By Jay Gabler for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

When it comes to good nutrition, Sharon Day believes in starting early. 

“Our goal is to begin our babies with an Indigenous diet,” Day explained. Traditionally, “we had corn, beans, and squash. Those were our foods, along with wild rice, and if we ate meat, it was very lean, low cholesterol.” 

That’s very different from “the foods they began to feed us,” said Day, referencing European colonizers. “The commodity foods, white flour, white sugar, these foods high in cholesterol.” 

The Indigenous Peoples Task Force (IPTF), a Minneapolis organization Day co-founded in 1987, is now making an effort to hit reset on that unhealthy diet. The first jars of Indigi-Baby food were released in 2023, providing families with a wholesome and sustainable alternative to commercial products. 

The IPTF has been developing its baby food for nearly a decade, said Mike Neumann, the program’s agroecology coordinator. There was extensive testing of the recipes, which were created by Lori Watso — a chef and nurse from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community. That was followed by a national search for a partner to help produce and package the foods, as well as a struggle with pandemic-era supply chain delays. 

“It’s much more complicated than we imagined in the beginning,” said Day. Indigi-Baby bucks the status quo for 21st century baby food: the products need to meet not only government regulations but also the IPTF’s own high standards for food quality and back-to-basics packaging. 

“Most of the baby food on the market these days comes from these little plastic pouches,” said Day. “We didn’t want to do that, so ours is actually canned in jars — and so we have to get licensed for the process.” 

The food’s integrity begins at the source. Ingredients are grown locally, using heirloom seeds and methods that forgo the extractive approach of industrial agriculture. “The strategies we use,” said Neumann, “are geared towards improving soil health, helping to attract pollinators, bird and other life.” 

“We don’t use any herbicides, any pesticides, none of that,” said Day. 

“There’s a sweet potato and Hopi black bean,” said Day, grabbing different Indigi-Baby jars to list the varieties. “Gete okosomin and butternut squash. Wild rice and apple juice; a little bit of lime juice and maple syrup. Sweet potato and rutabaga, and in this one there’s also super tender rutabaga apples and a little bit of lime juice.” 

The first batch of Indigi-Baby food was produced in association with North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems, an organization founded by famed Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman. IPTF is currently exploring more options for partners to produce future batches.

In distributing the first jars of Indigi-Baby, IPTF prioritized community health clinics and food shelves, in Minnesota and elsewhere. “Our goal is to get it to as many Native babies [as possible],” said Day. 

“The goal,” she elaborated, “is when young mothers give birth, they would nurse their babies. And then from the nursing, give them this baby food, which doesn’t have any of the sugar, fats, or salts, or flour — the [ingredients] that are killing us.” 

Neumann said grocers are already asking when they can stock Indigi-Baby products, which may start appearing on regular store shelves as the project’s capacity increases. 

Nationally, there’s at least one other brand of baby food informed by a similar philosophy: Bidii Baby Foods, a New Mexico company based in the Navajo Nation. According to its website, Bidii Baby Foods wants to challenge the assumption “that traditional foods are reserved for times of ceremony or celebration (mainly because they are expensive and hard to come by).” 

That accords with a larger goal of increasing access to traditional foods, for the health of the community and of the earth. The crops that become Indigi-Baby food have proved more resilient to climate shocks, and because more carbon is stored in the soil compared to at heavily-tilled conventional farms, said Neumann, “it’s also helping in a very small way to reverse climate change.” 

Regarding IPTF’s more crop-diverse, less invasive farming practices, said Neumann, “We know it works in other places, and we’re seeing it here as well. It’s something that we’re hoping to do more to promote as part of Indigi-Baby foods: these Indigenous-based, regenerative agroecology methods.” 

And the babies like it, too, said Day. “So far, so good,” was how she described families’ reactions to the first shipment of Indigi-Baby. During the testing process, Day couldn’t resist trying a spoonful or two herself. 

“It tasted pretty good to me,” said Day. “I think you could take the same ingredients and make smoothies with them. That’s how good they are — and they’re very healthy.” 


Jay Gabler wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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The Department of the Interior is disbursing $7 million to offices throughout the country for Indigenous-led conservation projects.

