How are the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla tribes working to take care of their unused food?
Morning Edition host Connor Henricksen joined NWPB’s Anna King to discuss how the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are finding success diverting that waste.
Connor Henricksen: Anna, you recently covered a story about diverting food waste from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Can you give a brief overview of what that project looks like?
Anna King: The Nixyaawii, Don't Throw It Away! project is centered on helping people on the reservation understand that food waste creates lots of greenhouse gas and can create a lot of stuff in our landfills, and that there's really a way that humans can control this and that they have the power to divert their waste and create soil for community gardens, et cetera.
Basically, taking back their food sovereignty is really important and treating these foods with respect — their First Foods.
First Foods mean things like huckleberry salmon, deer, the wild roots and celery that grow out of the ground. They believe that these foods are actually their family members and relatives coming back through the earth to take care of them and to help nourish their bodies. And so throwing that food just in the trash is really upsetting to them. So this is a better way in which they can reclaim these foods, turn them into gorgeous soil, and return those soils to the earth.
Henricksen: So how much food waste has the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation been able to divert so far?
King: In about a year, they've been able to divert about 2 metric tons of food waste, Connor.
Henricksen: What are the ways this community is helping teach people about food waste diversion? Do they have bigger ambitions for this project in the future?
King: They're using all types of tools to teach the community about why they collect the food waste and how to properly do it so it helps the earth.
You know, some examples are that they play games with kids at community programs and events to help them learn how to sort food properly for the different methods of composting, a method called Bokashi and a worm bin.
So, all of these different ways of sorting the food helps those systems work the best. And so the little children are like, “Worm bin!” and then they put the correct food in the worm bin pile on the game, and they get prizes for doing that.
And then they're also teaching their older seniors and elders how to do this at the senior center. This all really helps teach the busy, middle-life people who are working how to do this project. The elders and the children are bringing these stories home and teaching their relatives about how to do the food waste.
You know, as far as ambitions for the food waste project, they do have some really big ambitions. They're hoping that someday they might even take over the food waste at the Wildhorse Casino, and the hotels and the restaurants there. They're also looking to expand even beyond that into nearby communities like Pendleton. But first, they want to really own the food waste project in the center of the reservation in their community, their school, their longhouse
Henricksen: For a brief look behind the curtains. This piece is part of NWPB’s effort to do more solutions-focused journalism. Can you tell us more about that?
King: Solutions journalism is really just a way for us here at NWPB to look not just at problems, but at how places in Washington, Oregon and Idaho are seeking solutions related to those issues.
These stories look at a response to a problem, how it's been effective, and what lessons can be learned from a particular response to an issue. It also looks at what the limits are. So we're really focused on this right now, Connor, and it's just a joy to do these stories.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
