Community Resilience with Linda Black Elk & Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills

[Music] Welcome back, this is Andy and this is the Poor Pearls Almanac. In this episode we actually have two guests that join us to talk about food sovereignty. Linda Black Elk and Ruth Plenty's sweetgrass, she kills, join us to talk about food sovereignty in the Northern United States. Linda Black Elk is an indigenous ethno-botnist who focuses on food sovereignty and making foods and medicines accessible. She works heavily with the United tribes and the indigenous environmental network. She also works as a food sovereignty coordinator at the United tribes technical college. Her second guest, Ruth Plenty's sweetgrass, she kills, is the food sovereignty director at the Nuita Hitatsa Sahing College, where she also works to teach about food sovereignty. So this is a really unique and special episode because we get an opportunity to talk with some folks that are doing real meaningful work and address some of the issues that I don't think become quite apparent for most of us across the country as we talk about conversations around food sovereignty and land back. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode and if you do, please give us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Linda Ruth, thanks so much for taking some time to chat with us. Starting with Linda, can you guys tell us a little bit about your work? Sure, thanks so much for having us on today. I'm Linda Black Elk. I'm the food sovereignty coordinator at United tribes technical college, which is the tribal college that's in Bismarck, North Dakota. So there's a series of tribal colleges in the United States. Ruth, you probably know how many exactly there are at this point. I'm thinking it's upwards of like 39, might have been the last number that I heard, but they are tribally serving institutions normally on and within reservation communities. There are a couple that are in more urban areas where there are a lot of indigenous people like Bismarck, North Dakota. And so that's where I teach. I'm really an ethnobotnist is probably my biggest sort of background thing I work a lot with plants and I love teaching about them. Yeah, and I'm super honored to be here today. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ruth Plenty-Sweetgrass. She kills and I am the food sovereignty director at Niuwa to hit on the astonished college, which is a tribal college also located in North Dakota on the Mandan hit outside and a recurrent nation. So that's the Fort Worth old Indian reservation. The work that I do specifically at the college, I shifted just within the past year from the Native American Studies Department into our agriculture department. And a lot of the work that I've started to do has been more focused on our, we are fortunate to have access to about 30 acres of land, where it was originally called the land lab, but now we call it the For Sisters Garden. And we have community gardens there. We have an orchard. We have a pollinator garden is what it's been called, but I think of it as a medicinal garden. We have a permaculture demonstration area. We also have a traditional garden located there down at our land lab. So that's where a lot of my time and thinking and energy sort of has been spent, but also because this is some of this work is still formulating specific to food sovereignty. We're working on plans to better engage with our communities into the thoughts of, okay, for us specifically here on Fort Worth old, what do we envision for food sovereignty? What does that mean to us? And then use that to then generate a longer term plan for work through the college, but then also with the tribe and community and other stakeholders in the area. Awesome. So you brought up food sovereignty and also answered some of my questions about your past when I was doing some research on you. And I was trying to figure out how you ended up where you were because you have like this very specific career path. And then there's this like very sharp turn into food sovereignty. And you guys can't hear right now, but they're both laughing at me. And so I want to talk about this concept of food sovereignty and utilizing what's available in terms of resources because it's I think a very simple concept. It's something that everyone can understand why food sovereignty would be like an important thing, you know, not to rely on outside sources and you know how that predicate things like food security and health. But it also comes with like a lot of loaded personal and political reasons. I don't think you can really tear those two things apart. Now if you don't mind Ruth talking about it, what brought you towards making this career change and focusing on like food sovereignty and your work? Well, I would love to be able to say that I'm an ethnobotnist because I think from the time I was a little girl, I'd been interested in plants and I grew up on my family's ranch. And so I spent a lot of time on the land, whether that was working with the cattle or my grandmother's both always hat gardens. And so seeing different plants, knowing there were plants that we use traditionally for medicinal purposes, growing food. So I'd love to be able to say I was ethnobotnist. But what I can say is that I grew up very connected to the land. I grew up taking things directly from the