Post by Okwes on Feb 12, 2006 14:39:17 GMT -5
Traditional Foods (health)
www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2004/06/02/news/life/lif01.prt
6/3/04
Looking to the old ways
By KAREN HERZOG, Bismarck Tribune
(This is the first of two parts on American Indian food and culture. The
second part runs next Wednesday.)
"The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer,
antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land
from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live ...
and again you say, why do you not become civilised? We do not want your
civilisation! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before
them." -- Crazy Horse, Lakota warrior and leader.
"We used to be some of the fittest and strongest people, until we were
stripped of our heritage, which is living off the land," said Shelbert
Chasing Crow, a student at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck
and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux.
"We need to get back to how we used to live," he said.
Chasing Crow was a student in the "Diabetes and Mother Earth" class at
UTTC taught by Wanda Agnew, a licensed registered dietitian and director
and instructor of UTTC's nutrition and food service program. For their
final class project this spring, students reported on interviews they
conducted with American Indian elders about "the old ways" of hunting,
fishing and gardening.
On the last day of class, Agnew asked her students -- "how many of you
have been directly impacted in your family by diabetes?"
Scanning the raised hands, she noted, "100 percent," the same as her
other classes.
In North Dakota, American Indians develop type 2 (or "adult onset")
diabetes at triple the rate of the rest of the state's population, said
Sherri Paxon, director of the division for chronic disease at the North
Dakota State Health Department.
Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death among American Indians,
and a strong contributor to the number one killer -- heart disease.
Diabetics also can develop neuropathy -- nerve damage -- leading to
blindness or amputation, Agnew said. The rate of gestational diabetes,
which sets on in pregnancy and usually goes away after delivery, also is
significantly higher in American Indian mothers than in white mothers,
studies say.
Agnew's class aims to educate students about diabetes so they can take
that knowledge home to their families.
Diabetes' high rate among American Indians probably has several causes,
Paxon said, but studies point to a fast, and drastic, change of diet in
the past 100 years, Paxon said.
Before Europeans came, native people lived on lean meats such as
buffalo, game, birds and fish, traditional garden vegetables, including
corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and natural-growing fruits and berries.
They lived active lives -- hunting, gathering and gardening.
"The Native Americans are hit harder and faster than the rest of us (by
diabetes) because they are only two generations away from the 'old way'
based on game animals and fish," said student Dawn Lambert as part of
her report.
Lambert's aunt, Carol Ann Schroeder, of Havre, Mont., told her that
these active hunters and gardeners, confined on reservations, subsisted
on government commodity foods, high in salt and carbohydrates.
Some of the elders interviewed blame those commodities for the
prevalence of diseases such as diabetes. Though commodities actually
were offered by the government as "a very weak apology" for the havoc
wreaked on the Indian way of life, Agnew said, the foods weren't the
traditional healthy ones tribes had lived on for thousands of years.
JoAnn Larvie's aunt, Delores Larson, of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux,
told her, "We need to ... bring our gardens back, our hunting and
fishing."
Nursing student Terry Trottier interviewed elders on Standing Rock about
health problems. What they brought up most often was the loss of the
buffalo, Trottier said: "The grand beast was a way of life for our
people, and its demise led to ours." That had much to do with the spread
of diabetes "like wildfire on our reservations," he said.
"It's time to go back," to the sweat lodge, the sun dance, sobriety, he
said.
"All chronic diseases have a mental health component," as well, Paxon
said. Where poverty is widespread and access to medical care is
difficult, depression and fatalism spread. People may just give up, she
said.
Education is key in breaking the cycle, Paxon said. Even if people
develop type 2 diabetes, the later they get it, the less damage it will
do to their bodies. Amputations and dialysis often can be avoided if the
condition is caught soon enough, she said.
In prediabetics, even a moderate weight loss and an extra 150 minutes of
exercise a week may hold back the onset of type 2, Paxon said.
www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2004/06/02/news/life/lif01.prt
6/3/04
Looking to the old ways
By KAREN HERZOG, Bismarck Tribune
(This is the first of two parts on American Indian food and culture. The
second part runs next Wednesday.)
"The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer,
antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land
from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live ...
and again you say, why do you not become civilised? We do not want your
civilisation! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before
them." -- Crazy Horse, Lakota warrior and leader.
"We used to be some of the fittest and strongest people, until we were
stripped of our heritage, which is living off the land," said Shelbert
Chasing Crow, a student at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck
and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux.
"We need to get back to how we used to live," he said.
Chasing Crow was a student in the "Diabetes and Mother Earth" class at
UTTC taught by Wanda Agnew, a licensed registered dietitian and director
and instructor of UTTC's nutrition and food service program. For their
final class project this spring, students reported on interviews they
conducted with American Indian elders about "the old ways" of hunting,
fishing and gardening.
On the last day of class, Agnew asked her students -- "how many of you
have been directly impacted in your family by diabetes?"
Scanning the raised hands, she noted, "100 percent," the same as her
other classes.
In North Dakota, American Indians develop type 2 (or "adult onset")
diabetes at triple the rate of the rest of the state's population, said
Sherri Paxon, director of the division for chronic disease at the North
Dakota State Health Department.
Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death among American Indians,
and a strong contributor to the number one killer -- heart disease.
Diabetics also can develop neuropathy -- nerve damage -- leading to
blindness or amputation, Agnew said. The rate of gestational diabetes,
which sets on in pregnancy and usually goes away after delivery, also is
significantly higher in American Indian mothers than in white mothers,
studies say.
Agnew's class aims to educate students about diabetes so they can take
that knowledge home to their families.
Diabetes' high rate among American Indians probably has several causes,
Paxon said, but studies point to a fast, and drastic, change of diet in
the past 100 years, Paxon said.
Before Europeans came, native people lived on lean meats such as
buffalo, game, birds and fish, traditional garden vegetables, including
corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and natural-growing fruits and berries.
They lived active lives -- hunting, gathering and gardening.
"The Native Americans are hit harder and faster than the rest of us (by
diabetes) because they are only two generations away from the 'old way'
based on game animals and fish," said student Dawn Lambert as part of
her report.
Lambert's aunt, Carol Ann Schroeder, of Havre, Mont., told her that
these active hunters and gardeners, confined on reservations, subsisted
on government commodity foods, high in salt and carbohydrates.
Some of the elders interviewed blame those commodities for the
prevalence of diseases such as diabetes. Though commodities actually
were offered by the government as "a very weak apology" for the havoc
wreaked on the Indian way of life, Agnew said, the foods weren't the
traditional healthy ones tribes had lived on for thousands of years.
JoAnn Larvie's aunt, Delores Larson, of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux,
told her, "We need to ... bring our gardens back, our hunting and
fishing."
Nursing student Terry Trottier interviewed elders on Standing Rock about
health problems. What they brought up most often was the loss of the
buffalo, Trottier said: "The grand beast was a way of life for our
people, and its demise led to ours." That had much to do with the spread
of diabetes "like wildfire on our reservations," he said.
"It's time to go back," to the sweat lodge, the sun dance, sobriety, he
said.
"All chronic diseases have a mental health component," as well, Paxon
said. Where poverty is widespread and access to medical care is
difficult, depression and fatalism spread. People may just give up, she
said.
Education is key in breaking the cycle, Paxon said. Even if people
develop type 2 diabetes, the later they get it, the less damage it will
do to their bodies. Amputations and dialysis often can be avoided if the
condition is caught soon enough, she said.
In prediabetics, even a moderate weight loss and an extra 150 minutes of
exercise a week may hold back the onset of type 2, Paxon said.