AmeriCorps Volunteers dig in to help Ho-Chunk Organic Gardening project
By Ken Luchterhand
A new concerted effort is underway to help the Ho-Chunk tribe come closer to food sovereignty.
Melanie Stacy, Grants Assistant with Ho-Chunk Housing and Community Development Agency (HHCDA), is spearheading the effort that will provide more organic vegetables and other wholesome food to Ho-Chunk families.
To make that possible, an assessment of Ho-Chunk members and communities will be done to find out the existing situation, and what needs to be done.
Heath Littlejohn has been hired as Garden/Food Assessment Coordinator through a Food Sovereignty Assessment grant provided by the First Nations Development Institute. First Nations, based in Colorado, is an organization to strengthen American Indian economies to support healthy Native communities throughout the United States.
Involvement from the Ho-Chunk Nation Departments are already underway.
Also joining the crew are Jessika Greendeer and Jim Price, both AmeriCorps/Vista volunteers who will be helping the development of organic village gardens.
This is the fourth year of reaching out to Ho-Chunk communities to establish organic gardens, but one thing Melanie needed was staff to help in the longevity and reach of the program. But this year, that staffing gap has been filled.
“There are a lot of ideas from community members,” Stacy said. “We can assess the communities and families and determine where the projects need more attention and where to go from here.” “I am so thankful that Jessika and Jim will be helping and I am sure that each community will be extremely pleased with their knowledge.”
“It’s important to have an understanding of the food system,” Littlejohn said. “We need a change for the better. We have bodies that are thousands of years old, but we’re eating 100-year-old food. That causes medical problems, such as diabetes.”
The project also is an educational tool, informing the community members about their diets and what they put into their bodies, he said.
“It’s a real eye-opener,” Littlejohn said. “We will let them know what is in their food. Food sovereignty has different meanings for different areas and different tribes.”
As a child, his father made sure he got back to his roots and maintained a Ho-Chunk vocabulary. He used to come back to Blue Wing for three months during the summer and two months in winter. He used to hunt with his uncles. He got more information about cultural ways when he was here.
“I would take in as much as I could,” he said.
When he was 18, he moved back to the area where he grew up. His goal is to strengthen the tribe and follow the traditional lifestyle. He wants to do his part in preserving the ways of the past.
“That is what this is going to be about. It will take us back to the way we should be: shucking corn and pounding ash for baskets. The memories come flooding back to me,” he said. “I see great potential for this program.”
Jim Price, one of the two AmeriCorps volunteers, said that he has tremendous respect for the Ho-Chunk Nation.
“The important thing in planning is to keep it connected with Ho-Chunk cultural values,” he said. “We need to keep elders, veterans and leaders included in the vision.”
AmeriCorps is a federal program that pays a volunteer a small stipend to be able to just meet living expenses. When the one-year term is finished, a volunteer can renew the commitment, take a check for $2,000 1,500 or receive credit for college tuition.
Price grew up in Iowa, having an early childhood living on a farm. They had a large garden and they used organic practices.
He became a journalist in 1991, when he started working a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. He left the newspaper career in 2007 and began working at Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee which promotes community gardens, composting and organic gardening. He learned how to pull a community together in the inner city of Milwaukee. That effort continued until 2010, when he shifted gears again and returned to journalism on a semi-retired basis.
That changed again when his wife was looking at postings for AmeriCorps volunteers and saw that a horticulturist was needed by the Ho-Chunk Nation.
“She was looking for an opportunity for our son, but I decided to apply. He wasn’t interested,” Price said.
While his wife and son live in Milwaukee, he drives to Tomah for work on Monday and returns after work Friday. He hopes to find some place to stay in the area.
Jessika Greendeer is from Baraboo, the daughter of Conroy Greendeer Sr., an elder who saw the need of organic gardening in communities. He died in 2014. His advice and example were the impetus to her to become more interested in horticulture.
Greendeer spent a 10-year stint in the U.S. Army, also taking up the journalist trade.
“I wanted to be more self-reliant,” she said. She was purchasing organic food at the time and wanted to learn more about food systems.
Greendeer became involved in the Veteran Farmer Training Program in Pennsylvania and has been organic farming since that time with her sister, Kristen.
Now, after a year of mourning after the death of her father, she has decided to venture out into organic gardening again, this time as an AmeriCorps volunteer.
“It’s most exciting. There is not an absolute rule. It’s a combination of art and science at the same time. I’m excited now, but I’m sure I will be exhausted in August,” Greendeer said.
“If we can get 10 people in the Nation to change the way they eat and live, it will be a success,” she said. “Someday we will be eating Indian corn.”
Littlejohn said that village gardens used to be huge – three arrows long, which means the distance of shooting three arrows from a bow. “Everyone helped. Everyone harvested and shared, keeping food available for all Ho-Chunk people. We need to take it back to the way it used to be. Elders couldn’t do the work, so they shared their knowledge with the younger people, who took care of the gardens,” Littlejohn said.
Stacy said she really had to push to get funding for this latest phase of the Organic Gardening project.
“I believe in the Ho-Chunk people,” she said. “The day we put in beds and filled them with soil is the day I saw results. People who were questioning the project suddenly became involved and dropped any position. It was a community out there.”
They plan to be available at various events and functions to gather the data they need for the project. They will attend community events and solicit answers from tribal members attending General Council.
Their goal is to educate tribal members.
“If they don’t understand, you don’t get involvement,” Stacy said.
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