soil or having fresh steaks for dinner, whatever, you know, and my family did also hunt and so growing up with a deer hanging down in the barn while they put your the deer, for example. So I don't professionally. I think it was for me an amazing opportunity where my personal passions and my professional trajectory or my professional stream were able to merge because food is important. And I don't think it's really that big of a turn. So a lot of the professional work or work that I've done in academics has been in the field of I would say probably biological conservation. And so thinking about the world holistically or in systems, I think really merges nicely into food sovereignty because you think about things from I guess I think about things in the sense of systems. And we have our food systems and it's hard to pull a lot of things apart. I mean, maybe it's not hard to pull things apart, but to me, it makes more sense to think about things holistically. So I don't know if that really answered your question. I hope it did. Yeah, I think it mostly did. Okay. I think it ties a lot of it together. I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, that's exactly when I thought of what he was saying about your career path Ruth, my perspective as a woman of color as someone who's a descendant of indigenous people. It didn't seem at all like a curve to me. It seemed like a natural progression. And it's probably because it also seems like a natural progression for indigenous people who are working in hydrology to go into food sovereignty, indigenous people who are working in any field of environmental science, indigenous farmers, food and food sovereignty and where that goes, meaning like health, our own physical, spiritual, mental, emotional health, but also the health of the land. It's all part of everything that everyone is already doing, like even people who are working in Native American studies with Native American lit. A lot of them end up doing work in food sovereignty, you know, I think it's just because because you know they're working in within the realm of culture and cultural. Sometimes I hate that word preservation, but that's the only word I can think of right now, but and Ruth has even done work in that like, you know, she could easily teach a Native late class. And I think that that's even a natural progression just because it has to do with the realm of culture and of course, so does food, just the thought I wanted to throw on here. Like what you're saying, what I think of is like the academic component provided a framework for the more important hands-on component, if that makes sense. So I want to ask, I just want to pick a little bit more on Ruth here. So you've been doing a lot of this food sovereignty work, and that includes like helping people learn how to grow food. Now with COVID, I know a lot of that has moved to a virtual classroom and as somebody that has a podcast on like how to grow food. I am very interested to know a little bit about how that's worked for you and has it given you a bigger platform or do you do you find it more challenging? What are your thoughts on that process? I think that that should really be a question for Linda as far as teaching virtually. Okay. My virtual teaching is probably has a very much more narrow audience compared to Linda's. However, I would say that thinking of your question and not being able to do as many things in the classroom are having to be socially distanced. And more and more people being worried about food security, what I've observed in our communities is that more people are starting to want to garden or want to have access to local foods. And what's been interesting to me is there's been a fair number of people who are interested in local food. who grew up gardening. So we're either children or young adults and now are either older adults or our elders who want to garden and they want to get started again but don't necessarily want to have a full-on garden. And so those are opportunities for us to have conversations about, well here's the community garden. You know, so you have access to a lot of these resources here and we can sort of we have socially distance protocols down at the gardens or you know you can think about container gardens and maybe that's the way to get started because then you just have a few things on your porch and you don't need to worry about coming in contact with other people. So that's probably more of my recent experience thinking about how to continue this dialogue and this learning and getting people engaged in securing their own food, growing their own food and hopefully you know the next part is thinking about some of the gathering which can be a little bit challenging in the current status of my reservation but sorry I'm going to cut you off Linda Ruth when you say gathering do you mean as in foraging or yes yes I'm just seeking like turnips and wild onions and choked cherries and juneberries and mints and part of it is knowing where things grow and then part of it is knowing land access and then part of it is knowing so how close or far things are in proximity to different kinds of oil development and the potential contamination of things. Yeah so that's terrible. It's not like so much complexity there. I do consider Ruth and ethnobotnist and you know when people ask me about other ethnobotnist she's one of