One program can have such an impact on creating food sovereignty.
1 Medicine Root Garden Program: 3 Levels of Gardening Courses, 9 Months of Classrooms and hands-on instruction, over 50 Gardening students, and over 50,000 pounds of produce grown on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
There are over 50 students in this year’s Medicine Root Gardening Program, which begins today at the Oyate Ta Kola Ku Community Center. The Medicine Root Gardening Program aims to strengthen the food sovereignty of the reservation, enabling local families to grow their own produce, which is hard to come by on the remote, rural reservation, and very expensive to afford when available. By supporting such organic food and garden programs, Indigenous families have the opportunity not only to provide healthier eating options for themselves but also to sell any surplus produce and generate seasonal income.
Classes begin in February. Today, on February 11, the Oyate Ta Kola Ku’s Medicine Root Gardening Program will welcome dozens of beginning to advanced gardeners to the first of 12 in-classroom training sessions.
A look at the curriculum. The sessions start with filling out a seed list and making an aerial view of their garden plots.
In the second class, participants will receive an introduction to “The Mittleider Method” of gardening, which is focused on vertical growth, high-nutrient-infused raised grow boxes, and low but focused watering.
The classes will continue weekly through April 29. Topics will include Understanding a Garden Plan, Soil Block Making and Seed Starting, Watering Methods, Fertilizers and how to mix them, Plant Deficiencies and Diseases and how to correct them, and more.
Then, starting in July, food preservation classes are scheduled as the season moves along to ensure families can access the healthy food they’ve grown all year round.
Impact by the numbers! The program served people in 13 communities in all nine districts of the vast reservation on the Great Plains of South Dakota, where the growing season is short. In 2024 alone, over 50,000 pounds of fresh produce were harvested and distributed throughout the community!
Growing more than produce: In addition, through the gardening program, interested individuals can learn how to become seasonal entrepreneurs and generate income through sales of their surplus vegetables and fruits, possibly through the Medicine Root Farmers Market.
And at the end of the summer, the Oyate Teca Project offers classes in methods of food preservation such as canning, ensuring they can enjoy the fruits of their labors long into the winter months.
From Rose Fraser, Director of Oyate Ta Kola Ku Community Center, which hosts the classes… “We like to see gardens in everyone’s homes! Families feeding themselves eliminate some of the negative barriers about our people.”
“We see more and more people wanting to garden,” she adds, “wanting to learn what is going into their food.
“We seed pride in learning a skill our ancestors have done in the past.”
And the result?
“Through newly acquired skills, people are eating healthier, staying more active, and storing food to last them through the winter.”
