Over the last few centuries, indigenous populations have been decimated as a result of the arrival of settlers primarily from Western Europe. For example, estimates of the population of North America (modern day Canada, United States, and Mexico) prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 range from 112 million down to eight million. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 9.6 million Americans who identified as Native American on their Census forms.
Since the 15th Century, initial contact with European settlers typically led to disastrous consequences for those populations over time. The first wave of deaths resulted largely from the lack of immunity to communicable diseases carried by the new arrivals–this was a common occurrence, not just in North America, but around the world.
The story of the Puritan community that left England in search of religious freedom in 1620 and landed in what is now Massachusetts is well-known. What is less well-known is the fact that this group of settlers was able to take over a village that had previously been inhabited by a group of Patuxet tribe members, who had died off in a massive pandemic a few years earlier. A study published in 2010 suggests that the disease involved was leptospirosis, spread by rats that accompanied earlier French efforts to colonize the region. As a result, the Pilgrims ‘inherited’ the tools and cleared land that had been left behind.
A smallpox outbreak in Sydney, Australia in 1789 shortly after the prison colony was established there killed very few of the new residents, but killed up to 70 percent of the aboriginal tribes that lived in the same area.
Violence or other forms of coercion against indigenous communities was another major factor in this population decline. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, passed during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, forced Native American tribes in the eastern half of the United States to give up their land and move to designated areas west of the Mississippi River. Some tribes resisted and hid out in remote or wild areas, such as the small portion of the Seminole tribe who hid out in swamps and stayed in Florida. Other tribes were forcibly evicted and marched west, including the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ for an estimated 60,000 members of the Cherokee Nation, who were pushed out of their homes in the U.S. southeast and marched 1,200 miles under military escort to eastern Oklahoma. Historians believe that between 10,000 and 16,000 Native Americans died during this ‘removal’ process.
Another 30,000 Native Americans were estimated to have died during the so-called Indian Wars in the West following the American Civil War, as they resisted U.S. government efforts to push them into reservations.
However, the factor that has had the longest term effect on indigenous populations has been the health impacts of changes in lifestyles imposed upon them over the decades, particularly those that involved dietary choices. It was no accident that the lead female character in the recent movie Killers of the Flower Moon, Molly Burkhardt (nee Kyle) of the Osage Nation, suffered from a severe case of diabetes.
In an extensive study released in 2011, the Indian Health Service estimated mortality disparity rates between the Native American population and the general U.S. population for a substantial list of diseases. In nearly every category, mortality rates were higher for native Americans, most especially for ‘alcohol-induced’ (6.6 times higher than the U.S. average), chronic liver disease (4.6 times) Type 2 diabetes (3.2 times), and kidney disease (1.5 times), which are primarily non-communicable diseases which are often attributed to either genetics and lifestyles, or both.
Low-income Native Americans living on reservations do not have access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), which provides recipients considerable flexibility on the food choices they can make using those benefits. They are only barred from using the program to purchase alcoholic beverages or hot, ready-to-eat foods. Instead, Native Americans receive benefits under the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (or FDPIR).
Under FDPIR, USDA purchases and ships USDA Foods, selected from a list of foods to tribal and state agencies. These administering agencies store and distribute the foods, determine applicant eligibility, and provide nutrition education to recipients. USDA provides the administering agencies with funds for program administrative costs. In recent years, USDA added some traditional Native American foods, such as bison meat, blue cornmeal, wild rice, and wild salmon to the list of eligible products.
The phrase ‘food sovereignty movement’ was coined by the international organization La Via Campesina and used in public statements at the 1996 World Summit. They define the concept as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their food and agriculture systems.
This notion has been embraced by several Native American tribes, such as the Quapaw (in Oklahoma) and Oneida (New York) since that time, which have invested both time and money in promoting traditional native foods in both production and consumption. Interest in this approach surged among more Native American communities due to their experiences in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In December 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that Native Americans and Alaska Natives were 3.5 times more likely than White Americans to be infected with this virus in the first year of the pandemic, before vaccines became available. This discrepancy, especially the fact that people with chronic diseases were more vulnerable to dying from COVID-19, spurred many Native Americans to take more direct control over their food sources and choices, by planting gardens with traditional seeds, engaging in more gathering of fruits and nuts in protected forests, and utilizing their fishing rights to a greater extent.
Some tribes have gone further, buying back or getting the federal government to agree to restore portions of their ancestral lands, while others have taken steps to limit access of non-native farmers to leases of tribal farmland. The Yurok tribe of Northern California has been able to regain control of 60,000 acres of its ancestral land through purchase and land transfer from the Western Rivers Conservancy.