the people I bring up and and they're you know ethnobotnist definitely do that work. My friend Dr. Janelle Baker is Athabasca University I suppose it is in Calgary and she works on exactly that like what is the effect of tar sands and heavy metal in the soils and the impact on traditional foods and that's a big deal where where Ruth is as well that I really like what you were saying Ruth because I think that's what it all comes down to is can people feed themselves like that's the the foundation I think of of the work that I do is can people maybe even more than that can people feed and heal themselves. So I think this is all circling around this very important conversation that's like pairing you know food sovereignty and concepts of like decolonization of foodways and what that actually means in like practice. I think in this age of like social media with like influencers and things like that it can be really challenging to meet people where they're at I'd love to hear a little bit about what you guys are both doing in terms of making things accessible some of your thoughts about how the internet discourse might be impacting what you're trying to do. You know you you were right Andy and in talking about how both Ruth and I have gone toward offering a lot of stuff online and doing a lot of like Facebook live and and things like that and for example I'll refer back to a couple of videos you can actually find I'm not sure if they're on YouTube Ruth or not but for instance how do you turn carrots into kimchi you know carrot kimchi or you know how do you turn dandelion greens into like a like a spicy little salad for example you know so super really simple things that everyone can do and everyone can find the ingredients for even here in North Dakota where you know the grocery stores are not very diverse at all but even with those limitations you know here are ways to have really healthy things in your diet and and this is their benefit you know as far as probiotics and things like that. I feel like it wasn't just the pandemic that moved us that direction although that was definitely a nudge in a push like a big hard push because we we both love to teach in person and we love being outside with groups of people and taking them on plant locks and harvesting stuff and eating together we also live in a place where sometimes people drive four hours for a one hour you know 30 minute doctor appointment for example and so this is the way that a lot of indigenous education has moved all over the world you know I have friends down in Australia of course you know who maybe live in the outback who have had to instead attend high school their entire high school career on online and that works a lot better for them or you know we have friends up in Alaska who have had to do the same so you know I feel like that was just something that was like oh yeah we can do this this is this is a good thing for people you know and especially during the winter months you know it's been very very well below zero here lately although yesterday it was a little warmer but you know I mean we had winchills of 45 below in the last couple of weeks and so you know that's a tough time for people to be able to get outside even though there are still plants and things that are forageable this time of year it's tough to get outside in this weather so it's it's kind of nice to to to make things really accessible that way I think I think it just comes down to that you know I've done online workshops on how to make an oxy-mail how to make a tincture how to make the perfect cup of tea I did that you know recently actually and and it's always amazing to me how intimidated people are by tea by a cup of tea you know when you know like Ruth was saying like this has been a part of our whole lives I've been drinking tea I've been foraging my entire life yeah um using plants for food in medicine my whole life but you know so so for me it seems weird that people would have trouble just with the concept of hey put those plants in a cup and pour hot water over them people want measurements and things like that these days so um you know I've had to change that up but making things as simple and accessible and as real as possible and encouraging them to just do it just do it don't be scared taking that fear out of it is is a big thing because we have been absolutely conditioned to be afraid even the word wild and what that conjures up you know heart of darkness kind of stuff uh uh um uh you know getting people over that hump and to stop being afraid and to realize that this is all pretty safe as long as you know some simple rules yeah and I think hearing the things that Linda shared one of the things too that's been an exciting piece of this for me has been the young people getting involved and because it seems like a lot of the kids in high school middle school even elementary school don't always have the opportunity to be outside and identifying plants it's not like a normal thing anymore whereas growing up it felt like that was kind of semi normal my experience and that I would have estimated kids my my counterparts in school could at least identify maybe 10 plants at least and now I don't know if kids could necessarily identify 10 plus but when you get them out there and you start talking and pointing things out it's exciting to be there when they start to really look