Progress 06/01/23 to 05/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:This year our target audiences included: 1. Students interested agriculture or Indigenous foods at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College (Agriculture department interns) and Montana State University (Indigenous Foods Student cohort). 2. Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College community: This included students and employees of the college, as well as local high school students and members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold. All workshops were open to the public, with specific marketing to this community. 3. Buffalo Nations Food Systems Initiative Advisory Council: This is a group of five knowledge holders from the Buffalo Nations biocultural region of the Northern Great Plains and Rockies, who guide the work of the Buffalo Nations Food Systems Initiative. 4. Montana State University's Curriculum Committee for the Indigenous Food Systems Graduate Certificate. Changes/Problems: A delayed starting date for the project due to allocation of funds being delayed (October 2024 start date vs. expected June 2024 start date) has delayed some activities. It took time to write the subaward agreement with Montana State University and get all the required signatures for both institutions. Additionally, some of the grant activities rely on other funding sources, which were also delayed in being allocated. For example, the Buffalo Caretaker Certificate is in the early curriculum development stage due to delayed funding from other grant sources. This certificate is expected to be launched in 2025. This slight delay in implementation of the new certificate program also delays activities related to seeking WINHEC accreditation for the certificate. The project team anticipates no long-term problems in completing grant activities. Scholarship, internship, and CEU process needing to be streamlined at NHSC. Identifying consultants and relationship building with consultants for curriculum development at NHSC has delayed the contracting of services. We have several consultants who will are working on service agreements and should be able to catch up with the work. Both teams (NHSC and MSU) hired staff to work on the project. It took time to create the job descriptions, recruit, hire, and train the new project staff. Now both teams are fully-staffed and the new employees are up to speed on the project and institutional processes. This should not adversely affect our project timelines in the future. We changed our external evaluator and have been working with them to develop our evaluation framework. The subsequent years' work and reporting will reflect our evaluation framework. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Training activities: Indigenous Food Cohort Meetings; projectjoint meetings with students; in-person visit to the partner institution; project staff participation in theIAIA Introduction to Beekeeping and Pollinator Stewardship for Indigenous Stewards Train-the-Trainer course. Project staff particpation inthe NDSU Extension's Master Gardener course. Professional Development: Project staffparticipationin a workshop on a Tribal Climate Adaptation menu. Project staff attended USDA-NextGen Project Directors' Meeting in Washington, DC. One student attended Agri-Forum and returned to her institution excited about all the opportunities she learned about at USDA. She shared all the materials she brought back with other students and faculty on campus. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project teampresented results of the project at the Fort Peck Food Sovereignty Summit in April 2024. Projecgt staff gave an update on the project during the NHSC Food and Seed Summit in April 2024. That event was hybrid, allowing for in-person and virtual participation. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In year 2 of the project, regarding goal 1 (curriculum), the Buffalo Caretaker Certificate will gain institutional approvals at Blackfeet Community College, certificate application platform will be developed, scholarship application criteria and selection process will be developed and course syllabi and learning outcomes will be fine-tuned. The first cohort for this certificate is expected to begin in summer or fall of 2025. Additionally, MSU and NHSC project partners will identify clear steps for WINHEC accreditation of new academic (certificate) programs. Relative to goal 2 (experiential learning) in year two the relational framework between NHSC and MSU students will continue to be strengthened by having at least two in-person visits (one at MSU, one at NHSC) and six virtual meetings. The first international exchange will take place in year 2 when a project team travels to learn about milpa farming from Mayan partners in the Yucatan peninsula. Planning for year 3 travel to Sami reindeer herding partners will begin in year 2. Finally, relative to goal 3 (scholarships), in year 2, the first scholarships will be awarded to TCU faculty to enroll in the MSU grad certificate in Indigenous food systems. The scholarships will be awarded in early 2025, and the first certificate cohort begins in spring 2025.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1: Our project team created a curriculum committee with representatives of various tribal nations, tribal communities, and tribal institutions of higher education. Identification of curriculum needs and where the appropriate knowledge holders resided. The format of the curriculum is unique in comparison to many traditional educational programs because of the Indigenous methodology of following the natural seasons and cycles of bison instead of the rigid, artificial timelines in higher education. We have also piloted workshops with Indigenous food systems topics to gauge the interest within the community as we begin to work through developing the microcredential requirements. We have also spent time building relationships with potential contributors to this work, such as curriculum developers, intern hosts, and resource producers. We also produced several short videos about the local tribal food system for use in classrooms, workshops, and for marketing of our program. Other activities: We have hosted other Indigenous educators and shared our unique tribal food system knowledges. We also distributed traditional seeds and seedlings while providing information about our microcredentialing program. Data Collected: Curriculum committee meeting notes, course descriptions, syllabi and application criteria have all been gathered. Summary statistics and discussion of results: There are no summary statistics or results to report currently, as curriculum development is in the early stages of development for both the Buffalo Caretaker Certificate and the post-secondary certificate in Indigenous food system. Goal 2: Experiential learning. A literature review has been completed, examining the design and impact of short experiential knowledge transfer exchange programs. Our project had thirteen students regularly engaged in experiential