On a Wednesday summer evening on the Rosebud Reservation, members of the Siċaŋġu Nation arrange 12 tables to form a U around the parking lot of a South Dakota Boys & Girls Club. The tables at the Siċaŋġu Harvest Market are laden with homemade foods for sale—tortillas, cooked beans, pickles, and fresh-squeezed lemonade. The market is one of many ways the nonprofit increases access to traditional and healthful foods that also happen to come with a low climate impact. The Lakota, of which Siċaŋġu is one of seven nations, were traditionally hunters and gatherers, but today, the Siċaŋġu Co nonprofit is building on both new and old traditions to fulfill its mission.
The market is one component of the group’s food sovereignty work, which also includes cultivating mushrooms and caring for a bison herd. Siċaŋġu Co is also working on housing, education, and programs that support physical and spiritual wellness. But food came first. “We started with food because it’s so universal. Not just as a need but as a grounding cultural and family force,” says Michael Prate, who spearheaded the program in its initial stages. “It’s where people come together to build relationships.”
At the market, Siċaŋġu Co member Frederick Fast Horse shows off the mushrooms that he has foraged and raised to passersby. According to an important story passed down in Lakota history, the Lakota were once cave dwellers, and mushrooms were key to their survival, Fast Horse tells Sentient. These critical fungi are more than just calories though, as Fast Horse believes mushrooms are part of what helped Lakota stay so healthy for centuries, until the effects of colonization, which shifted the Nation’s diet to a heavy reliance on dairy and processed meats. “Every single mushroom actually coincides and targets a specific organ inside of your body,” he tells me.
In addition to being a skilled mycologist and forager, Fast Horse is also the chef at the nonprofit’s school, where he is reintroducing culturally significant ingredients to the students. Fast Horse makes breakfast and lunch for around 70 students and staff each day. The typical fare is pretty simple, he says: dishes made of just a handful of ingredients, plus a broth and spices.
In collaboration with school leadership, Fast Horse is developing dietary guidelines that reflect more traditional foods and agricultural practices. This way of eating amounts to “living off of the land.” It means eating “all the foods that are already around us, everything that you grow and very simplistic methods of preparing food and eating it,” says Fast Horse.