at the world through a new lens look at their environment and a new lens and you see that happening and what was interesting too was there was a few kids I got to have that experience with who might otherwise be considered like troubled teens but they were just uh it was it was like there were such good kids I don't know how to describe it I mean they they enjoyed the experience they really got into gathering and and they could you know it was this conversation so it was that beautiful moment of this intersection of culture of relationship of knowing about plant identification knowing about the uses of these plants and their spirit was just shining you know so that was part of the beauty of this moment and the work that I've been able to do and I would say also for me whether it's virtually or in person it's fun when you bump into people are people contact you and they say oh yeah I saw you post this or that about this particular food and that's really interesting or the you know and so people are listening are they watching or I don't always do things worth you know live streamed or videos but sometimes I'll just post pictures and say here's you know the latest project I'm working on and then people will say what can we do a zoom or can you come to my home and show me and my grandkids how to do this or that and there's really easy things you can do so uh for example I'll be going to one of my grandmothers and her house and she's got a few grandkids and we'll be doing some oil infusions we'll start some oil infusions together and let them set for a while and then we'll come back and we'll straighten them out and you know so it's just an exciting time to see people I feel like there's been a period of division or not necessarily division but where we've isolated not just because of COVID but I think partially too just the way that society has been working and maybe partially because of social media it's easier to interact on Facebook than it is to have a conversation in person sometimes for example so just some some reflections hearing what Linda had to share about your question. Hey there, it's Andy from the Poor Pearls Almanac. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our podcasts. As you can probably tell, this content involves extensive research and editing to early, weekly episodes. If you think this content is valuable for the future that we inherit, please consider financially supporting this project by visiting poorproles.com and clicking on the Patreon, Venmo, CoFy or PayPal tabs. Every dollar helps offset our costs for hosting the podcast content and helps offset hundreds of hours of work put towards this project monthly. Thank you for supporting us by sharing, liking, and donating to this project. Together we can build a better future. The social media thing, it's such a binary where there's like this really strong great thing of access and being able to utilize. If you want to look up people that are doing cool stuff who can post it immediately and you can ask questions live while they're doing it, it's like the best version of TV. While also on the other hand, there are certain like savvy media people who can leverage the algorithm of Instagram or Facebook to draw a division in order to get more attention, which eventually gives them more social media and to get whatever they're looking for out of their social media presence. And I think indigenous food, things like land back and decolonization are really lightning rods for a lot of these discussions that are much more nuanced than a ten-word meme or something on the internet is going to convey. I was really interested to know how all that kind of plays into people actually out there doing the meaningful work. If those things are being accelerants for good or if they're otherwise making it more difficult or just adding another layer of complexity to what you're doing. Both me, all of the above. I'll speak to that real quick. I have a pretty, you know, I mean not like, you know, what are they called? What are the influencers? Yeah, not like that kind of following, but I have a pretty large following on social media and I would like to think it's because I share ways that people can incorporate this stuff into their everyday lives. You know, I'm sure that there's a hefty dose of, you know, let's see what drama we can see at some point, you know, as well. Social media is not a healthy, it's just not, it's not a healthy atmosphere and there's nothing that anyone I think could do to make it that way all the time. And so it's really important to try to leverage whatever following or whatever that we have to be as healthy as possible. I'm on their cursing around about politics as much as anybody, but also at the same time it's been a really good way, for example, to share, you know, I think the simplest way and exactly like what Ruth was saying is yesterday I was making a batch of collared greens, you know, using a recipe from a gala, Gichi friend, who's a chef. You know, I want to share that because that's, I think, just a beautiful, it's a beautiful recipe. It's healthy, it's medicinal, or a day when I'm making a big batch of kimchi, you know, "Hey, why not do it right in front of the laptop so that people can see me making that?" where the other day I posted about a Hawthorne oxymel that I was making, you know, "Why not post about that so that people