learning as interns, research assistants, workshop participants, or site visit participants. Two student interns worked in the community gardens, orchard, research garden, and traditional garden. One student completed their degree and transferred to our partner institution to pursue their master's degree online. One graduate student received training in conducting literature and web reviews, developing online surveys, development and submission of IRB protocols, as well as the design of webpages for an Indigenous audience, in order to promote the steward-to-steward Indigenous food system stakeholder exchange program. She deepened multiple skills, from qualitative content analysis to management and leadership skills. When first participants registered, the students felt "proud to succeeding in things I never expected I would." She found it important to experience "how you can make a real-life impact by starting from reading some papers." One undergraduate research assistant assisted contributed to the "Steward-to-steward" program design, assisting the graduate researcher with Indigenous community protocols in building research relationships. This student advanced his skills in cultural knowledge recovery of plant and foodways, public education, and event organizing. This student who has very few Indigenous students in his discipline, said, "I have found my people here in this group of Indigenous students who are doing the work in food systems for our communities." His comment acknowledges the isolation and disconnect that many Native students can feel in various food systems-related fields such as Agriculture/Plant Science, a disconnect that has been overcome through the NextGen program. Five students engaged in experiential learning as part of a trip to Native communities to discuss, experience, and present on food sovereignty initiatives. This tour included a visit to the NextGen partner institution, a Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe community, and another tribal college. Students received Anishinaabe teachings on water and other traditional ecological knowledge topics, toured an Indigenous farm and tribally-run hydroponic greenhouse, visited with Indigenous horticulturalists and seed stewards, visited the tribal buffalo herd, and participated in a community food sovereignty summit where they presented the work of Buffalo Nations Food System Initiative to several hundred community participants. One of the students summarized this experience saying, "Buffalo Nations has provided a life-changing pathway for Indigenous, land-based education at Montana State University. I have had opportunities to learn directly from elders, engage with the rich cultural landscape of our region, and receive holistic support from a beautiful community of other students and staff. The development of my Relational Foraging program, a series of classes in the Bozeman community focused on the Indigenous food system of the region, would not have been possible without the learning opportunities I have had as a part of this initiative." Another participant through conversation summit presenters discovered her passion for nutrition in support of Indigenous women's health and is now working on research that includes recipe development using Indigenous foods to balance female hormones. Other students participating in these visits have similarly found their career pathways through individualized Indigenous food system related research including Indigenous horticulture, ancestral seed propagation and seed saving protocols; and use of ArcGIS mapping to demonstrate traditional and current Indigenous relationships with land in this biocultural region. The project's pilot tribal food systems workshops had a total of 147 participants. Many of the participants expressed an interest in continuing to learn about traditional foods and methods within our tribal food systems. Major activities completed / experiments conducted: To launch the "Steward-to-steward" exchange program, a literature and web review was completed, examining the design and impact of short experiential knowledge transfer exchange programs at both national and international levels. Guidelines were developed to structure the domestic exchange program. IRB approval was granted, and a website was created to receive applications. A database of Indigenous food systems stakeholders in was further compiled, and initial outreach commenced. The groundwork has been laid for a robust and expanding program, one that will foster leadership in students and farmers, facilitate the transfer of ecological knowledge and Indigenous values, and strengthen connections across Indigenous food systems. Data Collected: Established methodology for field data collection. Goal 3: Provide scholarships. Who or what will be most immediately helped by your work, and how: Scholarship recipients will primarily be TCU faculty or students, or others working on Indigenous food sovereignty in tribal communities. Major activities completed / experiments conducted: The curriculum committee developed draft selection criteria for scholarship recipients for the graduate program. We awarded six scholarships for undergraduate students, two of the recipients were non-traditional students and were exposed to agriculture workforce opportunities while developing applicable skills working in the gardens. The graudate scholarship application will become available in Fall 2024, and the recipients will be selected in early 2025. The first cohort for the program begins in Spring 2025. Data Collected: Qualitative data in the form of meeting notes from the curriculum committee meetings of the MSU graduate certificate in Indigenous Food Systems have been gathered. Discussion of certificate application and scholarship processes and criteria are captured in these notes.

Publications

• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Conference presentation: Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills, R., Ramaker, J. F., Cawood, W., Moreno, S. N., Zimmerer, J. T., Moreno, L., & Smith, A. (2024, April 12). Finding Our Way Home. Fort Peck Food Sovereignty Conference, Fort Peck Tribal College, Poplar, MT.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Under Review Year Published: 2024 Citation: Jill Falcon Ramaker (Anishinaabe) and Ruth Ann Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills (Hidatsa, Mandan, Nakota, Dakota) Thinking with the seeds of our ancestors as they find their way homes, in Indigenous Environmental Research Agendas, edited by Melissa K. Nelson. London, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills, R., Friedrichsen, C. N., Abe, S., Alberts, B., Barnoskie, K., Brunelle, D., DesRosier, M., Dubois, T., Echo-Hawk, D., Ramaker, J. F., Fellows, S., OBrien, R., Stephens, C., White, & Young Bird, B. Seed Rematriation: Fulfilling Our Responsibilities through Relational Work with Traditional Seeds of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation. Submission to Wicazo Sa Review anticipated 6/1/24
• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Buffalonations.net