Our Traditional Food and Nutrition workshop covers soil fertility, crop choice(s) for our bioregion, diabetes prevention, and the cultural connections of indigenous peoples with foods. Holding the workshop at the Intertribal Friendship House greatly helps in getting out to communities particularly at risk of dietary problems. The forced removal of traditional diets has had real impacts on the reservations.



We were particularly gifted in traditional foods -- including salmon and buffalo!





Special thanks to Cesar Gonzalez and Nikol Trujillo who have stewarded Intertribal's garden development.





If you're around the Eastlake neighborhood (of Oakland) some Saturday morning with a need to pull weeds, drop on by!

Jan. 2009 - Water Is Life

Our "Water Is Life" workshop, was held the weekend of January 17-18. Winter is the rainy season in coastal CA, so we take this time to understand and honor the water cycles, and how we affect them.

This is particularly critical this year, as we enter potentially a third-year of drought (though Mother Nature is now making a good push to close the gap!)

Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a growing field, helping to tip people's awareness of how to live in place. Dennis Martinez articulates it well:

"When I first began working, as a native person, in what could be broadly characterized as "eco-cultural" restoration, there was little apparent interest on the part of ecological restorationists and scientists in indigenous knowledge, or what we now call Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). But we have experienced in the last ten or so years a sudden and growing interest by Western science in TEK. New books and papers on the subject—generally written by non-indigenous scholars—appear frequently, and in ever increasing numbers."

Indigenous Peoples Restoration Network

March 29-30, 2008: Berkeley and Davis DQU

This weekend Ida, Jose, Cesar, NIkol, Lupita, Guillermo and Sergio visited the Edible School Garden, Berkeley's Farmer's Market and drove up to Davis DQU. The garden design was developed, we ate a peaceful dinner put together by all of us, watched a movie and rested for the night to begin the next days work.

On Sunday, the IPP along with DQU residents began to work on the garden. Approximately 5 beds, and 5 flower beds were made changing the landscape tremendously from before and after. Tulip bulbs were planted as borders along the beds. This was a great opportunity to get hands on training for the students who plan on doing some garden work of their own -- the primary goal of this program is to begin and/or improve organic sustainable farming and gardening projects in our communities.