can know they can make a Hawthorne oxymel too?" That's kind of, I think what I try to do, but there will always be that unhealthy element of gossip and, you know, it's so, so easy to say mean things to someone when they're not in front of you, you know, and you can't see that you're hurting them. So, definitely you have to just keep moving forward in spite of all that stuff. Yeah, it's a nasty place. Actually, Linda, I did want to ask you something in particular. I had been reading one of your interviews and you'd spoken about this idea of non-indigenous people decolonizing their diets to support native foods. You had suggested both buying from indigenous farmers and by starting their own gardens. So the first question I have is what I read around the idea of this garden itself. What are your thoughts about native crops being grown and potentially like being profiteered by like white farmers? Is that a big concern for you or is that kind of secondary? That's a huge concern. And that's the whole reason why I think that non-indigenous people should be growing. It's fine, you know, from my perspective and after talking with a lot of indigenous people about this, it's fine for them to be growing food for themselves. But it's just like a non-native person trying to open an indigenous restaurant. They shouldn't be profiting off of indigenous knowledge or indigenous foods or indigenous medicines. You know, we could go on and on. And so while it's important, I think for people to grow their own foods and even to grow their own medicines, I think that might have been some of what I was talking about in that interview. There are plants that are very, very important to indigenous people ceremonially food wise as well. But ceremonially definitely. And those are getting overused in particular during the last few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have been using a lot of indigenous medicines and non-native people have been to. So it's been important for me to use my platform to give them alternatives so that non-native people can still have good medicine, but not be exploiting or over exploiting things that are important to indigenous people, not just as medicine, but for ceremony too. I feel like there are certain things that should be left for indigenous people. And so you can try growing your own. Like I said, there are great alternatives. So just a simple example is sage during the pandemic. A lot of people have been talking about burning sage, but we don't want to over harvest sage populations. So why not try burning things like rosemary or there are many, many herbs that can be burnt for their antimicrobial smoke. So I think that's sort of what I try to put out there. And that goes with gardening as well, you know, growing growing your own beans for your family. But of course not selling them and profiting off of that species. One thing that comes to mind is and Ruth is familiar with the story, but the story of the northern being, the great northern being, which is actually a mandan bean. But it's, you know, some some white guy went up there, took those beans, decided they were delicious. And now there's a can of great northern beans and every Walmart across the nation and no one knows their story where they come from and who they're connected to. And that's criminal. Yeah, I agree. That reminds me a lot of people use the term permaculture pretty loosely. And like the ties between permaculture and indigenous practices and how genuine are those connections and what are people that are practitioners or permaculture doing to give back for that knowledge that they're utilizing and basically making a living from. And it's a complicated messy web. And the first step is basically acknowledging that I find a lot of people don't even want to take that first step. So that that's just my own experience with it as a white man who hasn't been on the other side is in particular being around the permaculture community. One of the challenges that I've seen. Ruth, do you have any thoughts on this idea of white people basically growing indigenous crops? Any experiences thoughts, especially as you're teaching some of these practices? Yes, I have a recent incident that totally speaks to what we're discussing, but I'm not going to directly reference. And so one thing that I think is really important that Linda mentioned that we've been working on here at Fort Burseld is seed rematiation. And we do have a number of different seeds. So traditionally our people did have large gardens along the river bottoms. So we have a number of varieties of corn, beans, squash, sunflower, tobacco and melons. And she shared with you about the great northern bean, but we have a number of other seeds that have been, I don't know, purchased, taken given to museums, to individual. I don't know if they'd be farmers or researchers. So a lot of our seeds have left our community. It doesn't mean that we don't have some here. So some of the works that we're doing at the college is to continue to grow our own institutional seed bank. And part of that is growing out the seeds that we do have access to. And North Dakota is very, very windy. And so when we start to grow out, we have so many varieties of corn when we want to grow out our corn, one of the considerations is mixing. So if you don't, what is it called when you put the bag over your corn gloves