The Indian Youth Service Corps initiates public service projects, run by Native young adults, that aim to benefit Native communities.

In South Dakota, the program is hosted through an agreement between Conservation Legacy's Ancestral Lands Program and a little-known arm of the National Park Service called the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program.

David Thomson is the program's regional manager.

"So we provide free professional assistance for a year's time frame," said Thomson. "And we come in as planners and help those communities through that process to really get those projects off the ground."

Communities can apply for this assistance and - Thomson said - current projects include building an Indigenous outdoor classroom at a Sioux Falls elementary school, renovating a trail with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, and developing an outdoor recreation area in Kyle on the Pine Ridge reservation.

A second South Dakota corps member coordinates cultural events with local Tribes in Wind Cave National Park.

Much of this work, especially the outreach, is done by Indian Youth Service Corps members - who benefit from a good-paying job, typically after college, and a professional development opportunity.

Thomson said after a year of service, a unique public lands hiring authority can work toward converting corps members into permanent staff.

"We need to always be diversifying and strengthening our workforce," said Thomson, "and definitely diversifying our workforce is going to improve the National Park Service in the future."

According to the Park Service, 2.5% of its 2020 employees were Native Americans, almost twice the proportion of Native Americans in the general U.S. population.




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New research shows Indigenous youth comprise more than a third of the children in Montana's foster care system, despite making up a far smaller segment of the state's overall population.

Researchers said addressing the problem is challenging. Data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice show the number of Indigenous youth comprise 30% of the children in foster care, despite making up just 10% of the Montana population.

Deana Around Him, Indigenous children, youth and families researcher for the organization Child Trends and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said a combination of factors is driving the disparity, but it often comes down to a lack of child oversight.

"Child neglect can lead a family to be engaged with the child welfare system and result in a child being removed from a home," Around Him explained. "We wonder if that is more of a question about the resources available to families and if the solution should be different than removal."

Around Him acknowledged solutions have been hard to achieve in Montana but researchers are exploring kinship and other family-based support systems that have shown hints of success in the past. A 10-year data analysis by the Montana Free Press showed Native children are placed in foster care at roughly five times the rate of white children.

The Juvenile Justice data showed Native American children in Montana far outpace any other racial group in the child welfare system. Around Him noted in addition to family-based solutions, making resources available to struggling families is also important so they can make what would seem like easy decisions.

"Getting a job may not be so simple as like 'yes, take the job'" Around Him asserted. "Because it offers greater income for your family but if taking that job requires you to find child care, and if there's limited child care available in the community, who are you leaving our child with?"

There has been a national effort in recent years to keep children in their home when it's safe to do so but despite those efforts, the number of Indigenous children in the Montana foster care system has continued to grow.


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The Black Hills National Forest is one of the latest federal lands to enter a co-stewardship agreement with local tribal nations-a management model encouraged by the Biden administration.

The Pactola / Ȟe Sápa Visitor Center sits on the south end of the Pactola Dam, along the 1.2 million acres making up the Black Hills. A ceremony held this month honored a new memorandum of understanding for co-stewardship of the center, bringing together local tribal nations and the U.S. Forest Service to jointly administer the site.

About 80 similar agreements were made after a 2021 federal order, according to the Interior Department.

Ada Montague, staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said the agreements are opportunities to make good on federal treaty promises; ongoing legal obligations the U.S. government has toward tribal nations.

"There's often a difficult history to reconcile with," Montague acknowledged. "That's usually a big first challenge. But when there are engaged folks on both sides who want to see something go forward, then typically the difficulties are more technical."

The technical challenges may be around the structure and terms of agreement, Montague pointed out, but there are increasingly more models for them, including a sovereign-to-sovereign cooperative agreements online resource launched by The University of Washington Law Library in March.

Tribes involved in the Black Hills agreement include the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Oglala, Rosebud and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes.

Weston Jones, who is Oglala Lakota and a summer law clerk for the Native American Rights Fund, said co-stewardship of the visitor center allows tribes to teach the public.

"They can share stories, they can share plant knowledge, animal knowledge, watershed knowledge and all the natural resource knowledge and pass that to their next generation," Jones noted.

The Forest Service said the center averages about 40,000 visitors a year.


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