horse Woman)—from the Anishinaabe: Ojibwe Nation, works as an assistant professor of the Community Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems at Montana State University.
As the director of the Buffalo Nations Food System Initiative, Jill details below ways Indigenous-led collaboration revitalizes the Northwestern Plains and Northern Rockies Native Nations’ ancestral relationships to the species of their homeland since time immemorial.
Thank you, Jill and all at BNFSI, for your work in creating sustainable food systems that benefit both people and the land, as one.
Q: What issue(s) are you seeking to solve, and in what ways are you working to solve them?
We are working to build intertribal food sovereignty as a critical response to colonization and destruction of the traditional Indigenous food system. We are aligned with the Buffalo Treaty and the Buffalo Nations of the Northern Plains and Rockies who are coming home to the Buffalo and working collectively to re-build vital 21st Indigenous food systems.
We are creating educational pathways as credentialing for Indigenous food systems professionals and conducting research related to recovery of Indigenous foodways and contemporary innovations to revitalize our food systems. We are building a Native knowledge network across the Northern Plains and Rockies amongst tribal colleges and universities, to develop curriculum and programs that support buffalo husbandry and Indigenous food systems education. Within our program, Buffalo Nations student fellows learn the Indigenous seasonal round—wild harvesting, tending the land, and responsibility for ancestral seed grown out on the MSU campus and shared with Native gardeners through our ancestral seed bank.
Q: What do you find most challenging in your work?
Buffalo Nations Food System Initiative is growing quickly to meet the demands for credentialing and research in support of the food sovereignty priorities of Native nations in our biocultural region. We find our human and financial capacity stretched as we do this work.
Q: What do you find most rewarding?
As we are coming home to the land, we are coming home to ourselves. As our elders tells us, “we are the land.” It is most rewarding to share this experience with our Buffalo Nations relatives.
Q: What do you wish people knew more about the issue(s) you seek to solve?
We would like to build understanding of the unique and enduring wisdom of Indigenous cultures, the success of our food systems in the past, and the strength of ancestral ecological knowledge. Living in good relationship with place is absolutely critical to restoring the balance in the web of relations that has been destroyed by an extractive, consumptive way of life. This balance is critical to the well-being of all life.
Q: How can people support your work?
We welcome participation in our events, help in tending our Indigenous gardens, kindness to the water, support for the Buffalo Treaty and making room for buffalo to do their good work on the land, respect for the land, and financial support for our work of building vital Indigenous food systems for the well-being of the land and the people. To help build understanding of our work, we have published an interactive educational map about Buffalo Nations Biocultural region and the guiding document written by our advisory council that can be found on our website.
Q: How do you create joy and hope in your life during the ecological crisis?
We are committed to generating healthy and ancestral foods to prevent the loss of our relatives to inflammatory disease, stopping the number of access ramps that are built to the doorways of our relatives struggling with diabetes, protecting the water for the sake of the relatives who need it now and in the future, allowing the buffalo to restore plants, insects, birds, and ecosystem through their inherent compatibility with this place.
We are working for a restoration of a precious balance in the web of relationship. By listening to the wisdom passed down by our ancestors and the wisdom of the land, we are taking steps towards vitality together. Every healthy plant raised in our gardens, buffalo released on the land, patch of berries allowed to flourish, meal shared with our families is an act of resistance to colonization. Re-indigenization gives us joy and hope.