glove the corn. Yeah, but there's a whole term for when you don't want your corn mixing with other people's corn, you do this. My forgot the word is. But you have to plant your corn like a mile apart from anybody else's corn because North Dakota so windy. And I know that's kind of getting off of the thought of your exact. question, but yet how do we get those seeds back to our people if there's only a handful of that particular variety? And then there's all of these other seeds from us, our people's seeds elsewhere in the United States and other people's hands. I don't know. I don't know if I want to get very much further down that road at the moment. Sure. That reminds me. I didn't interview last fall. It was about copicing, being able to create essentially how copicing impacts ecological zones and the fundamental problem was that the person I was interviewing Mark brought up was, well, while these practices could theoretically work today, the challenges the land has been divided up in such a way that it's impossible to ethically do these things without massive collaboration, which is way beyond the scope of the economic system that we have in place today. And I know it's not the exact same thing, but that's what you're talking about gives me a lot of those same vibes, if that makes sense. So yeah, the reason why I brought this up though is because I'm very interested in local ecology and that informs a lot of the decisions I make on my own farm. I think if you're both familiar with like permaculture, there's like a lot of common plants that are always used and a lot of native plants that are ignored. So things like oaks are not something that's commonly talked about as like a food forest cropper, whatever term you might want to use. Despite the fact that it can be used as a food source and it's so important for like the local ecology, you know, I look in my fridge today and I've got like a shelf full of ground nuts right now. I'm just thinking about like, you know, how do I build these relationships with plants like this, that have such a complicated history because of things that have happened here before. And I'm trying to do the right things for the land while also being respectful. And I think this is a challenge. And I think it's just part of why the conversation about like permaculture gets so muddy is because, again, to circle back even further, this conversation about like social media and the way it very quickly galvanizes opinions that are not very nuanced, even though the conversations are very nuanced and it doesn't allow for those, you know, you had brought up like it's much easier to talk and text or in a message or whatever than to like have a conversation in person. And that ease I think exacerbates these issues about talking about these plants. And I don't really have a question regarding this or my own personal experience. I just I wanted to bring up the subject just to hear some of your thoughts on kind of what are the what are the step, I guess I do have a question. What are the steps forward to, you know, we can't continue to live like this. If we want to make the planet in the United States or whatever, you know, this this country may be in 50 years habitable, like we have to be able to move past these conversations. And I was curious about your thoughts about that. So I actually took a permaculture class to see what it was like and, you know, something that of course we've all had discussions about what's his name Bill Molison and, you know, other people and the erasure of indigenous knowledge from the work that Molison and others have done within the realm of permaculture and about how a lot of what they do is based on indigenous science, but that's not talked about a lot. But it's my opinion that you and others, we all have to have a relationship with the plants and the wildlife around us. We have to develop that relationship. And I would dare say that that is important as most indigenous people that that that I know people don't look at it that way. But I think Ruth, you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. But most indigenous people I know have a relationship with plants and animals. It's just they're not putting it out there on social media and things like that. So a lot of people think that, you know, I'm constantly hearing stuff like, oh, that knowledge is getting lost when that's such a passive term for something that was literally stolen through violence and erasure, right? But I've been taught by so many elders and other knowledge holders who just know so much, you know, I still feel like a baby for all that I'm still learning. But I think that that's really important. Like you were talking about the ground ground nuts, were you talking about apios, like apiosamericana? Okay, so I think it's so important for people to develop a relationship with those plants because it's kind of like my students, you know, my indigenous students and what they say to me after they take an ethnobotany class or after they take a class about traditional medicines, you know, they say that I always used to drive down the road and just think it was all grass. When you just think like, oh, it's just all grass, there's really nothing out there. It's a lot harder to have a relationship in which you feel obligated to take care of the landscape and to take care of your relatives, your plant and animal, you know, a four-legged and even winged relatives. You know, it's hard to do that if you don't have a relationship with them. And so once you have a relationship and you're like, hey, these are my relatives, my actual relatives, there are stories from various tribes about being linearly descended from plants, you know, or certain animals. And so when you are a literal relative to those beings, you are much more likely to take care of them and a lot less likely to exploit them. And so I think that people developing those relationships is important to stop exploitation. But I don't think that relationship involves capitalism, you know, and I think that's important, but developing that relationship I think is really important. Well, and then I wanted to just add on to that. I think sometimes for me, it can be overwhelming to think about globally, we're in a really scary place at the moment. I mean, you can think of it like that, or you can think of it like, you know, this is an exciting time because we do have so much knowledge that we have access to and we can change the current path that we're on. But I guess it's like, all right, so as an individual, how do I engage in all of this? How do I make change? And you think that we need global change, right? We need systemic change and that that's a huge, huge thing. But that can be overwhelming if it's me. How do I help make systemic change or global change? And when something becomes that daunting, my son and I, it's fight, flight, or freeze, right? So my one son, he fights. My other son and I, we freeze. And so I don't want a freeze. You can't freeze, right? You have to do something. So how do you make it less paralyzing? And so for me, part of that is choosing to share what I do know, right? Make what I know accessible with who I choose to, whether that's social media or my neighbor, whoever. And just small scale chunk away. Like my mom, I loved when you were talking about, oh, I can't remember exactly how you said it. But then it made me think about my mom. And then you mentioned about your refrigerator. It made me think about my mom. My mom does not like wild game. My mom does not like it when I forage foods that I add them to what I'm cooking. And I'll say, do you know what you're eating? And she hates that. Am I eating bison? Well, I suppose there's nettles because I love nettles. I mean, nettles is like one of my favorite plants. I fall in love with different plants. And so I keep nettles in my cabinet and I throw it into stuff. But now one of my aunts asked me, because I'm always making all kinds of stuff. Well, can you make me a tea blend? And she mentioned, you know, what she needed it for. And she asked me for that. And I have a sister who has congestive heart failure. And so I gave her some, some things. And she said, because I've been using this consistently, it's been the best sleep I've had in about six years. Because it's reduced her pain. And so I may never get my mom to where I'm at. But I'm getting my, my other mom, my aunt and my sister. And, you know, they're starting to learn or they're starting to incorporate some of these local foods or traditionally used foods. And even my daughter, you know, she hates coming with me to go dig onions or whatever it might be. But it's funny because now she's 10 years old. And she'll be walking around with other kids. And this is plantain. And when you do this in this, it's a she'll be spouting after her friends because she knows something they don't know. But it's her sharing. So I might not be having this huge global systemic change influence. But I'm doing something, right? And I'm starting small. I'm sharing what I can with people close to me. And hopefully that will continue to grow. And maybe at some point have some, some impact at a larger scale. Yeah, that's a good story. It reminds me of like my own kids. Like you, you do these things and they are just annoyed with you like with this fervent hate. And then you turn around and they're just like, they just become like little, you know, all the things that they say they hate, you know, they come out later on. It's like a very slow digestion or something like that. But yeah, I guess like culturally speaking, that's also the same process where we have to make this process, this movement forward. But the digestion is just real slow. That for a very weird metaphor, the process to move forward just very, very slow. So Linda Ruth, this has been fantastic. I want to ask if you guys have anything you want to plug social media projects that you would like people to check out, anything like that. I'll start with Linda. No, thanks for having me on. I think if anything, yeah, check out United Tribes Technical College and if you're in the Bismarck North Dakota area, come visit and I'll take you out to our gardens and we'll harvest some stuff and eat it together and talk about plants and talk about food and people. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Yeah, I guess, similarly, if you ever get up to Newtown and want to come to the college and come check out our traditional gardens or see what it's depending on the time of year, see what we have growing around here and I definitely love to eat. Awesome. This is like I said, this has been great. I appreciate it so much. Thanks, Sandy. Yeah, thank you. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]